Long Island Electric Football Nation 67' BIG MEN (Established in 1972)

NEWS FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

"Strong" Island Electric Football League Hobbyists kick-off 49 years of Electric Football with their 2020 season Week #1 July 25, 2020!

July 25, 2020 (Patchogue, Long Island NY).

Greetings to you and your families and to all the amazing electric football leagues around the world, from the Long Island Electric Football League located one-mile from downtown Patchogue NY, in Suffolk County, regarded as one of the New York Region's best community success stories and just 50 miles east of Manhattan! Suffolk County has a population of 1.4 million people. During these crazy pandemic times, electric football is a perfect remedy for a great distraction as the Long Island Electric Football League launches another exciting season July 25, 2020! While we have been playing the hobby since 72', as you read along scroll through our years of service dedicated to the hobby, you will find a detailed page-by-page breakdown of the Long Island Electric Football League's rich history from it's inception.

For the first time using this Tudor Forum, the Long Island Electric Football League is proud to announce our historic 49th year playing this hobby and thanks to Tudor Games, we can share this amazing communication platform for readers to enjoy in a Long Island Electric Football League's time warp continuum! In a time where the legacy and likes of Stevie Wonder, the Beach Boys, Beatles, Lionel Richie, the O'Jays, and Elton John have all withstood the test of time, so too has Tudor Games Electric Football!

2020 Long Island Electric Football Hall of Fame Game:

The Long Island Electric Football season build-up began July 4, with our Hall of Fame Game, in what is becoming a bit of a rivalry between last season's AFC Championship Game finalist the LIEFL #12 Ranked Buffalo Bills (2019/7-3) (75-73 All-Time in the Long Island EFL) vs. NFC Championship Game Finalist and LIEFL #29 Ranked Carolina Panthers (2019/6-4) (28-27 All-Time in the Long Island EFL). Each year we take the AFC and NFC Championship Game teams who fell short of making the Super Bowl, and they play in the Hall of Fame Game the following season. The Panthers beat Buffalo in the Bills run to win 2017 LIEFL Super Bowl XIII, with an epic 17-7 victory. Carolina dominated again in an exciting 24-21 victory to kick-off our 2020 Long Island EFL season and for the last two seasons the Panthers have been knocking on the door to the NFC Championship Game in their quest for a shot at winning a Super Bowl! The only thing standing in their way is back-to-back, 2018 LIEFL Super Bowl XIV, and 2019 Super Bowl VX Champion, the LIEFL #11-Ranked Los Angeles Rams (76-80). (See our Hall of Fame Game Page News Story with Photos).

In our small world of electric football, the Long Island EFL, 32 Team-67' BIG MEN season is celebrating our sixth-straight seven-game season format after playing more than ten years in the 14-game season format, with a tough LIEFL opening 7-Game Regular Season match-up between the  AFC South Division, LIEFL #32-Ranked Houston Texans (2019' 3-4) (20-20 All-Time), and the AFC West Division, LIELF #18-Ranked Kansas City Chiefs (2019' 1-6) (66-83 All-Time), who received a number of First Round Draft Picks after going a dissapointing, 1-6 last season. The new seven-game season format is planned well. We take the first three games from the 2020 NFL schedule and the last four games to make up our seven game regular season schedule, as long as each team has at least three home games, and those who do not have at least three home games, we tweak the schedule so that the league is 100% fair to everyone. The player figures and coaching skill are what defines the greatness right?  

One thing is certain, this league competes with fierce love for the game embedded in old-fashion tradition and style. We saw huge strides in the 2019 in our league after playing our 15th Super Bowl!  Our new 150-250, player-base Draft after each season beginning in 2008, continues to improve and drive the standard of our league, consistently strengthening every team with teams who finish last in their division getting First-Draft grabs so that they compete and perform at the highest level possible making for a dramatic and significant overall improvement to our league. No team is safe in our league. Get beat or compete! We finally have a system in place where we actually can benchmark quality results. By our standards we don't think we have any terrible or weak teams in this highly- competitive 32-team league. We never know until we play outsiders.

