Joined on the podium by the commissioner and other representatives of the sport, Sills spoke in public for the first time in four years about his game. He announced that day, with little preamble and little emotion in his voice, that he was electing to exercise Article 7.7 of the Principles of Foundation, which stated that at any time, the creator of the sport, holding its copyright in full, could forbid any profit-making interest from collecting payment for any activity involving the staging, broadcasting, or casual exhibition of Loft. Article 7.7 effectively disallowed individuals and corporations from charging a single dollar to attend a game of Loft, or to even take in a dime from concessions, parking, or merchandise sales. Furthermore, the television networks could not show Loft on TV if they took in any advertising money whatsoever.

Article 7.7 went further than that. Even not-for-profit organizations like colleges, high schools, and local leagues were no longer able to open Loft games to the public if people were required to pay to watch. Any sponsorship of Loft would now have to come entirely out the sponsor's own pocket, whether it was NBC or a local church group's Thursday night tournament.

It took some time for those watching the announcement to process just what they were hearing. It seemed impossible that every conceivable profit that Loft generated in America could be suddenly cut off; such a thing just couldn't be done. There was too much money being funneled through too many different channels, and no one person could own the right to throw a wrench into the works of capitalism when the product in question had been absorbed so deeply into both the marketplace and consumer consciousness. Yet Article 7.7 had years of behind-the-scenes legal arguments and victories behind it, upholding the principle that Geoffrey Sills was the sport's sole creator and that he owned it just as he owned any other of his other works. If he chose to go entirely without personal gain, he did in fact have the right to establish Loft as a protected property.

The backlash began, of course, even before Sills got to the second half of his speech. Phones began to ring in boardrooms all over the country as he explained, with minimal eye contact with the camera and in a low monotone borne of an aversion of public speaking, why he had arrived at the decision to essentially stop Loft from going forward. Here is what he said:

When I was seven years old, my father took me to see The Wind in the Willows at the community center two miles from our house. It was put on by the local theater group, none of whom had any professional stage experience. But to my young imagination, what they did on stage that night was completely captivating. When I asked my father a week later if we could go back and see the play again, he told me that the group wasn't doing that play anymore, that its run was over and I would have to wait for something new. I remember I cried that night, alone in my room, and I think this experience seeded my love of the theater. As the years passed I began to see both the real sorrow and the real beauty of something that could only happen briefly in time and then be found only in our memories. That is what the theater is, and that is what I always meant Loft to be.

There was another experience in my life that got me thinking about the closing of stories. This time it was my father himself who affected me so. Until I was fourteen I admired him more than any boy has ever admired his father. He seemed to me a figure of daring and strength and courage, and after an injury on the job made it difficult for him to walk and he became depressed, beginning a lifelong problem with alcoholism, I came to hate him because he now seemed weak to me, the fire that was once inside him allowed to burn out over the years. He would say to me sometimes that his purpose on earth had been fulfilled by the age of thirty and his days after that were only the force of habit.

People will and must go on and on, but the things we create with our imaginations do not need to experience the aches of old age and the pangs of regret for the ways things might have turned out, if only the story hadn't stumbled on beyond its climax. For years I sacrificed financial profit for the right to keep my plays from being adapted into films or performed for years after their first run, and I did that because I wanted the viewer to keep the moment with them as they had first experienced it, never to be tainted by accidentally re-visiting that moment in a forgettable, secondhand way somewhere further down the line. It is when something leaves us that we truly come to appreciate it, and that's when the stories begin, the stories we tell the people who never got a chance to experience what we did. These stories make them dream, and dreams are what keep life compelling and what keep creators working to produce beauty.

It's my belief that we keep almost everything too long these days. We buy movies and put them on a pile of others for a rainy day, we put songs on a hard drive and come back to them when we're bored. We can record the most immense happenings in history and re-run them at will. Loft is in danger of becoming just another habit, just another product taken down off the shelf once in a while to briefly amuse us. I don't care for habits like that. I would rather lose something than take it for granted. In the wake of a loss like that, others will come forward to replace that void with something they've molded with their own imaginations and their own efforts, and something amazing will be given life. Creation is driven by loss.

