From: wang@cs.uiuc.edu (Eric Wang)
Subject: Re: Fiesta Bowl
Reply-To: wang@cs.uiuc.edu
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Distribution: usa
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 05:06:23 GMT

Some comments about the IBM OS/2 Fiesta Bowl:

--------------
IBM Football/2
--------------
In response to IBM's generous donation to the Fiesta Bowl's treasury,
numerous special rules were approved for inclusion in this one game.  A
partial list follows:

1.  Multi-motion.  If the location of the ball on the field allows the
    team on offense to legally line up its players within any of the
    three OS/2 logos on the field, then any number of such players may
    be in motion simultaneously before the snap, provided that they
    remain entirely within their respective logos; and in addition, one
    person may be in motion outside of the logos.

2.  Sack protection.  If an offensive linesman who lines up within an
    OS/2 logo loses his footing without being contacted by a defender,
    and is unable to carry out his blocking assignment as a direct
    result thereof, such failure shall not result in the immediate
    sacking of the quarterback; rather, all defenders who would have
    exploited the gap caused by the linesman's collapse must immediately
    hop on one leg to the fallen linesman's position and lightly touch
    him at least twice with their raised shoe before resuming their
    normal rush.  If this delay allows the linesman to regain his feet
    and make his assigned block after all, the result of the play shall
    stand.

3.  Field subregions.  At any time, either coach may call for the
    playing field to be partitioned into any number of rectangular
    regions, called _subfields_, and/or thereafter to cancel an existing
    subfield.  Each team must immediately field a full complement of 11
    players to compete within each subfield; this is the only limitation
    on the number of active subfields there may be at any given moment.
    Within each subfield, the players will play a normal game under
    normal rules, except that all field-related dimensions stated in the
    rules shall be linearly scaled so as to fit the size and aspect
    ratio of each subfield.  All such subgames shall proceed
    simultaneously, inheriting the same original game status (including
    score, time remaining, down, etc) but thereafter maintaining
    separate values for each quantity.  Players from one subfield may
    never interfere with players from another subfield.  Subfields may
    overlap one another, in which case one subfield within each
    overlapping area on the actual playing surface shall be deemed the
    "foreground" subfield, and all players in all "background" subfields
    must yield right-of-way to any "foreground" player within the area
    of overlap.  The team that wins the most subgames shall be deemed
    the winner of the Fiesta Bowl.

4.  Background communications.  Rather than requiring players to call
    time-out to discuss plays their coaches, all players will be
    equipped with helmet phones, and are permitted to conduct
    conversations with any member of their coaching staff during the
    normal course of play.

Unfortunately, the bozo in charge of downloading these new rules from
the NCAA rules committee was using Something Other Than OS/2, and the
rules emerged hopelessly garbled.  Consequently, they were not used
after all.  :-(

---------------
The Game Itself
---------------

Qadry Ismail receives a kick-off on his own goal-line, hands off to
Kirby Dar Dar on the reverse, and the moment Dar Dar turns the corner
(at his own 10 or so), I impartially say to myself, "He's gone!  He's
gone!"  Sure enough, he out-runs the pursuit 90 yards for the TD.  (I
won't mention Syracuse's two clipping infractions if you won't :-) I was
picturing the typical kick-off coverage in my head, and figured, once
Dar Dar runs around the corner of the vanguard wedge, there's nobody
else in front of him -- defenders just don't hang back on kick-off
coverage, and this makes them vulnerable to exactly this kind of
misdirection play.

----------------
IBM's OS/2 TV Ad
----------------

Pool table, pool balls, voice-over.  IMHO, this was weak, weak, weak.
If I didn't know OS/2 from an ant hill before I watched this game, I
certainly would NOT have learned a single ant from watching this
commercial.  I bet there are tens of thousands of loyal Orangemen and
Golden Buffalo fans who watched the entire game, saw the logos on the
field and on the jerseys every time they blinked, sat thru umpteen
repetitions of this commercial, and still have NO IDEA that (1) OS/2 is
an operating system (2) for IBM-compatible PCs that (3) runs DOS,
Windows, and OS/2 software and (4) is a competitor of, and alternative
to, Windows.  "What the hot place," they say, "is OS/2 some new-fangled
chalk for pool cues?"  I cringe when I think of the vast numbers of
computer-barely-literate people who looked at that 3.5" disk at the end
of the commercial and thought, 'Oh, a Macintosh disk.'  And if I were
some corporate MIS manager, my first reaction to this commercial would
be, "Hey, any idiot can SAY anything he wants, you still haven't SHOWN
anything for my own two myopic eyes to evaluate!", and my second
reaction might well be, "Hmmm, why DIDN'T they GIVE A DEMO?  They
wouldn't HAVE SOMETHING TO HIDE ... would they?"  Arrrgh ... IMHO, IBM
still has a fair amount of name recognition to gather and a lot of
public opinion to overcome, and this commercial just didn't do either.
(OK, name recognition, perhaps, but they FORGOT TO ATTACH said
recognition to their product!!  Repeat after the pet parrot: "Just what
exactly IS OS/2, anyways?")

Sigh ... I was expecting IBM to blow our socks off with spectacular new
commercials for OS/2 ... and it just didn't happen.  "IBM drops back to
pass, looking, looking ...  and it's got OS/2 WIDE OPEN at the Microsoft
20 yard line!!  There's NOBODY within TWENTY YARDS OF IT!!  And IBM --
FUMBLES?!!  The ball just slipped right out of its hands!  What a bad
break -- that was the easiest six they had all season."  It remains to
be seen whether IBM can fall on this ball and salvage the first down ...

On the other hand, it wasn't too bad when compared to the commercials
for other software packages and products that I've seen over the years.
But then, I think they were pretty lousy, too.  :-|

Just my opinions.  BTW, I watched the Fiesta Bowl for the OS/2 ads, not
the teams -- fortunately, it turned out to be a good game, so it wasn't
a TOTAL waste of time.  :-)

Eric Wang
wang@cs.uiuc.edu