Few items in my life have brought joy to those close to me like Mini Football. I capitalize this palm-sized ball because it is just that special.

Ordinarily, this is where I’d show you a picture of the magnificent Mini Football. But you’ll have to either wait for the end or scroll to the bottom for a moment. You have my roommate Mike to blame for this. I asked him about the “Hat Came Back” post the other day and he said he stopped reading at the picture.

He’s also the latest to be indoctrinated into the wonders of Mini Football. It’s small enough that you can get in some quality tosses indoors without A) breaking anything and B) not wear out your arm when going for hours on end.

It looks like a regular ball–leather cover, stitches, full or air–but I defy you to find another ball in existence that has brought so much entertainment in a short life span.

The core group of Mini Football enthusiasts attended Susquehanna University sometime between 2001 and 2005. My roommate Shawn–that’s Shawn L. for you longtime readers–is certainly in the MF Hall of Fame.

During our junior year, we had desks that faced each other on opposite sides of the room. Hour after hour passed with the ball sailing precariously over our monitors to the delight of everyone involved.

But it was really freshman year that MF secure its place in the hearts of the masses. Pick a random night and you’d find myself, Shawn L. and our friend Mindy passing the time in my room. I’d grab the ball from the shelf next to my desk and toss it to one of them. For the next (insert a scary number here) hours, that’s all we’d do. I mean, we’d chat and whatnot and maybe there would be a movie on. But the real action was the MF flying from point to point around the room.

The real fun came when someone made a bad throw, and the ball was no longer within anyone’s reach. We would do absolutely everything in our power to retrieve the ball without having to get up. Sometimes that meant tying together two lanyards with our keys to make a sort of lasso to snare it and pull it back. Other times we would get more adventurous and throw a shoe. If we tried five or six methods and still didn’t have the ball back–or even pushed it farther away–then someone would take one for the team and get up to get the ball.

Sophomore year was a little tougher, mainly since Shawn L. and I lived in a tiny room with desks that practically touched one another.

So maybe the MF was eager for us to move into a spacious suite and introduce some new people to the game. We even came up with a new contest, a version of H-O-R-S-E where you had to toss MF onto a foldout chair in order to score a “basket.” This was probably the most difficult game I have ever played. But it did lead to one instance in which I rode a bike down the hallway of our building, made a sharp left turn into our common area and tossed the ball safely onto the chair. I’m pretty sure Shawn L. didn’t even attempt that one.

Visitors were always fond of being involved in MF action. Several also threatened to steal the beloved ball for their own use, only to be threatened with certain death.

I can only think of one negative experience involving MF, which led to it being used solely in indoor situations.

I’ll take you back to freshman year at SU, just outside Smith Hall where Mindy, Shawn L. and I all lived on the rocking third floor. For some reason we decided that taking the football outside, at night, was a good idea. And I guess it was for maybe 15 minutes.

We were stationed in a small piece of grass near a streetlamp so we could see what we were doing. If I had to guess, I’d say it was easily 11 p.m. We saw a mysterious figure approaching us at a pretty slow pace. He was coming across the field hockey practice field, which was directly behind the dorm.

When he got to us, the guy clearly on some sort of–and probably multiple–substances. He immediately launched into a slur-filled rant about the lacrosse coach being mad at us. He said we should go to his office right now and apologize for everything we’ve done.

At this point, Mindy retreated to the nearby door and held it open. The mystery man–who was roughly 6-2, 230–became more and more insistent that we straighten things out with the lacrosse coach. I’ll take a second and point out that none of the three of us would have any reason to have even met the lacrosse coach and thus could have no beef.

Things really got interesting when he put his arm around Shawn L., who I believe is roughly 5-6. That’s when we stopped sort of blindly agreeing with him and waiting for him to be on his merry way. We told him something like we knew we had screwed up and we were on our way to apologize with the coach. Finally we hit on the right combination of those nonsensical promises and he turned around and slowly walked away.

We went inside with MF and decided it was probably best to keep that as an indoor game. MF has rewarded us with hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of good times. He must not be an outdoorsy kind of ball.

The Mini Football in all its glory