flip card

“I remember the first couple of times I watched him five, six weeks ago on video, I had to get a flip card to figure out who he was,” Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said.

Hollywood movie-making got its start 120 years ago at the boardwalk amusement parks of New York and New Jersey with coin-operated crank flip card viewers.

“And I understand that, listen, we’ve had a ridiculous amount of injuries. It’s the first time in my life that I think I sat at a game having to constantly look through the flip card to try to constantly determine who we were playing. But that being said, we still started out 0-5 with a relatively healthy roster until that fifth game. … Yeah, I’m embarrassed about that. And that’s one of the reasons I’m standing here.”

He was supposed to stay through the end of the Crimson Tide’s season, and indeed was on the sideline last Saturday, flip card in hand, for a 24-7 semifinal victory over Washington.

In the past, he might have a flip card with plays for third-down calls, and he’d match that up with the scenario based on location of the field, as if trying to solve a calculus equation between plays.