(c) The Dallas Morning News from Dallas TX. May 28th, 1996 Section C page 1.
By Nancy Kruh
It's one of life's little tragedies that the thing initially irresistible
about foosball-spinning the rods (wooo-weeeee, look at 'em go)-is also absolutely
against the rules.
Yet somehow foosball has managed not only to endure this heartbreak, but prevail. Today, the game that was the frat-house fixture of the 1970s is making a comeback. And this time it's showing up in, among other places, the homes of actual adults.
The latest boom in table soccer "started taking off in 1990,1991," says Mick White, who's in charge of home sales for Tornado Table Sports, a manufacturer based in Fort Worth. "At first we were growing a little bit, then exponentially."
Everything you can track in foosball is up: coin-operated use, home sales, the number and size of tournaments, the prize money, and maybe most of all, the product profile.
The most visible foosball table is the one where the dining table should be in Joey and Chandler's apartment on the popular TV sitcom Friends.
And as if the game needed any more "trend" affirmation than that, another table actually touched George Clooney's hands in an episode of the hit drama ER
Other recent sightings: Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Coors Light and Miller beer commercials and the movies Il Postino (The Postman) and Mad Love.
Of course, let's not get carried away here. Foosball doesn't begin to touch the popularity or the profitability of computer games today. Then again, it's a lot more fun to play during a power outage.
- That back to basics quality is probably a big reason for its resurgence, says Clay ("I'm no relation to Forest") Gump, who manages an Inter-net home page dedicated to foosball at www.foosball.com
"It's kind of a backlash," says Mr. Gump, a University of Maryland systems engineer who prefers his avocation unplugged "I think a lot of people don't want video games They want to interact with each other."
For Mr. Gump, foosball isn't so much a game as an addiction-not an uncommon description among those who play. So much so, you Wonder why it ever lost popularity.
But, in the 1980's, a generation of would be foosballers was lured away by the siren sounds of Pac-Man and his ilks. When video games moved into arcades, bars and pool halls, what got moved to make room were foosball tables.
Other things contributed to foosball's decline, too. For the frat boys, it was something known as "real life." And for the tables themselves, it was basic wear and tear.
The game's popularity in the 1970s created a glut of cheaply made tables.
"The tables were built like crap," says Mr. Gump. "They wouldn't hold up in a bar like a pool table would "
Though this is a point that probably no one besides foosers truly appreciates the most annoying problem with the old tables involved the slope at the lip of the goals. They tended to warp, creating great expanses of dead space that the lone goalie couldn't reach.
Solving the warp problem has turned out to be a key factor in the game's comeback, players and manufacturers say.
The solution was to flatten the table and create a goalie rod with not one, but three men. Now, no more slope, warp or dead space.
The changes were generated by the designers at Tornado Table Sports.
Housed in two plain metal buildings on a lonely, two lane blacktop on the outskirts of Fort Worth, it doesn't exactly scream "center of foosball universe." But it is.
The firm sponsors most of the major tournaments (on Tornado tables, of course) and a 6,000 member players association. It dominates in both commercial and home sales-claiming 75 percent to 80 percent of the market, Mr. Gump estimates.
The Tornado tables' reputation is so strong that even its closest competitor - Dynamo Ltd., another Fort Worth company-doesn't have the heart to criticize.
"Tornado makes an excellent product, and there bigger in the tournaments," says Chris Brady, national sales manager for Dynamo, which sponsors a couple of tournaments yearly to Tornado's year-round tour.
Being "big dog" comes with its down side. Mr. Gump gets regular e-mail feedback from around the country from players longing for a more independent tournament system.
What bothers Mark Thompson, a Gainesville, Fla, man who founded the independent American Foosball Association, is the lack of table choice in tournament play.
"There's other types of tables, and other types of people who have developed proficiency on other types of tables," says Mr. Thompson, whose 300 member group is dedicated to getting foosball into the Olympics.
But such criticism is dulled by the fact that the popularity of the Tornado tournaments is yet another major reason for foosball's return.
Around the country, players are thronging to compete for trophies and cash at the events, which range in size from the $1,000 "Hot Shot Foosbash" in Daleville, Ala, to the $100,000 World Championships, an event held each September in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
The level of play at the bigger tournaments is always astonishing to any-one just introduced to the game. With the subtlest of strokes, the pros can make a ball dance like Nureyev. Then, with the snap of the wrist they propel the ball so fast-it's been measured at 120 mph-that the surest way to tell a score is by sound, not sight.
POWKI It's an intoxicating explosion when the ball hits the backboard -one that can inspire a pro career (and one that almost, almost makes up for the ban on spinning).
"When you first start playing, and you hear the sound, it's kind of exhilarating," says Terry Moore, a 28 year-old Chicago man who has been ranked the country's No. 1 male player for more than three years. "It definitely gets you pumped."
Mr. Moore has built much of his pro success on a shot known as a "rollover," "monkey shot" or "snake shot" (foosball lingo, by the way, can and does go on for days). in a rollover, the plastic man does a back flip before striking the ball.
Mr. Moore didn't invent the shot, but he did popularize it-to the point that it's become a tournament mainstay.
While the two more traditional strokes-called the "palm roll" and "wrist shot"-can take years of practice to perfect, a player's rollover can be ready for tournament play in a matter of months.
"I think I might be a little biased," says Mr. Moore, "but I think it's one of the biggest reasons the sport has grown in the last three to four years. The shot can be learned with a high execution rate in six to eight months. That was the biggest asset in terms of getting players into tournament play. These guys don't have a 'five-row' [the rod that requires passing skills], but they still think they've got a chance."
Purists, such as Tornado's resident pro Steve Murray, aren't wild about the shot Because it doesn't require the dead calm of the other strokes, "it takes out the 'choke factor,' " says Mr. Murray, who is national promotions director, "and to me, that's one of the most exciting parts of the game."
Still Mr. Murray can't argue hard against anything that has increased the game's popularity. He spends much of his time zipping around the country, marketing the fever that he came down with 23 years ago, at age 14.
Today's players usually learn on the coin operated tables now turning up in restaurant-bars and upscale pool halls. Once you're hooked, the ache for your own home table isn't long in coming.
And Tornado will be happy to ease your suffering. (Models start at $595 and go up to around $1,100.) Last year, the company sold 5,500 tables, and six out of every 10 were for home use.
Many home tables, says Mr. White of Tornado, are going to baby boomers who are rediscovering the game they loved in college and introducing it to their children. Many are adding to a growing base of female players.
For four years, Donna Mock a day manager at a Click's Billiards in northeast Dallas resisted the lure of the foosball tables at work
"I used to think it was stupid," she says, "but I probably thought so because I didn't think I could play it" ,
Then about a year ago, she picked it up with a boyfriend, and she hasn't let go. (The boyfriend, however, is history.)
After going out three and four nights a week to play, Ms. Mock recently bought a table.
"Now," she says, "I have my choice of staying in or going out"
As foosball popularity continues its climb, the inevitable spin-offs are arriving. Tornado has introduced a line of foosball trading cards and tournament videos, and has started a table-soccer hall of fame. Dynamo, which sells only commercial models, now markets a table with electronic scoring and timer.
A California company has introduced a $7,000 table intended to sharpen corporate team building skills.
And, yes, it was only a matter of time before the arrival of this oxymoronic activity of video foosball.
One computerized version is now on the Internet, allowing you to down-load and test play it for free.
Mr. Gump tried out the game, and he offers his succinct review: "It stinks."
Ah, a true fooser. He probably can resist spinning the rods, too.
-Nancy Kruh