All of the competitors look to dethrone last year\u2019s champion, Josh Caputo of Montgomery, Ill. The event will be televised on ESPN2.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is like \u2018Top Gun,\u2019 the best of the best,\u201d said Johnson, who quarterbacked the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a Super Bowl win against the Oakland Raiders in 2003. \u201cThese (Pop-A-Shot) guys, I know they\u2019re training like no other to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n
After buying a Pop-A-Shot machine for his home in January, Johnson began shooting as many as 1,700 shots a day. He has now wound up at the precipice of yet another epic feat.<\/p>\n
Brad Johnson, who quarterbacked a Super Bowl winner, will vie for the Pop-A-Shot National Championship on Friday night. He sent this video to show he\u2019s ready. @TheRealPopAShot<\/a> #BigBadBrad<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/KqmgkQAokX<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Daniel Brown (@BrownieAthletic) July 31, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n Before he was an NFL quarterback, Johnson was an all-state basketball star at Owen High School in Black Mountain, N.C. He also was a two-sport college athlete at Florida State, playing sparingly over 56 games for the Seminoles\u2019 basketball team in the late \u201980s and shooting 51.8 percent from the field.<\/p>\n Johnson, 56, will be the oldest competitor in the field. He is also the only former two-time Pro Bowl selection in a field comprised mostly of early-40s professionals with occupations ranging from technology services supervisor to automotive parts buyer to field service technician.<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s Jarrod Shappell, a 41-year-old San Francisco-based business consultant who tuned up for the national championship by repeatedly smoking Golden State Warriors guard Brandin Podziemski in practice rounds earlier this week (more on that later).<\/p>\n Johnson qualifies as an underdog given his wild-card status and his lack of tournament experience. Then again, the quarterback who also played for Minnesota, Washington and Dallas during his 15-year NFL career began training long before the other competitors.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m an \u201980s kind of guy \u2014 all the music and video games, and especially the arcade,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cAt every bowling alley, at every arcade, there was a Pop-A-Shot, and I\u2019ve just always enjoyed it. Every sports bar, I found a challenge and tried to play somebody or tried to put up the high score.\u201d<\/p>\n In jumping into this world, Johnson has joined an unusual tribe. Shot-poppers make for a cultish following.<\/p>\n Where would they rank in terms of zealous devotion?<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s, like, K-Pop and Pop-A-Shot. It feels like that type of subculture,\u201d Shappell said. \u201cBut it\u2019s also, like, the funnest, most joy-filled group of people.\u201d<\/p>\n A Warriors season-ticket holder qualified for the Pop-A-Shot National Championship this Friday, so the team arranged a tune-up match against Brandin Podziemski. That\u2019s @jarrodshappell<\/a> in the blue jersey. \ud83d\udc40 pic.twitter.com\/6rG1r509uR<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Daniel Brown (@BrownieAthletic) July 31, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n To answer the obvious question: Yes, really.<\/p>\n There is a fiercely competitive national championship for the addictive basketball arcade game born in 1981. A college coach named Ken Cochran invented Pop-A-Shot mainly to amuse the boys and girls attending his sports camps<\/a> on the Kansas Wesleyan University campus.<\/p>\n The coach\u2019s prototype quickly evolved into a machine featuring a lone basket with a 14-inch rim and a seven-inch ball. (Standard rims are 18 inches, and men\u2019s basketballs are nine inches in diameter.) Donnie Frye, a local welder, helped Cochran design the frame. Pete Sias, an engineer in Salina, Kan., designed the electronics.<\/p>\n In Pop-A-Shot, the basketballs automatically roll back to the shooter. The key to success is firing as many shots as possible without hesitation.