Robofootball: Doublespin

September 20, 2020 would be a tough start for the Michigan Robocats. Detroit had the Tigers for baseball, the Lions once for the now defunct NFL, and even the old USFL team in Michigan chose the Panthers as their mascot. It was fitting that they chose a big cat namesake with a mechanical representation that resembled that of an ancient jaguar sculpture from the Inca Civilization, blocky but ferocious looking with bared fangs. It stuck out prominently in blue on the chest of each player on a silver background, matching the pants that were a little darker that the traditional Honolulu blue worn by the Detroit Lions; after all, they still had to respect obsolete franchise trademarks.

The initial inspection didn’t go badly at all. The robot doubles for Antwan and Jess passed muster. With the help of Yuri who was kept in the dark, Antwan’s armored suit was identical to that of a cloned receiver. The inch shaved off of Antwan’s legs dropped his natural height from 6’5” to 6’4” which provided the 2 inch cushion needed for his full head gear. Reynolds had weaved an intricate web as Yuri made two sets of armor for Antwan, one Reynolds scurried away on the pretext that it was a prototype example for the government. Instead of providing it to his government reps, he took it to the paint department over at HAL where all of the team colors and logos were applied to all of the armor covering the players. HAL had a huge enclosed automated paint booth where workers usually hung limbs on overhead conveyors like clothes lines as they moved slowly through the robotic sprayers, and then into the annealing ovens for controlled drying. The MIR had paint booths too, but nothing as fancy as HAL’s.

Jess was another story. There was no getting around the issue with Dr. Hobson about his intentions. Hobson was the one man that Reynolds preferred not to confide in, but there was little choice. Hobson at least had the evil scientist gene, and as long as the money flowed his way, there would be no problem. Hobson was very secretive about his research which was a plus in Reynolds’ mind. Like Jess’s dad however, the ultimate mafia solution was a date with the fishes under the sad sea, not a happy place without a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus and a couple of 60-pound solid concrete blocks tied to one’s legs. Like Steve Austin from an old TV series, Jess was rapidly becoming a $6 million dollar man, especially when his vertical mobile diagnostic chamber was thrown in, 3 times the cost of a Gen 3, and Reynolds still only had one of them on the team too, just a lowly offensive lineman with fused fingers.

Then again, for a few million more, the total Kettering team designs were supposedly just as good if not better than the Japanese Gen 3’s at a fraction of the cost. As far as Reynolds knew, there was now a lot of interest in robotic design throughout the world, but nothing quite like the Japanese models, until now with his Kettering’s newbies. The Japanese still seemed to be a year or two ahead of most everyone else with the exception of Kettering. Reynolds didn’t realize it at the time, but his Kettering models would eventually inspire other tech colleges in America into developing their own player designs in the future.

The only Robocat player that didn’t pass the initial inspection was a big bulky Gen 1 offensive backup guard from the previous season. His head had been sandwiched during the first season which left a crease in the middle of his head that looked like a small Mohawk. The crease rose about a sixteenth of an inch above its head; thus, making it slightly taller than 6’6”. A little hammering and bending by Yuri would bring it back into the realms of eligibility. Jess and Antwan were purposefully not present during the inspection when their Gen 2 cloned duplicates were indeed certified to play.

There were still just 12 teams for the second season, but expansion was certainly on the horizon. A few had suffered financial problems like the Robocats and reorganized under new leadership or investors, but survived nonetheless. Michigan was part of the Central Division that included teams from Chicago, Illinois, Wichita, Kansas, and of all places, Little Rock, Arkansas. Senator Margaret Leahy, a formidable opponent against real men playing football, had had an inside track on aiding and sponsoring the new RFL. With her whole-hearted support, the state was able to land a franchise, but, like the Robocats, they had finished the first season a dismal 0-12 after relying far too much on cheap inferior Gen 1 models. The fan base was never large in Arkansas given the limited population as compared to some of the bigger cities, and the team quickly ran out of money faster than any other.

