Foos Noos

At this year's CO State, Robert Mares was auctioning off (for charity) an original poster (signed by Open Singles winner Mike Bowers) for the 1974 Tony Cline Open. Tony Cline was an NFL player who enjoyed foosball as a hobby. I suggested that Robert take a picture of the poster with my phone/camera and he graciously complied. He wanted me to mention that this was the 3rd major tournament ever in the U.S. and that the poster is in the Foosball Almanac. -Arthur

[About 3 years ago, Mark invited me to co-admin this page with him. In that time, I haven't posted near as much as I would have liked to, but hopefully that will change in 2024. Anyways, I have already briefly discussed the topic of this post with him and while I suspect it is likely he will agree with some of the opinions I'm going to express, it is possible he may disagree with some of them as well. - Arthur]

The image below is from a 1984 Table Talk and discusses the Goalie War rules at the time on Dynamo. My best recollection is that the rules had not changed significantly from the TS era. I'd like to draw special attention to the fundamental principle of Goalie Wars which is in all caps on the upper right half of the article. With that in mind, I'm going to present a few scenarios, what the "old" and ITSF rules say should happen and which one(s) I agree with. Scenarios 1, 2, & 3 are about when the ball hits a middle rod. As Mark suggested, the optimal solution would be to have the middle rods removed for Goalie Wars, but not all Tournament Directors are willing to slow down the tourney that way, hence my mention of them. Scenarios 4 & 5 are about ball off the table.

Scenario 1) Yellow has possession, hits the ball which makes contact with a middle rod and enters Black's goal. The old and ITSF rules both indicate that Yellow gets a point and I concur.

Scenario 2) Yellow has possession, hits the ball which makes contact with a middle rod back into Yellow's goal. The old and ITSF rules both indicate that Black gets a point and I concur.

Scenario 3) Yellow has possession, hits the ball which makes contact with a middle rod back into Yellow's area. The old rules indicate that Black gets possession of the ball, whereas (as Dan Barber has pointed out to me), the ITSF rules indicate that Yellow retains possession of the ball. I am absolutely convinced that, for this scenario, the ITSF rules are flawed, because they are wholly inconsistent with the fundamental principle. Given that Goalie Wars at the upcoming Tornado Championships is not an ITSF qualifying event, as IFP Head Official, I am issuing a tentative ruling in favor of the old rules. In the event that I am overruled by both Donald Wilson and Mary Moore, I will issue a retraction. Also, should Goalie Wars ever become an ITSF qualifying event, we will reevaluate.

Scenario 4) Yellow has possession, hits the ball, which causes the ball to go off the table without ever entering Black's zone. I'm not entirely sure how the old rules handle this, but it's clear the ITSF rules indicate that Black gets possession of the ball and I concur.

Scenario 5) Yellow has possession, hits the ball, it enters Black's zone, and subsequently goes off the table. The old rules indicate that the ball goes to the player who was last scored upon. The ITSF rules indicate that Black gets possession of the ball. Between the two, I think the ITSF rules are fairer and in order not to confuse the players, that's what we'll go with. However, I'm not completely enamored with how the ITSF rules handle this scenario. In my opinion, the fairest way to handle ball off the table is to have an alternating possession arrow, similar to college basketball. Let me emphasize that this is *not* a ruling, but rather a proposed modification to the existing ITSF rules.

Tournament Soccer, The Million Dollar Tour, Jan. '78 - May '79. Tournament nearly every weekend in nice hotels. You could tour city to city. Two of the biggest stars, Tom Spear and Carrie Walegir. You had to be there to understand the greatness of this time period in foosball.

Doubles Strategy, from Johnny Lott.

I would like to personally thank Mr Alan Cribbs for his donation of Foos Noos issues to help share more classic articles and results from foosball's golden era!

Stay tuned, all you classic era foosball fans! More posts coming over the Holidays! Thanks for all your feedback, Mark Vennitti

In memory of the great Franco Harris, here's a post from the time the NFLPA had a foosball tournament in promotion with Tournament Soccer. At Happy Jack's Arcade, Long Beach, January '79. Foosball was everywhere, even being played by NFL greats!

What's it like to win $25,000 playing foosball? Gil Jackson shows you, shaking hands with Mark Scheuer after winning the '77 Tournament Soccer World Championships with Todd Loffredo.

Some of the oldest published results that I've ever seen. This is like the beginning of time. 😃 1974 Tournament Soccer Nationals, Denver Co. Foosball's first great champions.