You Make The Call

This weekend, while watching the NFL wild card playoff games, which included several plays that went under replay review, I flashed back to the You Make The Call spots that ran during the 1980s. They were commercial avails for IBM (and other sponsors) wrapped around a quick NFL Films quiz about a controversial play from a previous week. It could be a disputed fumble, interception, touchdown, or any other sequence that would be stopped as announcer Harry Callas asked the viewer to act as referee and make the ruling. Then a thirty-second commercial ran, after which the correct answer was revealed.

The series ran on Monday Night Football into the early 1990s, but when IBM pulled its sponsorship, that was the end, sadly. In 2016, NFL Films produced this feature, which looked back at those You Make The Call spots and included several great examples…

Towards the end of that video, several people asked, “When are they gonna bring back You Make The Call?” To my knowledge, no one has resurrected the feature on TV, but the NFL now runs an online version; one of the cool things about it is the inclusion of two additional replay angles to aid in your decision making.

I gave it a shot and only got about half right. See how you do by playing here.