If Loft is allowed to continue as a profit-making venture, I fear it will someday soon go the way of other sports: fought over by warring unions, cheapened by commercial encroachment, tainted by unfortunate behavior. Already in the past two years we've had to fight to keep TV timeouts and higher ticket prices out of the game, all the while fending off corporate interests who wanted longer, more expanded, and thus less dramatic tournaments featuring bigger rosters of athletes who are now demanding more pay and more fame. I don't have the energy to fight the forces which want to turn Loft completely into a business instead of merely a sport. I can think of nothing sadder than the prospect of hearing someone one day say, 'Loft used to be so much better, so much more pure.' That is unacceptable to me. Better to look at it as something that came into our lives, gave us some fun times and vivid memories, and simply moved on to the place where good things go when they want to stay good forever.

I fully expect the legal challenges to my decision to go on for years and years, but I'm afraid they'll have to take place without me. Today is my last official day as Loft's creator. While there may be no more Loft on television, no more superstars or T-shirts or crowded stadiums or tailgate parties, I urge everyone who has come to love the sport to play it on the fields of elementary schools and in the street where the only intruding interest will be the occasional car that comes along. I want Loft to now be free for everyone; if I were a stronger man and not occasionally victim to my own drive for glory, comfort, and accomplishment, I would have kept everything involving Loft free from the moment of its creation. Let today be known as the day I decided to take Loft away from the money-changers and give it to people for their own personal enjoyment, a small gift that can't ever now be cheapened by those with more money than they have. Let it go back to being what it was on the autumn day when I first began to build it: an interesting pastime which can bring people together so that they can have their own championship moments. Let Loft's story end at just the right time. If you feel a little betrayed today, wait a few years, think back on your enjoyment of the sport, and realize how many other good things have come into the world since the day I stood at this podium. I hope you'll think I was right to make Loft into a nice memory you can return to from time to time even as you get yourself in shape for the tournament being held right down the street for your family, their friends, and their neighbors. The sport is not going anywhere; the only thing being taken away, in my view, is its possible decline.

Good day.

The ramifications of the execution of Article 7.7 were devastating to anyone who had ever made money off Loft. The television networks, unable to sell advertising time (even the minimal amount dictated by the sport's non-stop nature), were still willing to broadcast the tournament at a large financial loss---but without being able to charge for tickets, parking, concessions, or merchandising, no event site would host it, and no one came forward to absorb the immense expense. The loss of Loft from the programming schedule was a definite blow, but there were still other major sports to show. Gambling concerns immediately scratched Loft from their dealings, and more than half of all collegiate and high school Loft programs came to an end due to the inability to budget for a sport that was not permitted to pay for itself even in some small way. The year after Loft's end was filled with an endless procession of magazine and newspaper articles condemning Sills' decision, as well as thousands of hours of protests from radio and TV hosts and their callers. It was difficult to find a single sports fan who saw the logic in Sills' intellectual position; no one wanted to see Loft disappear. He briefly became one of the more reviled figures in all of sports, but he seemed not to care one whit about his image in that world. His lawyers did all of his talking for him and he remained immune to all emotional and financial pleas to change his mind.

There were no less than four dozen lawsuits brought against The Sport of Loft, which was the name of the company Sills had created to oversee its development. Media companies, merchandisers, real estate concerns, state colleges---all could not bear to see Loft become a thing which could only be enjoyed for its own sake rather than its ability to generate revenue. The suits which Sills did not win were settled out of court; in the end, no one could defeat the air-tight legality of Article 7.7.

In time, as it became more obvious that there truly would be no Loft tournament in August of 2013, the debate over the wisdom and right of Sills to do what he did became more philosophical. At first sportswriters alone had been the voices of condemnation, but eventually Article 7.7 became a compelling metaphor for a wider variety of essayists and commentators. The myriad questions that arose could be argued about eternally. Could any one individual truly own something that affected the lives of so many? Was Loft just a possession, a piece of art on a wall that the artist could remove at will without responsibility for the after-effects? Were the personal interests of thousands, even millions of people, more important than the desire of one man, even if all the legal paperwork in the world guaranteed his wishes? Who owned the sport, and if it was the public, when had they claimed it from the mind that brought it into being?