Finally, for thousands of enthusiastic electric football coaches around the world who are proud to be a part of this unique hobby-- we can feel liberated! We don't have to feel like aliens anymore when we treat our players as if they were breathing beings. No more worries about whispering, screaming, and yelling at plastic figures for that next great touchdown run, pass, or defensive play ... it's game on! 

The Power of a Community:

Imagine this, one intuitive person and his childhood friends, all competitive athletes from the Long Island Suburban neighborhood of Bay Shore, NY, had the foresight to maintain absolutely mind blowing records kept and stored for the Long Island Electric Football League for some "fateful" reason. Who knew that Tudor would explode this hobby? On this Tudor forum league page, we provide you with an interesting taste of Long Island Electric Football League's impeccable records, now computerized. Maybe this moment in time was meant to be for this amazing hobby, to share something we feel is special. Records and statistics gives us something to compete for by chasing new records and surpassing old one's for the love of the game. We have maintained all of the records in our league since it was born in 1972, as we watched our league grow on paper in 1976 as kids, to who we are today! When we look at all of the handwriting in detail of the LIEFL records, we are amazed at our record-keeping skills! 

Perception Matters. If you went on You Tube and did a little research, anyone can find the best representation of electric football and the excitement it brings through some of the amazing legendary coaches around the country who play the game. But clearly, when we read negative articles that some toy critics write after they spend five minutes playing this hobby, the negative articles are not accurate and the writer's perception-check is off ... That's a cheap-shot at all of us who have energized this game professionally. Talk is cheap!  These writers deserve criticism right back for not doing their research properly. We metal board-warrior game fanatics know different because we witness the magic that our own teams produce on the board on any given Sunday.

Many coaches and their teams know how to put on a show and sometimes we swear that our player figures are real and that they talk to us by making big plays beyond our direction.  That is the fascination of the game, our heroes don't ever die! They have a mind of their own it seems. (Check out the Video Below), which captured some amazing electric football attached, and fast forward to some amazing plays in our 2017 Long Island Electric Football League Super Bowl XIII, between two LIEFL Wild Card Teams, the #12-All-Time (8-3) (75-73) Buffalo Bills vs. LIEFL #16-All-Time (8-3) (66-72) Detroit Lions. Some of the plays may be good "old fashion" electric football, but they work.

So many of you that we read about are legends to our hobby! Electric Football is not just a Nation, it's a World that only we who are passionate about the game understand!  Kudos to Tudor Games for bringing back this Hall of Fame game winning toy.  

"Long Island EFL's Brush with National Electric Football History" The Long Island Bowl of Champions!

In 1995, there was a big article written in NEWSDAY--the 11th largest newspaper in the United States--about two Long Islanders who received a Free-Pass to Chicago to compete in the World Championship of Electric Football by Miggle Toys. One of our LIEFL members decided to contact both of the Miggle recipients to include them in our league. We ended up successfully contacting only one of the Miggle Champions from the article with a challenge to play him and he agreed. No false bravado here, just competitiveness for us.

The game was set-up to be played in Islip, NY, on Long Island.

In this highly anticipated game, the star-studded Miggle Champ started with the pre-game hype bragging about his play-style as legendary. He cautioned us to be prepared for his mean and lean Chicago Bears, as if we never played the game. That's all just Psych-hype to the fearless LIEFL. Our motto is, "We don't talk, we play to win, PERIOD!" We are athletes, what our opponent was selling, we were not buying! 

Put Your League to the Test:

League credibility and ego's are always on the line when we all compete against outside coaches and leagues, so most people put their best teams on the field.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained right? The true test of a league is the power of the teams in the league. That is the benchmark and standard which we all compete with. We know there are leagues out there that are better than ours, and that is how we learn to make our league more competitive. 

We love reading the Tudor Games forum, but we want to read about your great leagues in detail. Recently we made friends with Capanther through the forum on here, and it has been exciting reading about his Super Bowl XXXIII tournament which is happening right now on the Tudor Forum page.  We love Mactele52 DBEFL's League, the Charlotte League, the Los Angeles League from years ago, but it seems to have lost its core of coaches, and the Electric Coach is fun, and so is Capanther's Solitaire League. Harrington Benton's work is interesting as well if you have not watched his YouTube Videos, please do. 

