04/05/2007

Record-Eagle/Douglas Tesner

Good vibrations on the gridiron

Rapid City man wants to form league

By
Record-Eagle staff writer

Record-Eagle/
Douglas Tesner
Brian Whittkop Sr. lines up two teams on one of his electric football fields. Whittkop is trying to start an electric football league.

RAPID CITY — Brian Wittkop Sr.'s favorite way to enjoy football is to watch plastic players buzz around on a vibrating metal field.

He wants to start an electric football league here, which may lead to the question: Why bother with such a low-tech game in an age where video game football has realistic movement, expert commentary and detailed reproductions of actual stadiums?

"There's a quaintness to this and it's social,” said Wittkop, 48, who belonged to a league when he lived in Monroe.

The game's heyday was the 1960s and '70s, when Tudor Games owned the rights. It fizzled during the 1980s but found a smaller, more devoted constituency in the '90s.

Wittkop is among tens of thousands of people who now play it, said Ira H. Silverman, a spokesman for Miggle Toys Inc. of Highland Park, Ill., which sells the sets and accessories online and elsewhere.

"When the Internet came around, guys in Florida, Texas or Michigan started talking to each other about it,” Wittkop said. "I keep in touch with guys all over the country. I have an e-mail list of about 200.”

It's more involved than it seems at first glance. Some of the bases that the plastic athletes stand on have dials built in that may be changed between plays. The more basic ones can still be manipulated by cutting or bending the prongs on the bottom.

"Some people know their guys so well they know how they're going to block and how they're going to run,” Wittkop said. "It isn't just a guy twirling around like people think it is.”

People can buy a classic board with two teams for $50 from the Miggle Toys Inc. Web site. And that is just the beginning.

Wittkop has 25 boards, some with team logos in the end zones. He also has players representing all NFL teams filed in plastic organizing boxes. That's on top of 40 college teams, some of which he painted himself and others he bought finished.

Some teams have painted-on old-time uniforms. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, for example, are decked out in their old orange uniforms and in their current pewter and red colors.

Some of his teams no longer exist, including the Houston Oilers and the Orlando Thunder of the World Football League, which is now NFL Europe.

"You can go as nuts as you want with them,” he said. "Some people put a crowd in the stands and everything.”

Wittkop has gone to conventions in major cities all over the U.S. that have their own playoffs and championships.

Wittkop's wife Patty "tolerates” his hobby, he said.

"She thinks it's a little immature, but there's a lot worse things I could be doing,” he said.

When Wittkop moved to Rapid City after retiring from operating a glass shop because he's on kidney dialysis, he had to drop out of the Monroe County Electric Football League. He's now putting up some fliers to see if he can find others in northern Michigan who are enthused or curious about the vibrating gridiron.

People who want to join don't need to have any equipment to begin with, he said. For more information, visit Wittkop's Web site at http://www.webspawner.com/users/crush687.