ClayNation: Put your best face-ball forward

I'm convinced I have a fool-proof way to determine whether you're e-mailing with a man or a woman.

Simply ask: Have you ever created or played a ridiculous game for competition?

Every man has.

Photo by Dan Catt (Provided to SportsLine)

These can be tests of skill (once on Spring Break we played catch the pineapple every time we came back to the hotel), tests of diligence and perception (as a kid my dad used to hide quarters on the carpet and have me attempt to locate them), feats of skill and power (the Dynamite game my male sixth-grade teacher allowed in class which featured a Nerf ball and final burnout competitions between students) or simply attempts to hit each other in the face with ordinary tennis balls (my friend Tardio spent his entire freshman year at UK dodging a "fireball" in the dorms).

These games often require limited or no material, might not have a clear beginning, middle or end and only sometimes offer the opportunity for a clear victor to emerge. One of the more ridiculous games of this nature I ever played was groin sock wars wherein we took turns dueling by aiming socks at each other's groins until one man tapped out in pain. If none of us have children, sock wars will eventually have exacted its revenge. Inevitably, most women find games of this nature absurd and ridiculous.

Sadly, once you enter office settings these games usually vanish. Save an occasional round of trash-can basketball or a stolen game of paper football during lunch, the grown up world doesn't offer men an opportunity to hew a competition out of the bare essentials of workplace surroundings.

But I guarantee you if law firms had paper football championships for their male associate class or introduced rubber band distance shooting challenges, workplace morale would skyrocket. Most offices haven't picked up on this idea yet. Probably because they are run by old white men who hate everyone and everything. Except money and Viagra.

Photo by Dan Catt (Provided to SportsLine)

Unless, that is, you happen to work in the offices of a tech company. Because then, lo and behold, men can be men. Competitions that require limited athleticism can bubble up from the foundations of the job. Which leads us to the story of the latest office game to emerge from the dregs of the cubicled masses. Meet Faceball.

Tagline: Your face, our balls. Which is interesting, because this is only one letter removed from the Minnesota Vikings team motto.

Faceball is the brainchild of John Allspaw and Dunstan Orchard, who began competing with each other this past March in the San Francisco offices of Flickr, an online picture sharing website. According to the Faceball website, the game emerged after "Hundreds of pink and blue beach balls were purchased for use on Flickr's 3rd year anniversary party, and these soon joined the plethora of other toys (finger darts, frisbees, helicopters, rubber chickens, etc.) in the Flickr office."

Here are its ingredients: A face, 10 feet of distance between competitors, and a ball. The more advanced nuances of the game are explained here.

The game began naturally as Allspaw and Orchard were located 10 feet from each other and began to compete in feats of accuracy with the beach balls. Eventually they began competing to see who could hit the other in the face more accurately. So moved were other employees by the brilliance of the invention that by April 6 the entire Flickr office competed and Allspaw was crowned champion. The game then spread to Flickr's European offices and by last month, the game had spread so rapidly that it became necessary for a rules and regulations website.

Photo by Dan Catt (Provided to SportsLine)

Incidentally, proving women hate games like this thesis, my wife Lara just looked over my shoulder as I was writing this column. When I explained Faceball to her, she said, "That's so stupid. Like making a game out of the worst part of dodgeball, getting hit in the face." Then she shook her head and walked away.

Nevertheless Faceball has particular appeal to me because it resembles a time-honored game several of my college friends invented entitled "Roommate Trust." Basically roommate trust required that a roommate sit against the wall and allow the other roommate to peg the ball just above his head in rapid succession. The truster (the one who sat against the wall) was not allowed to flinch at any moment as the balls whizzed above his head. Then the competitors changed position. Same with Faceball ... only the goal is to hit the opposing player in the face. So I guess the stoicism element is the same at least because players are not allowed to attempt to dodge the throw. This is a clear violation of Faceball rules and is known in Faceball parlance as "pulling an Oates."

The only real wrinkle in Faceball's ascendance to world domination (aside from the angry old white men) is an uncertainty about standardized balls. (Insert seventh-grade giggling.) It seems that Flickr Faceball games occur using a particular type of beach ball .

These beach balls are considered notoriously difficult to aim by Flickr's Faceball players. When asked whether ball standardization was important to Faceball purists, Dunstan replied: "Well, people are free to play with whatever balls they like, I guess, but if they want to be able to compare scores and performances, they really need to be using the 'official' balls.

"This week I set a new office record of 25 hits in a row, and a 5-round total of 51. If people want to be able to compare themselves to that, they really have to be playing under the same conditions. Different balls do make for a different game."

So consider yourself forewarned when the new guy at the office brings in a medicine ball and convinces you to play. So impressed was I by Faceball that I contacted a spokesperson for Yahoo (Flickr's parent corporation), Meagen Busatch, to ask what the corporate behemoth truly thought of the game.

Photo by Dan Catt (Provided to SportsLine)

Meagen admitted that upon seeing the game for the first time, she "couldn't stop laughing. Watching people sit perfectly still while a ball is thrown straight at their face cracks me up every time."

That ... or it reminds you of watching Tennessee Titans wide receivers run pass patterns.

Busatch pointed out that Faceball's rise in popularity seems to correlate directly with Flickr's own increasing popularity.

"In the 6 months or so since Faceball began," Busatch wrote, "Flickr has launched global support for seven new languages, grown from around 7 million to 11 million registered members, and now stores over 1 billion photos -– none of which could have happened without the team's 'work hard play hard' philosophy."

Right now, lots of my lawyer readers are grinding their teeth because summer associates are about to leave, which means nothing fun is going to happen at the firm for the next nine months. (Recognize that I'm describing law firm fun in the same way the Southern Baptists define obscenity. That is broadly.)

Even still, I know games are surviving on the down low out there in corporate America. As Faceball continues to sweep the land I'm interested in your own office games. E-mail me about these games and we'll run a future column bringing them to light. (Anonymity will be provided to sources when needed). Until then, just remember, your face, our balls.

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Clay Travis is the author of Dixieland Delight: A Season on the Road in the Southeastern Conference , available from HarperCollins. Called "as indispensable to college football fans as ibuprofen on Sunday morning" by Warren St. John, best selling author of Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer, Dixieland Delight is Travis' hilarious, loving, irreverent and endlessly entertaining chronicle of a world that goes a little crazy on football Saturdays.