When the Gen 2’s became more available midway through the 2nd season, they were rushed along and were more like untried and untested prototypes for the better and more flexible Gen 3’s. The Gen 1’s were big and blocky looking, durable, but slow, and not very maneuverable. Many a plain Gen 1 quarterback forced teams into running the ball more often. The Gen 2’s quickly gained a reputation for malfunction and unreliability since they used lighter armor and more fabric-like inner cushioning below the thinner skinned aluminum alloy outers. Many barely made the 200 pound weight minimum to maximize flexibility but durability was sacrificed in the process. The Gen 3’s that began appearing later on in the first season combined the positive attributes of each of the two earlier models: tougher outer alloy skins with more steel and titanium that rivaled the toughness of the Gen 1’s, but not sacrificing the flexibility and maneuverability present in the Gen 2’s.

The few teams that could afford and acquire some of the Gen 3’s ended up as the main ingredient for those making the playoffs and those on the bubble who did not. The Tin Cans out of Dallas, Texas had been able to get the most; as a positive consequence, they won the first Cosmic Bowl over Chicago last season, the equivalent of the Super bowl, but once again, the “Super bowl” name was trademarked, and to avoid a colossal cluster-fuck legal mess that only American lawyers can provide, they wisely chose another name.

2019 DIVISIONS

EAST

The problem with opening day is that Michigan had to play Chicago on the road as each team played their division rivals twice, once each on the other’s home turf, along with 6 other games, 3 home, and 3 away to make it all even. Since there were only 12 teams, each team played 6 of the other 8 teams outside of their division. Chicago had won the Central in 2019, literally knocking off the Baltimore Blockheads in the semifinals, but then only losing to Texas in the first Cosmic Bowl. The Texas Tin Cans completed a perfect 12-0 season followed by their 2 playoff victories.

2020 Michigan Robocat Schedule

09/20/2020 Michigan at Chicago

09/27/2020 Arkansas at Michigan

10/04/2020 Michigan at Boston

10/11/2020 Wichita at Michigan

10/18/2020 New York at Michigan

10/25/2020 Michigan at Seattle

11/01/2020 BYE WEEK

11/08/2020 Michigan at Arkansas

11/15/2020 Chicago at Michigan

11/22/2020 Daytona at Michigan

11/29/2020 Michigan at Texas

12/06/2020 Baltimore at Michigan

12/13/2020 Michigan at Wichita

POSTSEASON

12/20/2020 BYE WEEK

12/27/2020 PLAYOFF SEMIFINALS

01/03/2021 BYE WEEK

01/10/2021 COSMIC BOWL

The 2020 season began on the 2nd to last Sunday in September just as it had the previous year. The teams would play 6 games in a row on Sundays, take a much needed bye week off for repairs, and then play 6 more games every Sunday thereafter. A Monday night game was proposed, but once again, legal action threatened over the Monday Night Football trademark, and the idea was nixed. Another week off was given for repairs prior to the start of the playoffs. Only 4 teams made the playoffs, the 3 division winners and 1 wild card. Tie breakers for those with identical records were first decided by head-to-head competition, one’s division record, total points scored, and lastly, if for some improbable reason that there was still a tie, especially in points, total yardage gained was the last. In 2019, there were no ties, but there was a provision that the first playoff game be scheduled outside of one’s division; thus, meaning that the wildcard team would not play its own division leader in the first round. With that exception, the teams were seeded 1 to 4 with 4 playing at 1’s home field and 3 playing at 2’s home field. In that first season, Texas knocked off New York, Chicago beat Baltimore, and then Texas beat Chicago in the big finale.

The RFL in 2020 remained 12 teams with one shake-up, and that had to do with the Central Division that Michigan was a part of. The Louie Lugs of St. Louis sold the franchise to a business conglomerate in Colorado and became the Denver Decimators. Denver was placed in the Western Division with Texas, Anaheim, and Seattle; consequently, the lowly Arkansas Aluminites were moved to the Central in place of St. Louis to join Michigan, Chicago, and Wichita. It would be a nice break for Michigan since they would get to play a team twice that had rivaled them for futility in the first season.

