OB54: Football Tossing Game a Touchdown for Tailgates

Grills&Gear

By Carroll R. Walton, carroll@insidetailgating.com

Football season is upon us, and fans don’t have to just sit back and watch the game anymore. They can play their own version! The game is called QB54 and it was made for tailgating in the fall, especially for fans who are tired of just tossing a football around behind the car or canopy tent. This game gives everybody at your tailgate, of all ages, a reason to jump up and get into some competitive action.

And it’s easy. All you need are two chairs and a football. The makers of QB54 have created a standard canvas tailgating chair that converts into an “end zone,” complete with a basketball goal-like net to catch touchdown passes and bright yellow uprights for extra points.

After the game is over, all you have to do is take down the uprights, fold down two flaps and the chairs are ready for sitting, eating, and basking in a QB54 victory. As creators Mike and Frank Silva say in their You Tube video (in so many words) either a 7-year-old or an over-served 45- year-old can put it together.

The cool thing is we’re the only football game on the market, Mike Silva, 46 of South Brunswick, N.J. told Inside Tailgating. What I tell people is ‘When you go to a football tailgate why throw a bean bag or a frisbee, when you can a throw a football?’ And they’re like, ‘Genius.’ And the fact that they’re chairs, they’re dual purpose. It’s a game and when you’re done, you can form it into two chairs, and you can sit down and tailgate.

If it sounds like the kind of thing two brothers might sit around and do for hours, it’s because it is. Mike and Frank Silva, who grew up in Manalapan, N.J., created QB54 in 2016 based on a game they’ve been playing their whole lives. The two 40-somethings first came up with the idea when Mike was 9 and Frank was 12.

Back then, they called it “The QB Thanksgiving Classic” because they made it up to get out of helping with the holiday dishes. Football wasn’t an option because so many of their neighborhood friends were out of town for the holiday. The next best thing was a game they created with two garbage cans and a football. The CB antenna on the back of their father’s pickup truck served as the goal posts.

Frank and Christina Silva became their sons’ first investors for QB54.

My parents helped us with some seed money in the beginning, Mike Silva said. I think they absolutely love what we’re doing and how my brother and I are working with each other, and it’s bringing us closer together than ever before. As a parent how could you want anything more?

A QB54 game set comes with two foldable vinyl canvas chairs, two sets of goalposts, a carrying bag and a football. One set is $99.99 or a package of three goes for $299.99. They come in eight colors, including team-friendly navy blue, orange, green, silver, and black.

The basic rules are that the chairs are set 40 feet apart (or closer depending on skill level.) Players take turn making throws. If you throw the ball into the basket, it’s a touchdown and six points. Hitting any part of the chair on the fly is three points. After a touchdown, kicking the ball through the uprights gets you an extra point. If your kick goes into the hole, you automatically win the game then and there. Otherwise the first team to 54 points wins. The game can be played one-on-one or in teams of two.

Mike and Frank have also incorporated rules for safeties and interceptions. For full details, go to www.playqb54. com. They’re not the only rule-makers though, apparently. Mike said he’s constantly hearing from fans who have modified the game with their own rules.

One fan wrote in about the “pick six.” Under the regular rules, if a ball hits the chair, bounces up and you catch it before it hits the ground, that’s an interception and good for three points. For one customer, that was just the start. The player could then either take a knee for three points or take off running toward the other team’s chair. If the player decides to run, the opponent can then chase the ball carrier and stop him or her with two-hand touch. From that spot, the ball carrier gets a chance to throw at the opponent’s chair. Make it and it’s six points. Miss and his or her team gets nothing.

Now it’s turning into this real football game where people are lateraling and doing all this stuff and it’s becoming active, Silva said. It’s great.

Another customer came up with the Hail Mary pass, where the losing team has one last shot to win the game. The player has to take 20 paces away from his or her chair and can then turn and heave the ball toward the opponent’s chair. Silva said he saw a guy actually make one at a New York Jets preseason game this year.

They went nuts, he said. It was amazing. I was like ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe I didn’t get this on film.’

Seeing how people have responded to the game has been a big part of the fun for the Silva brothers, Silva said, and rewarding too. Mike said one of their customers is David Lionheart, the founder of an organization called www.playforyourfreedom.org that helps veterans returning from combat overseas. He travels to VA hospitals encouraging veterans to play touch football as he helps them acclimate back to civilian life. When he heard about QB54, he wanted to try it with veterans in their adaptive program, who were amputees or otherwise limited in their mobility.

Those people had to sit on the sidelines and watch them play, Silva said. Now we have veterans that are using our game to help them cope with all the things that they are dealing with being a wartime vet, and it’s just been unbelievable.

Silva said another surprise has been seeing their game take off in a Florida school system. He got the idea to approach schools from another gameproducer at a toy fair in New York City. Now 200 schools in the Duval County system in Jacksonville, Fla.—from elementary through high school—have QB54 games in PE class.

It’s a non-threatening way to introduce the sport of football to students, Silva said. It’s getting amazing interaction with them. Students that don’t normally participate in gym find the game fun, and now you have girls that don’t normally participate or boys that don’t normally participate because they’re nervous or whatever having a blast. It breaks down the barrier.

To purchase your own QB54 game, go to www.playQB54.com. To receive a 20 percent discount use promo code: tailgate20.

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