Adrienne Smith: How the NFL helped Blitz Champz's designer score a touchdown
The Boston Renegade's wide receiver on the NFL's Leaders programme and inclusivity in tabletop gaming
Going from US national team American football player to a card game creator is a little-walked career pathway. But it’s one that Adrienne Smith has trodden.
The Boston Renegades wide receiver’s Blitz Champz sees players face off against each other with a deck of offensive and defensive cards, testing their game knowledge strategy to score touchdowns and field goals, or to shut their opponent’s scoring opportunities out.
Having built the game from scratch, Adrienne sought the help of the NFL to get the game to a wider audience, via its Leaders programme, created to enhance diversity in its licensing portfolio. In doing so, Blitz Champz is now an officially branded NFL product.
So, with the NFL season well under way, and with the sport looking to expand its horizons with the inclusion of flag football in the 2028 Olympics, Adrienne also has big plans for the card game. We spoke to the national title winner on the development of Blitz Champz, the importance of inclusivity in its artwork and the partnership with the NFL.
Firstly, for the uninitiated, can you tell us about your career as a wide receiver and how that led to you to develop Blitz Champz?
AS: I’m a five-time member of the US national women’s flag football team and a two-time gold medallist with the US national women’s tackle football team. I’ve won six national titles with the Boston Renegades.
I’m also a serial entrepreneur. I really wanted to give back to the sport of football. Playing for the national teams, travelling around the world, made me realise how powerful the sport is, and how there are women and girls around the globe who love American football.
So in 2013, I started a company, called Girdiron Queendom, just really supporting women and girls who love football. It was under the umbrella of Gridiron Queendom that I created Blitz Champz in 2015.
I took all of 2016 to test the game. I was testing it with people who spoke English, people who did not; people who loved American football, people who had no clue what American football was - if I said ‘football’ to them, they would think ‘soccer’.
The game tested very well and I specifically designed Blitz Champz so that it was two things: one, it was inclusive. So you had female and male athletes in the card game. You’ve got people of all races, all hues in the card game. My goal was if someone picked up a Blitz Champz deck, they would know it was for them and football was for them.
The next goal was to make Blitz Champz accessible to people who did not understand American football. So in the card game design, there are icons that help people learn the game. So if you don’t know what a rushing touchdown is, and you don’t know what a tackle is, you can see on the card that a red tackle card removes a green rushing touchdown card.
And that was the genesis of it. I went to market in October 2017 and it took several years of persistence to get meetings with the NFL, pitch them the game and secure an NFL licensing agreement.
Why a card game, in particular? Was it because if you have 11 v 11 on a board, you can’t necessarily have that inclusivity?
AS: Correct. Again, I wanted something accessible and inclusive. Something that makes, for instance, tackle football, so difficult for other countries to adopt is that it does require 22 people to play. Whereas in soccer you just have your 11 and they play offence and defence, in American football you have 11 who play offence and 11 who play defence.
A lot of equipment is involved and that’s expensive. So it’s not necessarily inclusive and that’s why you see other countries not playing the game.
For me to want to create football in a 2D format, in a card game format, you only need two people to play – say you don’t have 10 friends, or 21 friends. You and your friend can play Blitz Champz.
Two to six players can play at a time and it makes it a great game for kids for families, parents, grandparents etc. And I wanted to have something where two people could play or a group of six could play. It didn’t need a whole bunch of equipment or a huge field, you can play on the floor, on the table .
It’s interesting that you ask me that, because when I was first shopping Blitz Champz, people would ask me: ‘Why don’t you create a board, then you can have things on it.’ And I thought: ‘No.’
For me , I want kids to be able to play it on the bus on the way to there game. or the dad and the daughter to play it on the plane when they’re flying somewhere.
‘I wanted everyone on the planet to see themselves in Blitz Champz’
What’s the premise of the green, yellow and red cards? And through this mechanism, is it easy enough to understand so that, say, someone like my daughter in the UK can get a decent understanding of the basic rules of football?
AS: Yes, absolutely. The colours of the cards are intentional. You can learn Blitz Champz quickly, but it does have layers of complexity that make it engaging.
All kids are taught green means go, red means stop. Your green cards are your offensive cards, that’s what you use to score points. Red cards are your defensive cards. That’s what you use to remove your opponent’s green cards.
Yellow cards keep the game in motion, to perform a particular function written on the card. If you play, for instance, a first down card, it allows you to draw two. If you play a fumble card, that means you skip the next player.
Blitz Champz is a gateway to playing flag football and tackle football. It’s an easy way to introduce concepts of the game. For instance: ‘extra point’. What does that mean? If you play Blitz Champz, you see there’s a picture of a girl kicking a football through the uprights and you know that’s worth one point. There’s also a passing touchdown, which means someone’s catching the ball and scoring a touchdown, which is worth six points. All of that is depicted in the artwork.
Have you had people come back to you and say they’ve used Blitz Champz for coaching, or that someone’s got into flag football as a result of playing it?
AS: Blitz Champz is used as a math learning tool in elementary schools and middle schools. Because you have have to use math: a rushing touchdown and a field goal? That’s 6+3=9.
I’ve had women in particular tell me that by playing Blitz Champz they now understand the game more and they’re able to connect with their boyfriends or husbands more because they have more of an inkling of what everything means.
How did you connect with Jason Narvaez for the artwork for the game and what were the main considerations in creating the images?
AS: I’m a graduate of Columbia Business School here in New York City. When I first developed a prototype I did my rudimentary best, printed out images and cut them out, and taped them on to index cards.