2020 DIVISIONS

That left opening day 2020 for Michigan against powerhouse Chicago, and the game got off to bad start for the Robocats. There was no longer a need for sideline coaches save for one to speak to the refs; rather, enclosed war rooms were built either separately or within locker rooms, some were just expansions of the former media rooms complete with sophisticated cameras and networks and computer stations that rivaled that of a NASA space center. Thumb jockeys, some students and some techs that had won their jobs back from the previous year after some intense competition from the Kettering students, all sat in segregated rows with individual 32” monitors while a massive widescreen monitor fully 20 feet long and 11 ¼ feet wide to keep a 16:9 viewing ratio graced the front wall that the individual techs faced. This was standard equipment in all visitor rooms; home teams could have even bigger and better equipment in their own rooms if desired. Fortunately for Reynolds, the expense of this set up back at the Silverdome had been borne in the 2019 budget.

The individual electronic control boards that traveled with the team were about as sophisticated as anything on the planet. There were 2 complimentary joysticks, one for basic left-right-forward-backward movement while the other was for directional jumping, up-down-left-right. There was a vast array of other buttons specifically suited to each position, one for closing and opening hands though the offensive linemen lacked these since the fingers were fused to prevent holding, another for spinning clockwise, one for counterclockwise, others for coordinating hand movements for catching the ball, and on and on. The kickers, quarterbacks, receivers, running backs, and even defensive secondary players all had specialized control buttons too, nearly an entire keyboard, especially for the quarterback.

Reynolds was technically the head coach, but he had offensive and defensive coordinators who jumped around the room with headsets barking out orders, yelling and cursing like typical coaches, but only between plays or when the Robocats were on defense. Reynolds settled down at his own station up front; after all, he had a control board similar to the other player controllers the size of a large TV tray, complete with joystick and numerous buttons, only most of his controls were nonfunctional. It was supposedly connected to the #7 receiver which happened to be Antwan.

Reynolds could however type in communication commands to Antwan which were transmitted and translated by voice to Antwan’s ear piece, concealed naturally in his full head and face covering armor. Antwan spoke back by the miracle of Dragonspeak software that in turn, showed up on Reynolds’ monitor as the written word. Reynolds had his offensive and defensive coordinators call plays and it was up to the thumb jockeys to implement them. For Antwan, Reynolds typed in the play call which transmitted to Antwan’s ear piece. Jess on the other hand had individual programming and his muscle movements were controlled much the same as the robot players, only he proved to exhibit superior mobility under Hobson’s direction. Reynolds could still hardly believe it with his young quarterback, watching Hobson next to him flipping controls as if some demon spirit had inhabited and possessed Jess’s body. It would never seem quite right to Reynolds.

As more of an emergency backup system, the control boards could be utilized for automated or auto pilot mode as Reynolds liked to call it. The controller could hit the two red buttons that were on the far opposite ends of the control board, set up that way to avoid accidental implementation like a large machine press was to prevent hands from getting crushed when the carriage came down. When they were depressed simultaneously, the robotic player would simply follow a pre-programmed pattern based on the play called. Practice had revealed that there was no substitute for human joystick and keyboard movement especially when it came to improvisation and maneuverability in a 3-dimensional field of play.