We embrace competition to learn to be part of a very special hobby with great, talented people who play the hobby. We won't always agree with you, but we respect all hobbyists of electric football.

Statistics can make a difference in electric football, just as they might in the NFL. For our title match against the Miggle Champ, we decided to put a feisty LIEFL #8 Ranked Dallas Cowboys (81-68 All-Time), team on the field with a proven track-record in the Long Island EFL, for whatever that is worth. In that 1995 season for us, the Dallas Cowboys finished a hard-fought 3rd Place at (8-6) in the LIEFL NFC East, but they made the LIEFL playoffs as a Wild Card Team. They had a major upset over the tough #10 LIEFL Ranked New Orleans Saints (10-4 and 76-72), 16-13 in OT in the Wild Card Game! Then Dallas lost in the LIEFL NFC Divisional Game against a ferocious #2 LIEFL Ranked Washington Redskins (11-3 and 105-68) team, 35-17. The Cowboys had 106 Points and were Ranked #6 in the LIEFL NFC on offense, and they Ranked #3 on defense in the LIEFL NFC that season. 

Running Back Emmitt Smith ranked #21 in our LIEFL with 119 carries with 1238 all-purpose yards, and only 6 touchdowns compared to the LIEFL #1 all-purpose player that season, Kieth Woodside for the #6 LIEFL Ranked Green Bay Packers (10-4 and 86-76) who had an LIEFL leading 122 carries for 2174 all-purpose yards in 1995 with 21 touchdowns for the Pack who lost to the #23 LIEFL Ranked Wild Card Philadelphia Eagles (9-5 and 63-78) in the LIEFL NFC Divisional Championship Game 38-30 that season. Regardless of our challenge, we knew the consistency of our Cowboys as a tough Tier II team climbing to the elite Tier I-Top-Five Ranks in the LIEFL behind teir one's #1 Ranked Miami Dolphins (166-34), dominant winners of LIEFL Super Bowl's I, III, IV, V, VI, and IX, the LIEFL Super Bowl VII Champion, # 2 Ranked Washington Redskins (105-68), #3 Ranked Denver Broncos (102-60-1), #4 Ranked Chicago Bears (94-66), winner of 1976 LIEFL Super Bowl II, and 2000 LIEFL Super Bowl XI, and LIEFL #5 Ranked Pittsburgh Steelers (90-68). The Cowboys have played almost 150 games in our league, and we feel all leagues are unproven obviously until we all compete. We also recognize that one team is not a complete representation of a league.

The Cowboy Romp!

By kick-off our LIEFL battle-hardened Cowboys were ready to get it on and play against the champ. Our opponent Chicago Bears looked intimidating in those dark jerseys, and "America's Team" dressed in white jerseys for the Long Island Bowl of Champions, which we had hoped to make an annual tradition. We thought that our annual Super Bowl Champ could play our opponent's SB Champion, making for a great friendship. 

Even if we were destroyed, we would have handled the game with dignity, respect, and a handshake after the game. We don't do would-have, should-have, could-have scenarios in our league, we just compete! We agreed to the rules and he won the passing rules with stick set-ups and managed formations, but we won on defense and in our running attack, which turned out to be relentless.

Good nature trash-talking by the Miggle Champion sadly went on before the game, during the game, and after the game.

As we predicted in our pre-game prep against our unknown opponent, he came out passing on first down. We somehow stopped his Bears cold on their first passing drive by shutting down his outside game with our linebackers, and in the trenches LIEFL Cowboys Ed "TooTall" Jones, Harvey Martin, Randy White, Leon Lett, and Larry Allen stuffed his run, pushing his line back 20 yards in two plays forcing our opponent to punt on fourth down. On the ensuing punt, speedy Emmitt Smith returned the ball 78 yards with a blazing sideline run to the scorched Chicago Bears 22 yard-line. One play later, Smith, led by big Larry Allen, dominated the running game as Smith bullied his way right up the center and in for the Cowboys first score! Smith had his way the entire game rushing for over 100 yards on the ground in the Long Island Bowl of Champions. The Cowboys consumed the clock and our LIEFL pre-game strategy worked perfect for this game!

