How to Play Football

Here's another "Goofy" explanation of a sport: this time, college football. The beginning explains all the ingredients that go into the game, and that's pretty funny.

Then the football starts, pitting Taxidermy U. vs. Anthropology A&M. The star is Taxidermy's "Swivelhips Smith," who takes the opening kickoff and swivels his way 105 yards for a touchdown!

This is really cornball material, but very funny in spots. For example of the corn, they explain "the quarterback barks the signals" and you hear a dark barking - that sort of thing. The funniest play of the game is a 100-yard fumble recovery and run. The rest is fairly routine sight gags.

Very corny, very dated but definitely fun to watch.

This short, nominated for an Oscar, is likely the best of the sports cartoons Disney did (most of them centered around the lithe, atheletic and graceful Goofy) and is a classic, although Tex Avery was there ahead of them, with Screwball Football in 1939. Tex more than holds his own, but How To Pay Football is hilarious and yet another in a long line of works with which Disney can be justifiably proud. This airs on the Ink and Paint Club periodically. Recommended.

PERHAPS THIS ANIMATED short film (aka "Cartoon") owes so much of its widely acknowledged success with both the Public and the Critics due to the bridging of the gap between two seemingly different worlds. On the one hand you have College Football and on the other our friend GOOFY'S habit of fracturing anything and everything. (Spoofing, that is!)

ALTHOUGH THIS CARTOON is old enough to be on both Social Security and Medicare by now, it is still fresh and relevant; proving that the Gridiron just hasn't really changed that much. Plastic shell helmets, face masks of varying elaborately intricacy and competing varieties have found their way into the various stadia, but no matter. Football is still football and so are its fans.

SO WE FIND ourselves at the big game between arch rivals Taxidermy Tech and traditional foe, Anthropology A & M. Goofy is the star and possibly the whole team and cast; as every character is a variation of the formerly named "Dippy Dog". The roster of both varsity squads are populated with some very active Goofy clones.

THE CARTOON EXPLORES each and every cliché that is peculiar to the sport, some even seeming to invent a few new ones. We go through the litany of: "Barking Out the Signals", "Well Oiled Machine", "Throwing a Bullet" and "Swivel Hips". All could have well proved to be tiresome and trite; but they are so well handled and woven into the breakneck speed action that they do serve their purposes so well.

THE OTHER AMENITIES that are offered here are: the outstanding Technicolor photography, crisp & clear sound and a befittingly peppy and energetic score; with both the theme and the incidental music's type and tempo added so much to what is such a sight-gag oriented medium.

THE FINE FIGHTSONG march that opens up all the festivities sounds as if it is an original; but is pleasing and complex enough to be that of some college or university. It was apparently a thought shared by the Disney staff as well; as the colorful tune was reprised for a second go round as the main theme for Disney's 1953 cartoon, FOOYTBALL NOW AND THEN.

Since there is little reality to this, we have to look at it for its comedic value. Goofy and his ilk are again there to teach us about a sport. This is college football and the most accurate part of it is the milieu itself. The game is silly but the whole surrounding business is quite well done. The fans, the doctors, the alumni, the coaches are the most fun. Of course, the game itself is just craziness. I saw this in my childhood or on The Wonderful World of Disney and got a kick out of it. I did like how the final touchdown was scored.

This Walt Disney Cartoon spoofs the many newsreels that people watched in Cinemas in the '20's, '30's and '40's. It explains to viewers how to play (American) Football, with hilarious results. Recommended Deeply.