The only thumb jockey who didn’t understand some of the verbal abuse mouthed by the coaches was Ichiro Nagasaki, and that was because his English was a little weak. Japanese students always learned a 2nd language while growing up as it was simply part of their more rigorous schooling, but Ichiro had spent 4 years with German, believing that Germany was the main rival of Japan when it came to engineering and design pursuits in both automotive and robotic concerns. He had only one year of English but was getting the curse words down quite nicely along with “Jaysus Cwist”, and “God Damn It” from the way the coaches went on. Ichiro was a little guy too, Yuri’s height but slim as the fast food lifestyle of America had not caught up with him yet. He couldn’t pass up the fine offer that came from Kettering, especially when he could control his own design that had been modified into a running back, one that he had total and absolute control over. How ultimately cool would he be to the nerds and geeks of his world. He not only controlled a robo-football player, but basically designed and invented one too. He would be the king of nerds and would gain nearly as much notoriety as the retired Japanese hall of Fame baseball player of his namesake, Ichiro Suzuki. Kettering and the RFL would give him the opportunity to become a rock star, if only in his own mind, and he couldn’t very well pass that up.

The first season for the RFL overall had been glitch city, but some of the bugs were still present. The opening kickoff in the new season by the Robocat kicker was a fine example. The kicker, one area that Reynolds had not paid much personal attention to given his time and efforts with Jess and Antwan, was another important player. The kicker had to place the ball on a tee, step back, then run forward and blast it. The problem was that the kicker controller worked the controls and placed the ball improperly on the tee. He did not notice from his monitor that the ball slid sideways ever so slightly nearly off the tee, but it held. When he maneuvered his directional pad to bring the player forward and coordinate the kick, the soccer style boot kicked the off-leaning ball 20 yards into the stands just off the midfield mark.

The home Chicago crowd roared with laughter, cheering and taunting at the same time as the Choppers lined up at their own 49 yard line for their first offensive play. The Choppers were actually sponsored and partly owned by Harley Davidson, and sported black and orange coloring with big motorcycle choppers as their team logo. They looked mean and tough. To counter, the Michigan corner covering the receiver went into motion too, but unfortunately, collided with his own safety, which was being maneuvered up and down some by his controller, who happened to go up, right at the inopportune time that the corner was cutting across. Both defensive players went down as the ball was snapped. By the time the two players were back on their feet and running to cover their assignments, the nimble Gen 3 receiver was spiking the ball in the end zone while the two defensive backs were crossing the 20 yard line in a feeble attempt to catch up. The receiver simply had to camp under a lazy pop-up throw with the shortage of able defenders. The extra point was good, and with 9 seconds gone off the clock, Michigan was down 7-0.

The ensuing kickoff sailed out of the end zone for a touchback before Ichiro could track it down. His running back player doubled as a return specialist and Ichiro would prove as good as Holliday predicted. Not only was his nifty little 5’6” running back the most agile player on the field, Ichiro proved to be no slouch with the controls. Watching his player was like viewing a remote controlled car whipping around, through, and under vehicles in a slow moving traffic jam, maybe like Frogger on the first few levels.

“When am I going to get the ball?” Antwan’s words popped out on Reynolds’ screen.

“Hang tight Antwan, we’ve gotten 3 first downs on the ground.”

“Okay man, but call some passes, I can get open around these guys.”

“Okay, just try to run the play plans for now.”

“Hey Rudy!” Reynolds exclaimed from the very first row as he caught Rudy’s attention. Rudy “The Gorilla” Garrioli stood in front of the war room barking out offensive plays. Not all that tall at 5’8”, he had fairly broad wrestler’s shoulders and long arms, and given his last name combined with his physique, the gorilla namesake was not a stretch by any means. When you threw in the fact that he was one of those dark extra hairy Italians, it was a done deal. Rudy had been the offensive coordinator for Central Michigan University once, but more relevantly, a cousin of the Verlucci Family. It was always either about the connections in life, or the money as Dano Verlucci would say.

“Yeah boss?”

“Give me a pass play for Ant…., sorry, I mean my guy, #7.”

“Okay boss, you want something short like a screen or down field?”

“Let’s go downfield, I’m getting open real easy.”