I knew that this wasn’t going to do it and needed something more professional. I reached out to the Columbia Business School alumni network and said: ‘Hey, I’ve come up with a card game, I’m looking for an illustrator to help out to bring it to life.’ And Jason was recommended to me.
He and I met a couple of times, I explained the game. He’s a football fan and he has twins, a boy and a girl, and he loved how I had created my games to include girls as well as boys.
I had a spreadsheet of what value each card was and what the function of the card was, and the image I wanted on that card. From there, he started to create some concepts. We went back and forth, I gave him my feedback and he created these beautiful images.
Jason has done amazing work, he’s worked on Marvel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so he’s a highly skilled illustrator, and I absolutely love the artwork he came up with.
I wanted the kicker to be female, because it pays homage to all the girls and women in the US who have played the position of punter or kicking extra points and field goals on their high school or collegiate football teams.
I wanted everyone on the planet to see themselves in Blitz Champz, so I presented those specific details to Jason and he captured the action in those cards
What is the NFL initiative, Leaders, that enabled Blitz Champz to become NFL-endorsed? How did it work and how did you get involved?
AS: The Leaders programme is absolutely fantastic and when I reached out to the NFL, the licensing department mentioned that there was this programme that was going to start to make securing an NFL licence easier for women and minority business owners.
A couple of years went by and I circled back and they were like: ‘Yes Adrienne, we’re ready to go.’
It’s allowed me, as a small-business owner who did not necessarily have a fully established product, a doorway into securing the NFL licence. I still had to go through all of the protocols that anyone else would normally have to do. The difference is that, typically, the NFL requires a company to have already been established for X number of years, bringing in Y number of dollars in revenue.
What can the tabletop gaming world learn from initiatives and endorsements such as the NFL’s? Are you aware of anything similar in this industry, or what can it learn from something like Leaders?
AS: I image there are some programmes out there, but I was not made aware of them.
It would be wonderful. We know there are difficulties in how the world is set up. Not everyone has access. And that’s what it comes down to. It’s not about placating or giving favours. It’s about equalising the playing field, making access equal to everyone.
Because, here’s the thing: creativity is spread throughout the world in everybody’s gender and skin colour. We have brilliant people around the world. So we are ourselves are cutting out amazing games and ideas because they aren’t being presented by a specific type of person.
And that’s sad. Because I think about, if I had been living only a few decades earlier, Blitz Champz wouldn’t exist because it was created by a woman who happened to be black.
It makes me think of all the other things humanity has missed out on because they didn’t come to a person who fit a prerequisite skin colour and gender.
And that’s where the artwork come in in terms of appealing to people?
AS: When I’ve done school visits and even when I’ve been a speaker at certain events for adults, it’s not only who’s making the game, but does the game itself encourage everyone to get involved and maybe think: ‘I like this game, maybe I could pursue that game idea I’ve got.’
If you have a game idea, pursue it. You can get it done. And you only stop once you accomplish your goal. Keep going.
‘If it’s doing well and people ask you about it and tell their friends about it, then you know you’re on to something’
Do you have any other words of encouragement to fellow designers who may be fighting to get their game or project off the ground?
AS: Perseverance. That’s it. This is a marathon. The worst part about it is you don’t know how long your marathon is. With Blitz Champz, I created it, I prototyped it, I tested it with family. It seemed to play well. I created a better prototyped, I continued to test it. It continued to do well. From that point, I said to myself: ‘I’m all in.’
That was my mentality. ‘I am not going to give up.’ So test, test, test. Test with people who look like you. Test with people who don’t. You’ve got to understand where your game is good and where it might need to be improved.
Also, not all games are great. So if you find in your testing your game isn’t the best, it’s not going to work, put it aside and create a new game. Don’t get lost in 15 years of trying to make the square peg fit into the round hole.
But if it’s doing well and people ask you about it and tell their friends about it, then you know you’re on to something.
Try to make as much of it that you can yourself. Develop it as much as you can, so you have that much more ownership, and then start knocking on doors.
At the very beginning, with the original Blitz Champz deck, there were a couple of games stores here in New York City. I went to them, I pitched Blitz Champz to them and I got my first few sales that way.
During testing, was there anything particularly eye-opening in terms of feedback?
AS: I love to play Spades. I was convinced the cards had to be standard sized. One of my best friends asked: ‘Why do you want this smaller card size? Why don’t you want the bigger poker-sized cards?’
I don’t even know what my reasoning was. But at one point I got a larger deck and started handling them and thought: ‘This is better.’ And she said: ‘And it’ll be better for kids. They have smaller hands and it’ll be easier for them.’
That was a phenomenal piece of feedback because it was the exact right thing to do.
Plus if I’m trying to put this amazing artwork on a smaller card, people aren’t going to be able to read it, especially the blitz cards where I’ve got this writing at the bottom telling people what to do.
The larger card size, unbeknowst to me, actually helped with the functionality of the game. It helped with the flow.
Outside of Blitz Champz, are there any favourite tabletop games that you enjoy playing with family members? Are there any that influenced your game?
AS: I’m an only child and I grew up with cerebral parents. We started out with Candy Land, but I was a sore loser and I got put on punishment several times because I couldn’t handle losing.
After Candy Land, I graduated to Scrabble with my mom and with my dad it was Chess. The strategy behind Chess, thinking two or three moves in advance, I pulled into Blitz Champz.
Also Uno, because I wanted something easy to learn and mass market.
I’m a huge Spades player. My mom was a big-time cards player. I loved the teamwork aspect. I loved the idea of winning points and that spades could trump other cards, so it’s an amalgamation of all those things.
But there’s nothing that beats family time.
For more information, visit blitzchampz.com