<\/p>\n The player with the highest score wins, but that\u2019s not necessarily the shooter with the most makes. The shots vary in value based on timing. In the latest version, the Pop-A-Shot Elite released in February, made shots can count as two points or three points depending on the shot clock. In the national tournament, rounds last 55 seconds.<\/p>\n Cochran sold his Pop-A-Shot business to a Silicon Valley executive in 2016. Tony Stucker was living in San Mateo, Calif., and burned out working for several tech startups when he began looking online for a business he could buy. His search turned up Pop-A-Shot, there for the taking.<\/p>\n \u201c(Cochran) had been trying to sell the company for over a year before I even found it,\u2019\u2019 Stucker said in a phone interview. \u201cDifferent people had kicked the tires, but the business really hadn\u2019t done much throughout the decade.\u201d<\/p>\n Brandin Podziemski (left) of the Golden State Warriors studies the technique of Pop-A-Shot finalist Jarrod Shappell. (Courtesy of the Golden State Warriors)<\/p>\n At that time, sales had slowed to roughly 300 units per year. There was no advertising. Competitors were dominating because they were on Amazon, and Pop-A-Shot hadn\u2019t bothered.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the companies just wanted to buy it and take the name and throw everything else aside,\u2019\u2019 Stucker said. \u201cI was like, \u2018No, I really want to focus on the legacy and build this back up.\u2019 I think (Cochran) appreciated that. We became very close.\u201d<\/p>\n Cochran died in 2017, a month shy of his 85th birthday, but his wish came true. Stucker guided Pop-A-Shot into the online market, and the company engineered licensing deals with several dozen NCAA teams.<\/p>\n Stucker said several NBA players, including Dallas Mavericks guard D\u2019Angelo Russell and Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker, have the home game. He gets a kick out of the Miami Marlins baseball team having a Pop-A-Shot Elite in its clubhouse; the barcode scan on the machines keeps track of the players\u2019 scores.<\/p>\n \u201cWe see how much they play, and they\u2019ve got some good players,\u2019\u2019 Stucker said. \u201cMaybe they\u2019re not having a great year on the field, but they\u2019ve got some good Pop-A-Shot players.\u201d<\/p>\n Above all, Stucker revived the Pop-A-Shot National Championship, which had been dormant for 25 years. After last year\u2019s hastily organized event, Stucker helped orchestrate 2025 qualifying events across the country, starting during the fan fest at the NBA All-Star Game in San Francisco. There were other regional qualifiers, during the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas, the NCAA Final Four in San Antonio and the WNBA All-Star Game in Indianapolis, among others.<\/p>\n \u201cThe level of play is much higher,\u2019\u2019 Stucker said. \u201cAt our most recent qualifier in Vegas, there were a bunch of people just going back and forth with the high score. A lot of times, it came down to whether they missed two shots or three shots. It was just that simple.\u201d<\/p>\n There isn\u2019t a large money prize, but there is a trophy and a championship-style belt for the winner. Pop-A-Shot does pay for the finalists\u2019 airfare and accommodations.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what they win,\u2019\u2019 Stucker said. \u201cThey win all-expense paid trips.\u201d<\/p>\n About that disputed wild-card entry \u2026<\/p>\n Sure, Johnson is a former NFL player as well as an accomplished trick-shot star<\/a> with an unusual Instagram account<\/a>.\u00a0But none of that mattered \u2014 not even the Super Bowl ring \u2014 when he arrived at the St. Louis qualifier.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re there to win, and they want to beat me,\u2019\u2019 Johnson said. \u201cThere\u2019s no, \u2018Hey, good to meet you. I kept up with your career.\u2019 They want to beat you, and they want to beat you bad.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s true competition. It sounds crazy \u2014 it\u2019s a game of Pop-A-Shot, you know? But there, everybody\u2019s been putting in so much work. They\u2019ve been doing this for years.\u201d<\/p>\n To get to the qualifier, Johnson left his home in Athens, Ga., at 2 a.m. and made an 11-hour drive to St. Louis. Things wrapped up about 3 a.m., and he turned around and drove home.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/DSC07963-1-scaled.jpg\")
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