“Okay boss, listen up kids, Flanker 42 on 3!” Rudy barked out. What was nice about technology was that the thumb jockeys didn’t have to memorize every play and what their player was supposed to do, it didn’t hurt anything if they did, but rather, Rudy’s voice command combined with direct keyboard input, brought up a schematic on the big monitor as well as on each player’s individual screen. Since 25 seconds was allowed when the ball was spotted by the robo-ref, the controllers had plenty of time to reference the play before the ball was snapped. If worse came to worst, they could always hit the 2 red buttons for automated mode and the basic play would be transmitted to the player on the field with movement instructions. The red buttons were there for malfunctions to the control board or if for some reason the play call didn’t go through to the board.

Antwan cut around his defender with ease, did a head fake left about 15 yards down field, and then cut right on a fairly basic down and out as called by Rudy. The ball sailed over his head despite his maximum 3-foot leap. “Damn it! I was wide open!” flashed across Reynolds’ monitor.

“Damn it Rudy,” Reynolds repeated Antwan’s words aloud, “He was wide open.” His words were meant more for the mysterious Dr. Hobson who was sitting next to him. Hobson was frowning too and cussing under his breath in frustration.

“Dash 47!” Rudy commanded deferring to a run play. “Sorry boss, you know, we didn’t have much time to test those new enhancements that you and the Doc there did to this quarterback. He seems to move well and has a good arm, the accuracy isn’t there yet.”

“Let’s give him another chance, but you just call the plays as you see fit Rudy, but when they start stacking the line, we’re going to have to throw.” Jess’s clone had the same #18, the Gen 2 model that they acquired late in the first season; nevertheless, it seemed to spend more time in the repair bay than on the field. It was healthy now, and guy named Mark was its best controller. If they had to pull Jess, the #18 clone and Mark would relieve Jess and Hobson. This would require some locker room substitution, but only after a break like a timeout, end of the quarter, or say half time. Reynolds couldn’t very well have Hobson run Jess to the locker room, and the clone quarterback with the same number could not be present on the bench at the same time. In fact, the #18 clone had to be kept hidden in the office that Reynolds kept locked and off limits to any techs. During a switch, Jess would have to be hidden as well. The same system was set up for Antwan too.

“Yeah,” said Rudy, “Maybe a little screen this time, but let’s get it to Ichiro, that boy can run, Screen 777!” Rudy shouted out the play needlessly. The room had good acoustics, plus the players were glued to their monitors where the play flashed on instantly when Rudy spoke it. They had the outdoor volume turned down, but one couldn’t help but hear the crashing and bashing as the players collided from blocking and tackling like a demolition derby on the field.

Curiously, some of the crowd favorites were the black and white striped robot zebra refs that looked like leftover cartoon characters from some mechanical prison. Some of the individual sweeper units that accompanied the Zamboni-like trailers were decked out in white with red crosses on their chests and backs, constantly scampering about between plays to pick up debris. The bigger units only came in to pick up a whole or partially whole player after a breakdown or malfunction. Time was usually only called when that player had to be taken off the field. To avoid injury, the human refs sat on elevated chairs on the sidelines to run the game. Their assistants had their own control boards for the on field robo-refs.

Ichiro’s field partner had already gained 52 yards on the ground like a chicken with little kids chasing it though the kids looked like giants compared to the chicken. When the screen play was called, Hobson manipulated Jess’s muscle controls successfully with his keyboard to throw an easy pass, but two linebackers slipped through the Robocat blockers as it looked like the play was going to be a bust. At the last split second when it looked as though the running back was going to be little more than a thick piece of bologna between two slices of orange Chopper bread, Ichiro ducked and spun out of the way as the 2 linebackers ran smack into one another. With the blockers still in front taking out what secondary defenders remained on that end of the field, Ichiro ran in for a TD, and, with the extra point, tied the score at 7 apiece.