With our opponent losing 21-0 at the half against the Cowboys, the trash-talk was ignited for the rest of the game when the Miggle Champs team wasn't winning. As athletes we tend to handle our wins and losses with class rather than whine about losing. When we lose we just accept a tough defeat and come back strong for the next game. We let our team just play the game the way it was meant to be played by letting our team do the talking on the scoreboard.The Dallas defense came up huge against his Bears passing game, shutting this Bear team down with silence, strategic precision. The best of the opponents Bears was a 22-yard pass touchdown play to their tight end with seconds left which ended the memorable game with the Long Island EFL Cowboys winning 21-7!

In the end our Dallas Cowboys defense shut down the Chicago Bears, holding them to zero yards on the ground in rushing, and 55 yards in the passing game. Leon Lett had three tackles and Larry Allen had three tackles for the Cowboys as they celebrated a proud moment in LIEFL history for us!

After the game this Miggle Champ boasted about how his five-year undefeated Cleveland Browns would have crushed our Cowboys, but in the end we thoroughly enjoyed the competition and statesmanship for the game.  Even if it were so that the Browns could have crushed Dallas, we always have the formidable and better than average, LIEFL #1 Ranked Miami Dolphins (166-34), who have played many outside tournaments as a worthy opponent.

This trash-talk happened in the Florida Bowl an Electric Football Tournament in 1984 that we competed in. Our opponent from Florida guaranteed a victory against a tough Dolphins team from the LIEFL. Our Dolphins ended up winning the tournament, spanking the Chicago Bears 35-0, the San Francisco 49ers 24-7, the Pittsburgh Steelers 42-14, and in the finals, they dominated the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 38-10! Miami's Tony Nathan had 5 Touchdown runs of 45, 66, 30, 24, and 56 yards, totaling 261 rushing yards on the ground! Nathan shinned as did the LIEFL that day. Nathan made a name for himself with 20 touchdowns and six 100-yard kick returns for touchdowns in that tournament!

Did you ever have one of those teams that you knew could compete with anyone? Miami was that team for us in the Long Island EFL.

In 1981, we won 23 games without a loss, and the Dolphins also had a 66 game winning streak before losing to the ferocious defense of the Denver Broncos, who came into the Long Island Electric Football League with a bang in their first year in the league in 1978. Talk about "for real". Denver had the #1 Defense in the LIEFL in 78' with only 73 points allowed to Miami's 239 league leading points scored and #1 in the LIEFL. Superior Offense vs. Superior Defense. The Broncos crushed the Dolphin offense delivering Miami their first loss ever 8-5! 

In 1995, the Dolphins (20-1), won LIEFL Super Bowl IX, beating the tough NFC Champion Philadelphia Eagles (12-6), 20-17! At that point Miami had won five LIEFL Super Bowls before we dismantled them in 2008 after losing in the 2008 LIEFL Wild Card Game to the Baltimore Ravens 21-17, we realized the Draft had changed the league and Miami was no longer a dominant force in the LIEFL. What we found is that when we transformed all 32 teams through the Draft using the TTC player bases and switching our old speedy bases from Linemen to Runners, the league became complete. 

In our overall analysis looking back, the Dolphins were just a good team, but like any EFL team, beatable by tough opponents. We are now at a point that every division in our league is a huge challenge and no team is safe on Sunday. Since our transformation to the seven-game season format we are yet to see an undefeated champion.  Only two teams have come close, the 2008 LIEFL Super Bowl XI Champion Oakland Raiders (9-1), and the 2018 Super Bowl XIV Champion Los Angeles Rams who also finished (9-1). 

We have now rebuilt every team to perform at a different level because the league has changed to perform at a different level. Lessons learned thanks to all the great videos out there and coaches!

That would have been a great game Miami vs. Cleveland, and we challenged, but the game never happened.

Our season is stacked! If this is your kind of thing, through this forum, we will provide readers with our entire LIEFL 2020 season with weekly updates, including historic league information, schedule and scores, highlights, standings, game by game league leaders in statistics, rushing, receiving, kick-returns, all-purpose yards, and yes, defense too! Hopefully, we will provide interested readers with the inspiration to do the same in sharing information about their amazing leagues!

Thank you for reading!