JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – Carson-Newman Vice President of Athletics Matthew Pope has announced the Eagles are adding Tiddlywinks as the department's 22nd intercollegiate sport.
The Eagles will begin competing on a national scale in the sport this fall.
"Our recruiting efforts are already underway," Pope said. "We feel like we have an opportunity to win Tiddlywink national titles and add to the great tradition of championships at Mossy Creek."
Current head baseball coach Tom Griffin has agreed to coach the team in addition to his baseball duties if for no other reason than to give the department year-round viral interview content.
"The standard will be the standard," Griffin said. "You better believe that when we put our squidgers on top of our winks, we'll make sure we execute. If we don't squop, I know the bogeyman will get us. We're not gonna let the bogeyman get us. We're gonna wink, squidge and squop and that's gonna be on our coaching. We're going to be the best version of ourselves."
Tiddlywinks is sometimes considered a simple-minded, frivolous children's game, rather than a sophisticated strategic game. However, the modern competitive game of tiddlywinks made a strong comeback at the University of Cambridge in 1955. The modern game uses far more complex rules and a consistent set of high-grade equipment.
Holt Fieldhouse will be transformed into Tiddlywink Town on matchdays.
Tiddlywinks is a competitive game involving four colors of winks. Each player controls the winks of a color, the colors being blue, green, red and yellow. Red and blue are always partners against green and yellow. There are six winks of each color, which begin the game in the corners of a felt mat measuring 6 feet by 3 feet. This mat is ordinarily placed on a table, and a pot is placed at its center. There are two primary methods of play with the four colors of winks: a pairs game, and a singles game. The pairs game involves four players, playing in partnerships, with each winker playing a single color. The singles game involves a single winker playing against another single winker, each playing two colors of winks in alternation.
The players take turns, and there are two basic aims: to cover (or squop) opponent winks, and to get one's own winks into the pot. As in pool or snooker, if a player pots a wink of his own color, then he is entitled to an extra shot, and this enables a skilled player to pot all of his winks in one turn. The point of squopping, which is the key element distinguishing the modern competitive game from the child's game (though recognized in even the earliest rules from 1890), is that a wink that is covered (even partially) may not be played by its owner. The wink on top may be played, though, and sophisticated play involves shots manipulating large piles of winks.
The game ends in one of two ways: either all the winks of one color are potted (a pot-out), or play continues up to a specified time limit ( 25 minutes), after which each color has a further five turns. Then a scoring system is used to rank the players, based on the numbers of potted and unsquopped winks of each color.
The sport is being added as a part of the NCAA's Emerging Sport Initiative that is recognized for its proliferation by a date check on April 1.