Along with Texas and New York, Chicago was the only other team that had a Gen 3 quarterback returning from season 1, and it showed. A few additional teams would acquire them in 2020, but the original 3 had more real time game experience with their returning controllers. Chicago marched up and down the field with a pass game that Michigan could not seem to match, mostly due to the little practice time that Hobson had controlling Jess’s body. Jess’s strange overhaul had gone a little past the deadline, time to make the season, but only a few weeks before opening day, and then there had been breakdowns, sensors jarred loose, electronic issues, and other muscle movement control problems. Part of it was just adapting and controlling all of the complex movements a body could make with a few keystone sensors implanted in his brain about a central processing unit. One also didn’t put Madden Football 2020 on one’s PC and become a master overnight. It took time to recognize individual player differences and quirks, and Jess’s body had tons more than any nonhuman player. Even Montana to Rice or Stafford to Johnson took some synchronization developed from long hours of practice and experience.

“Damn, these things hit like fuckin’ trucks man,” Antwan relayed back as he was slow getting up. He caught his first pass late in the 2nd quarter but was dropped like a moving appliance striking a 3-year old.

“Stay down any time and we’ll bring you in.” Reynolds typed as a reminder. They had worked out before game time that if Antwan got hurt, then he should just stay down and let the sweeping crew bring him to the locker room. It struck him that Jess did not have the ability to communicate like Antwan. Hobson had mentioned something about repressing memories in whatever parts of the brain that Reynolds had no hope of recalling. What if the boy actually did get hurt or even killed on the field? Reynolds sighed, another body disposal would be in order, or maybe a real cremation this time like he had told Jess’s dad. The Verlucci’s did have some interests in a few funeral homes, not to mention a crematorium. Michigan had some odd law that funeral homes could not run their own crematoriums, but the Verlucci’s just got around it by putting the businesses under different names with ownership by different family members.

Jess was getting hit a little here and there, but Hobson seemed to be getting him back on up on his feet easily via remote control. His play and movement however seemed to be becoming more sluggish as the 2nd quarter progressed. As a result, Hobson actually called it a day for Jess at halftime after conversing with Reynolds. Hobson brought him to the office area that was off limits to virtually everyone except Reynolds. It was a little trickier given that they were on the road; nevertheless, there were always multiple offices for visiting coaches. The 2nd half would be played by the Robocat #18 clone, the same unit that had seen limited action the previous year. The controller Mark would work it while Hobson remained in the office part of the locker room going over his patient. If Reynolds couldn’t make a winning duo with Hobson and Jess, then he’d have to defer to Mark and the clone. He was hoping that his special experiment would gain top billing, but he was practical too.

Game 1 had end up in a 49-28 loss to Chicago, but it was not all bad. Three areas needed addressing and that was the passing game, the kicking game as they had missed a field goal to go along with a couple of bad kickoffs, and the defensive secondary. The Chicago Choppers had mostly outmaneuvered the pass defenders and Reynolds concluded that it was more of an experience factor rather than one of talent. The quarterback matchup had been just a little too much in Chicago’s favor, and Reynolds hoped to change that. Chicago was a top team, runner-up to Texas last year, and they had an awful lot of Gen 3 starters out there; yet, in Reynolds opinion that was shared by his two coordinators, the Kettering models looked a little green, but looked as though as they could compete head-to-head with the best of the Japanese. On a high note, the Robocat running back had tremendous possibilities. Jess along with Ichiro’s running back did exhibit superior maneuverability and the fragile Gen 2 quarterback at least held up under Mark’s control in the 2nd half, but was simply outclassed by the Chicago Gen 3 counterpart.

There were individual controllers for the backup players, and Reynolds had spelled Antwan here and there giving them both a break as needed. It was tricky substituting the same numbered player as Antwan, but Reynolds was the head coach, and he could call in a new controller whenever he wished. Only a few of the human puppet masters controlled players on both sides of the ball, namely the linemen. For the most part, the thumb jockeys had a single player, though some, like Ichiro’s runner, might serve a dual role as a special teams’ player too.

“If defensive linemen’s IQ’s were 5 points lower, they’d be geraniums.”

Russ Francis