This game is not to be confused with the SPI game of the same name-- and almost the same year. This is the playable game, professionally developed and packaged, and fun.

Scrimmage was invented by Chuck Eskridge, and David Williams. It is a football game in which one side controls the offense and the other controls the defense. Movement is accomplished by dice rolls, with slower players have lower maximum movement capability. Each side has pieces (players) of varying strength and speed. Any player can tackle any other player, but only players of equal or greater strength can block opposing players. The offense sets up, and then the defense, with a twist: the defense does not know whether the offense is running a passing play or a running play. (The choice is disclosed after the play starts.) If it is a passing play, the pass can be thrown to a designated grid but only after the play has had time to develop. If a play breaks down, the offensive player draws a card to determine whether he can recover.

The passing mechanism works wonderfully: the offense places two men downfield in one of several grids, and secretly chooses a card identifying the grid to which the pass will be made. Each team then moves players (including the potential receivers) with the roll of the dice. When the pass is made, the offense chooses which square in the grid the pass will go to. The choice of squares determines how easy it is for the receiver and the defensive back(s) to get to the square to which the pass is made: if the receiver gets to the square and the back does not, the pass is complete. If the back gets to the square and the receiver does not, the pass is intercepted. If both get to the square, the pass is incomplete.

The running game and the pass rush depend on the the success of the blockers and the defensive line. There is luck in the dice rolls, of course, but the luck evens out over the course of the game and a good play can survive a little bad luck. Card drawing can also be important. Sometimes tacklers reach the ball carrier but fail to make the tackle, or make the tackle and force a fumble, which can be recovered by either the offense of defense.

This is one of the few games non-simulation football games (i.e., not strat-o-matic football or its cousins) that really feels like you are playing football. You choose your play in advance, and, like real football, sometimes it works as planned, sometimes it fails, and sometimes you have to improvise during the course of the play.

Only about 800 copies of the game were sold, primarily in game stores in the South. Two versions were created, the original version and a second version that included an optional "monster man" with good speed and power.

Chuck and I were aerospace engineers working for Boeing on the Apollo program in Huntsville when we invented Scrimmage. We had the various parts of the game made by seven different companies. A company in Laconia, N.H. made the wooden pieces per our design. Each piece is a body of revolution that can be turned on a screw machine. The pieces were put in a vat with special paint, and the vat was rotated to produce the colored pieces. They cost about a penny apiece. The original box top was designed by a Boeing graphics designer in our group. The second box top was designed by a first cousin of my wife's, Ben Humphrey, who was an excellent artist. The box top sheets were printed in Nashville, Tennessee (a four color process). The boxes were made by a box company in Cullman, Alabama. The plastic tray for the various game parts and the plastic first-down marker and down marker were made by a company in Huntsville, and the printing of the interior parts of the box was done in Huntsville. We bought the dice and plastic footballs from a novelty company in Nashville. The pasteboard shipping cartons (for six and twelve games) were made by a box company near Huntsville.

My father, a cotton buyer in Luverne, Alabama, assembled the games in his cotton warehouse, and cartons of six and twelve were shipped from there. We first intended to use blue and red for the two team colors. But then, we decided to go with yellow and red. The later version of the game included a monster man for the defense. He could move his maximum distance on every move and was not limited by the roll of the dice. Without the monster man, the games tended to be too short (the first team to score won the game).

We could make and assemble a game for a little over $2.00, and our wholesale price for the game was $3.50. The games retailed for about $7.00. The biggest sale occurred at a Sears store in Huntsville, which advertised the game on TV and sold about 200 of them during a Christmas season.

I've just discovered this website and was pleasantly surprised to find that the game has been well received. I've retained six copies as souvenirs (two old versions and four new versions).

David F. Williams

Huntsville, Alabama
Retired Aerospace Engineer