Daily Dirt: Tabletop games and Tab

Daily Dirt for July 28, 2021 by Steve Eighinger

Gimme the board games and tabletop fun, keep your computers

When it comes to board games, that’s exactly what I want — not any modern-day computer gizmo things. I like to roll dice and move my game pieces by hand. With that in mind, welcome to Vol. 20 of the Daily Dirt:

1. The best board/tabletop games ever? Here are my top five:

A. Scrabble: An already great competition would be even better if those relatively small letter tiles were magnetized. Same for the game board and tile holder. (PUBLISHER’S NOTE: YOU KNOW THEY HAVE THIS, DON’T YOU STEVE? JRG)

B.Monopoly: The real-estate game was first introduced in 1935 and remains a tabletop favorite. The longer the game takes, the better.

C. Strat-O-Matic Baseball: For me, this hall of fame sports game lost some of its appeal when the computerized form hit the market. I loved having the player cards in front of me and rolling those crazy little dice.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: BEING ONE OF THE MOST ARDENT STRAT-O-MATIC PLAYERS IN THE MIDWEST (ASK MY WIFE) STEVE MAY BELIEVE THIS IS AN EFFORT TO SUCK UP. INSTEAD, IT IS AN EPIC FAIL SINCE HE DID NOT LIST STRAT AT THE TOP. JRG

D. Sorry!: There’s actually a scoring system for this game if you are playing multiple rounds.

E. Uno: I’m not a big card player, but this game has always provided quite a bit of entertainment.

2. One soft drink I would like to see brought back is Tab, which was produced by Coca-Cola from 1963 through 2020. Tab was a diet soft drink — but one that actually tasted half-decent — that piqued in popularity in the late 1960s and 1970s. The only other diet soft drink that is bearable, in terms of taste, has been Diet Mountain Dew.

3. There are some interesting storylines emerging from the college sports landscape. For instance:A. Texas and Oklahoma moving to the Southeastern Conference. This looks like a done deal.B. Kansas and Iowa State to the Big Ten. C. Or USC and UCLA to the Big Ten.D. Or, what is by far the most intriguing, a merger of the Big Ten and Atlantic Coast Conference. Would this finally send Notre Dame to the Big Ten — where it belongs — since the Irish are ACC members in sports other than football?