Perhaps not so surprisingly, the outcry from Loft's athletes was not quite as vocal, as their employment had always been transitory and the money the vast majority of them made was a pittance, requiring ninety-five percent of them to take up outside employment between tournaments. Only a handful had endorsement deals which enabled them to stay professional Lofters year-round. A few migrated to other sports where they could make a solid living, even at the minor league levels, though none went on to become elite athletes with household names. The rest, more than likely already engaged in amateur pursuits, continued on that path. It could be said that the only Lofter whose devastation at losing his job was visible to the public was Paul Rupp.

At first Rupp, like most everyone else, was simply confused by the news of Loft's end, keeping a close, guarded eye on the first week's developments, not quite believing that Sills' decision was final or even his to make. After undergoing his second surgery to repair the damage Loft had done to his wrists over the years, he rehabbed and went on training privately as normal, awaiting the next open tryouts. When those were officially cancelled, he still believed that the training portion of the annual Loft calendar would merely be scaled back and that he should be ready to audition for a team come mid-winter. He spent time alone at his small house on Long Island and tried in vain to convince certain teammates he liked to join him for training, but there were no takers; they had all moved on, satisfied to be pleasantly surprised if the tournament should be put on again. Some spoke of how intently Rupp tried to persuade them to practice with him, as if Loft's existence depended on the sheer force of their will. When spring came and there was no positive word about the possibility of a reprieve for that year's tournament, Rupp stopped talking to anyone.

It was then, according to the few people who really knew him, that he changed forever. He would not even answer phone calls from the agent responsible for securing his endorsements, which had naturally been put on hold. The Loft field on his property which he paid a small fortune to have maintained year round fell into disrepair, and no one saw Rupp for weeks. Sometime in June he left the country and evidently went to Germany for a period of months. By the time he was next seen in the states, America had come to terms with the end of Loft and moved on; another NFL season had begun and the World Series was approaching. Though the court battles raged on and on, Loft was truly done. The public consciousness had turned the page, and in keeping with Geoffrey Sills' wishes, the game had become more or less a memory. Even local amateur leagues had trouble staying afloat under the burden of too much financial responsibility. Something else that kept Loft from a continued full life on playgrounds and in neighborhood ballparks was the field itself; it was of a design too complex to simulate easily without a decent amount of funding. It was so much easier to just play baseball, soccer, football, basketball, hockey.

Sports historians did find a boom industry in documenting Loft's past, with dozens of books written and even a handful of movies made about the game. But the hurdles that needed to be cleared just to put a group of teams together for competition on a continuing basis were too great, and only at private universities did Loft continue to eek out a real existence, with some of them simply agreeing to fund the games entirely regardless of the fact that no money could be charged for tickets. Occasionally over the next few years, regional amateur tournaments were held as well, but none caught the attention of wide audiences. Loft became a novelty, practiced only by real devotees. Fans attended annual conventions to remember the seven years it had so influenced the sports landscape, trading memorabilia and playing host to its former stars.

Paul Rupp's continued absence from public life more than a year after Geoffrey Sills' press conference led to wild speculation about how he was passing his time, and some of the more accurate reports of his day to day existence were distressing to his admirers. For a period of months he lived on the coast of Maine in a rented cabin, fishing in a nearby creek for several hours each day and, according to neighbors, sleeping quite often on the beach, uncovered and alone. He then moved into a small apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he lived quietly and without friends, shooting baskets at a public court a couple of hours a day, but apparently not making any real effort to keep in optimum shape. He was believed to be in a state of depression, and despite the rumors that circulated about this, he did nothing to alter the public's perception of him, clinging to his silence. It was widely thought that Paul Rupp had come to value the fame and glory he had achieved as a Lofter more than he ever wanted to admit to himself, and that despite his fierce dedication to the sport, it was just not rewarding enough to play it on his own or to perhaps organize a small league in his area and finance it himself. Some said the realization that he was just like any other athlete who had become dependent on public recognition and adulation was incredibly painful for him.

At some point during this time, his Barnstable teammate Christian Pruitt received a handwritten letter at his home in Cincinnati. It was from Paul Rupp. It read simply this:

Hello -

I'm sorry for what I said that night of the game and for making you feel less worthy. I watched the game on video and then I saw that it hurt you. It wasn't right for the TV to keep showing you. I don't know why I thought I could say those things. I wasn't a good teammate and now it's too late to play with you again.

