3/28/2023 0 Comments Qube yard game![]() ![]() I think it’s going to be damned exciting – the most exciting use of interactive television ever.” Our intention is to make this format permanent. “We’re banking everything on this game,” he told The Financial Post. Lehr told The Financial Post that he was hoping the national recognition the game received would allow him to get additional sponsors for his financially struggling organization. ![]() The biggest supporter of the project was the Metros owner, Jay Lehr. The idea for the game came from Scott Kurnit, the program director for QUBE. “All fans since the time of Adam and Eve have wanted to do this,” Allie Sherman, the former New York Giants and Winnipeg Jets head coach who became a consultant for Warner Amex Cable, told Peter King of The Cincinnati Enquirer. The July printed program guide for QUBE even featured a Metros player on the cover and had ten pages of diagrammed plays that included detailed explanations. Metros head coach Hal Dyer provided a 15-minute football primer on the QUBE channel at the top of every hour. The Metros and QUBE spent the week leading up to the game educating fans on how the system would work. In exchange, the Metros received $2,500 and another $2,500 would go to the winner of the game. The Metros organization had agreed to let fans call the offensive and defensive plays for the game against the Gladiators, which was scheduled solely for television. The five response buttons allowed for any sort of interaction the cable company programmed for a particular show. The box featured 13 buttons that allowed cable subscribers to choose 20 standard or 10 pay-per-view stations. The QUBE system was a box the size of a small book and had 30 channel options and five response buttons. QUBE allowed people watching at home to interact with their television in real time. The cable company used an interactive technology they developed called QUBE, which had been around for 2-1/2 years. The game was televised on the Warner Amex Cable system in Columbus, a partnership between Warner Communications and American Express. The game marked the first time a minor league football game is believed to have been televised and the first time television viewers in the United States were allowed to call the plays for a football team. The Metros were playing their first game of the season while the Gladiators were already 2-0 on the year. The Columbus Metros, ranked number one in the country, hosted the Racine (Wis.) Gladiators on July 12. A dream for armchair quarterbacks turned into a nightmare for the top-ranked semi-pro team in the country on a stormy summer night in 1980 at Franklin County Stadium in Columbus, Ohio. ![]()
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