Remember foosball? It's big again

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Sweat drips down Chris Marks' forehead as he leans over the foosball table. Mouth slightly open, right hand delicately turning the rod handle, the 26-year-old German insurance broker is a portrait in concentration.

Back and forth. Back and forth. Marks gracefully passes the polyurethane ball up and down the line, from one yellow plastic man to the next, looking for an opening as his opponent nervously wiggles his two defensive rods.

Not that it matters. Marks is simply biding his time.

One quick flip of the wrist and it's over, the ball moving so fast you don't actually see it. The ball makes a tinny "thwack" as it hits the back of the goal.

Marks celebrates with a triumphant "whoop." Arms raised, he flips the final bead across the scoreboard, digs into his nearby backpack and takes a slug of Gatorade as he pulls off his yellow-tinted sunglasses and wipes his brow.

This is why he flew nearly halfway around the world from Frankfurt, Germany, to a crowded ballroom in a nondescript hotel in the middle of Kentucky in the middle of January.

"I really like the head-to-head," Marks says, slightly out of breath. "There's no other game where your opponent is like 2 feet away from you across the table. It's like, 'Who's better?"'

There are few in the world better than Marks. And some of them are in this same room, playing in the 13th annual Super Bowl of Foosball, one of the most popular regional foosball tournaments in the country.

Twenty feet away sits 22-year-old Billy Pappas, considered the top American player. Across the room, 22-year-old Rob Atha from England practices doubles with a teammate.

Watch the world's best players, and you realize this isn't the game you grew up playing after school in your buddy's basement or at the neighborhood bar.

The ball flies across the table as their hands jump quickly from rod to rod, their heads hunched over the table as they plot out the next pass, the next shot, the next win.

This isn't just a game to the players, it's serious business. Well, sort of.

While the $35,000 prize money available to the winners in the Super Bowl of Foosball is hardly pocket change, most of the players know they'll never get rich rolling a ball between plastic men from one end of a 4-foot table to the other.