-Paul R.

At some point the two went their separate ways; according to an unofficial biography of Rupp, it was due to his unwillingness to father children. He was alone again, and did not continue his EMT training. One winter's morning he picked up a newspaper and read that a high court had struck down the attempt of a media company called Downfield Pass to form a professional sixteen team Loft league, the most serious challenge yet to Article 7.7. The article pointed out that Geoffrey Sills had not accepted a $220 million buyout to sign over the rights to the sport. Big business had failed again to bring Loft back to life. In that very same newspaper, Rupp then read a small human interest article profiling his former girlfriend Susan and detailing her move to St. Petersburg, Russia, where she intended to work without pay in a bankrupt orphanage.

On that very afternoon, Paul Rupp got into his car and drove to New York City---to Geoffrey Sills' East Village apartment.

Accounts differ as to exactly how long the two men spoke that night, alone in the spacious apartment. It was at least five hours, ensuring that when Rupp eventually did leave the building at approximately 2:45 a.m., he had to face a pair of reporters who had been tipped off about the ongoing talk and were hoping that there had been a breakthrough, that Rupp's single-minded dedication had managed to win Sills over where years of other arguments had not. Sills did not come down with him and Rupp had to pass by the reporters alone, silently as always, while Sills watched from a window above, turning away without a gesture when he was spotted there. A light went out in the room and down on the street Rupp walked two blocks to his car, his body language conveying only an air of extreme fatigue. He got in and drove away. His face revealed nothing. Nor could anyone offer any inside details of what transpired during the meeting, for while Sills had been visiting with two theatrical producers when Rupp arrived, he had not allowed them to stay, answering no calls and ignoring repeated knocks at his door. Beyond that, neither party ever spoke of what transpired in the apartment, though the end result was no change to the continued enforcement of Article 7.7. Loft remained in its suspended state. One reporter who decided to follow Rupp on his drive back to Boston wrote that the ex-superstar pulled over at a rest area outside of Hartford, Connecticut and sat atop a picnic table for a full hour, simply watching a line of trees rustling in the wind, before moving on as the sun came up.

"He was a man who came into his life's purpose at a late age, only to have that purpose suddenly taken from him," Geoffrey Sills wrote in the preface for a paperback edition of a play published a year after his conversation with Paul Rupp. The play, entitled The Savant at Rest, depicted the rise and fall of a struggling American industrialist---but those who worked with Sills on its production universally believed that the character of Frederick Holm was based on Paul Rupp, and more specifically, the things the athlete had said during those famous hours in Sills' apartment. "In that purpose he had found not only wealth and notoriety, but for the first time, an authentic state of being and a personality he had never known existed. It could be said that there was no Frederick Holm until the discovery of the copper mine created him. He spent years in amazement at who he had become, only to disappear from the world and from himself when his fortunes were taken, leaving him the man he was before: invisible, uncomfortable in his own skin, and utterly unable to forge a third act to his life's story. Sadder still were his painful attempts to express his predicament to the people he needed to set right his ship. Finding himself having to plead for something for the first time and not educated enough to persuade with intellectual argument, he could only present his confused beliefs to the puppetmasters in a muted voice and let their judgment stand. When that judgment did not favor him, there was nothing he could do anymore to remain Frederick Holm."

And that is where Loft stood more than four years after Rupp's crushing loss in the title game. The sporting world continued to move on and the most recognizable names in Loft's history became footnotes until the sport did indeed come to seem like nothing more than a piece of great theater taking its place beside a thousand others, with only a minor lingering bitterness embedded in the hearts of its diehard fans. Gaps in the sports and entertainment landscape do not last for long, and while there was no sudden invention of a new major sport after the end of Loft---so much for Sills' belief that other creators would come forward upon seeing how immense the profits of an original athletic league could be---the public remained busy with the sports that had been around for decades. That particular section of the newspaper did not lack for stories, controversy, or drama, and probably never would.

