All the cool kids are going gaga over the new iPhone this week. From what I hear it has the ability to make phone calls and text. I know right! That's amazing.

But, as the skinny-jean clad masses put down their vinyl and take a break from brunch (and other 2010 hipster stereotypes) to line up for a box of plastic and circuits, I am calling for the return of a classic telephonic device: the football phone.

If you're too young, or if you had friends and things to do in the late 80s/early 90s, I'm talking about the Sports Illustrated football phone. You could get it as a special gift with a SI subscription.

Sports Illustrated Football Phone - Christmas edition (1991 commercial)
Chris Valentine via YouTube
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You could get a magazine about sports, AND a phone that's a football!. Or is it a football that was also a phone? Who knows, it was one of the most enduring mysteries of the turn of the decade.

Just look at the astonishment on display by the 'regular' people in that commercial. They can not believe that a phone is in a football. That phone can make a phone call, and it's a football! The wonders of the modern world will not cease. Boyfriends and husbands the world over were being prepared for a Christmas for the ages. Songs will be sung for generations about that year dad got a phone hidden inside a football.

Sports Illustrated Football Phone - Christmas edition (1991 commercial)
Chris Valentine via YouTube
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And those features! Push button dialing! On/Off ringer! Automatic redial! And it plugs into a standard jack! You can keep your animated emojis iPhone X.

Sure today's mobile phone are really small computers that can connect you to the sum total of all human knowledge, and people all over the world, nearly instantly. But, can these fancy glowing screens come with a swimsuit issue?

Everything today is about putting something into a phone; cameras, music, videos. But, there was a simpler time when people got excited about a phone being inside something, like a football or a sneaker. OMG I forgot about the SI show phone!


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