Then something happened which drastically changed the saga. One year after marrying a chef from England, Geoffrey Sills fathered a son. After resisting settling down and starting a family for so long, mostly because he had convinced himself that his work and his solitude were things he could never possibly compromise, he found himself with a new life. The man who had changed so little during his adult years was suddenly a different person, his priorities seen through a new lens. The transition did not make him friendlier, or more accessible to the public, or less iconoclastic. But the fact that he now saw his legacy in terms of what might lay beyond his own natural lifespan caused him to re-evaluate his attitude toward the necessity of transience in all things theatrical. One moment he believed that nothing he ever created should be allowed to live beyond him, and that ideas which had had their day in the sun must be made to fade away before they became tired with age. In the space of just a few months, though, it became more rewarding to think that should he pass from the world too soon, those ideas could be experienced again by someone of the most immense importance to him. Sills admitted to another, more private reason for his changing attitude as well: never in his adult life had he found the need to explain himself to anyone, cynically feeling the public's pre-conceptions of him were fixed in stone, the pre-conceptions that he was difficult, secretive, over-dedicated. But with the birth of his son, he saw the chance to re-invent himself as he wished to be. Here was someone to whom the name Geoffrey Sills could mean something pure, unadorned. Every new discovery about his father could possibly make Nicholas Sills fonder and more proud. And this meant discovering his works too. Around the same time that Geoffrey started writing his memoirs, he made several phone calls to associates to begin the process of making his legacy a little more permanent.

So it was that a man named Richard Quarters recently found himself taking a commuter train from San Francisco to Mountainview, California to deliver some news to a fellow Lofter from some years back. Quarters had participated in Geoffrey Sills' original test group at the beginning of the story in 2002 and played in the first two national Loft tournaments, once in the same lineup as Paul Rupp. Never an elite Lofter, Quarters had stopped playing to become a coach, part-time math professor, and later, a historian of the game. Now he found himself excited to be given the assignment of telling Paul Rupp personally that open tryouts were being staged in four months for the next national Loft tournament---one which would be no more and no less grand than all the ones which had come before. Of course Rupp knew what was coming, as the newspapers were filled with the details of Article 7.7's "revision" to permit a new era of Loft in America, but it was the new commissioner's idea to send someone to Mountainview to ask Rupp face-to-face if there was any possibility that he still had some Loft left in him.

To my relief, the man who answered his door when I knocked that afternoon looked not much different from the one I remembered playing in the title game with (and visibly disappointing with my overly strong sends) in Austin, Texas. Dressed in jogging shorts and a T-shirt, he looked like he was ready to come out for training at that very moment. He was forty-two years old, and it had been four years since his last appearance in a game, the loss that had so broken him. He shook my hand, asked if I was now with the commissioner's office, and I said yes. I got right to the point and he did too, telling me he thought he would be ready for the tryouts and that he was willing to make the trip. And then he asked me if I still kept my head too low during rolling tackles.

The question is: Can he do it? Can Paul Rupp possibly come back after a four year layoff and not only make a Loft team but perhaps achieve some measure of greatness again? As I write this, we are nine days away from the open tryouts and he's been training full-time here in Los Angeles with a group of new Lofters, none of whom he had ever met before, for a little over three months. He has cancelled the lease on his apartment in Mountainview and is willing to live in whatever small town he needs to should he make a squad.

Loft, the television documentary, is back in production, and as one might expect, cameramen have been taking dozens of hours of footage of Rupp's Los Angeles preparation. He still gives no interviews. He just takes the field, goes all out for six hours, and exhausts himself to the point of collapse. The thought of becoming a coach has absolutely no appeal for him; he will either play or watch from the stands. So far, the footage suggests that the calendar may have moved on, but his incredible skills have not eroded nearly as much as they should have. One columnist has suggested that what Rupp would like more than anything in the world is to have to truly struggle again to be the best. I think I agree, and I think the challenge this still solitary, single-minded man faces now is as exciting as any he's ever dealt with.

America is becoming excited about Loft again. Millions of people who have never seen it played on a grand scale are about to experience it for the first time. The site of the next tournament is Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri. It seems impossible to me that either of the two men who built Loft's legend will miss the opening kick, one sitting in the commissioner's box, one standing on the backline, tensed and ready to move when the whistle blows. They have changed, but the game has not. There are no new rules, no new wrinkles, no concessions to the dollar, no adaptations to the times.

Loft is what it was when this story began.

Richard Quarters
Los Angeles, California
July 3, 2016



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