Shake, rattle ... and fall

Norman A. Sas.

I had never heard of him either. But his obit came across the wires the other day.
Turns out he was the guy who invented the electronic football game. No, not the little handheld device from the late '70s that had a tiny red light that you moved across the screen to a series of beeps and blips avoiding would-be tacklers in the form of more little red lights.

I'm talking electronic table-top football. The closest a game got to the real thing ... before Madden.

I got my first (of three) electronic football games when I was 12. The "field" was a sparkling piece of green sheet metal with the NFL logo painted in the middle and all the yard and end zone markers perfectly recreated. The players were about the size of a pawn on a chess board. But so much cooler. My set came with the Dallas Cowboys (then America's Team to the media -- but no one else) and the Detroit Lions. Enclosed in the box was an order sheet to get more plastic players dressed as other NFL teams. It wasn't long before all my favorite teams (Pats, Chiefs, Browns) and uniforms (Niners, Vikes, Raiders) were represented in my growing collection of guys. Sometimes I would just set up the field (Pats vs. Niners usually) and lie on the floor and imagine the players runnning around the sheet metal field. Hey, I said I was 12.

Electronic football was one of those games where the set-up was as much or more fun than the actual playing. Like Stratego. Or Mouse Trap. Or Risk. The beauty of electronic football is that the set-up happened before every play. Each little guy sat on top of a green stand. Attached to the bottom of each stand was a little wheel with two prongs sticking out of it. The idea was that if the wheel was set straight then the two prongs would make the player run straight. If the wheel was turned to the right then the player would go right. If the wheel was turned to the left, then left he would go. That was the theory.

So when me and one of my friends sat down to play a game we would spend 15 minutes setting up the first play. This guy and this guy will pull right, and these two guys will pull left, allowing the running back to cut right and then straight through the hole created by the blockers. On defense it would be this guy will come up on run support while these two guys head back in coverage. It was a lot of strategery.

Then you would flick the switch. And all the strategery would go right out the window.

The field would begin to vibrate. And I mean vibrate. Loudly. A motor attached to the underside of the game would cause the sheet metal to rattle, causing the players to move around. The idea was that the players would move in the predetermined patterns that were set up before the switch was flicked. The reality was that the players would bounce all over the field. Some backwards. Some in circles. Some would begin to "run" and then fall over. Other players would come together in a pack for a group vibrate. Half of the time the little foam ball would fall out of the guy's hand and we would yell "fumble!" A fumble was recovered when another player would bump into the ball. Sometimes that would take minutes. Very suspense-filled minutes.

No matter how many times the flick of the switch created chaos instead of something that looked like football, me and my friends would faithfully gather all our guys up again and set up another play. All the while talking about the last play as if something had actually happened. And that's because every now and then a little plastic guy carrying a little foam ball would vibrate his way down the field with a bunch of other little guys chasing him and cross the goal line for a touchdown. I'm guessing the average score for electronic football was 6-0 (it was almost impossible to kick an extra point). They were some of the best 6-0 games I've ever seen.

Sometimes my mother would come into the room where we were playing and stop to watch as we placed each guy carefully in position. There was a hush of concentration in the air. Then the hush would be broken by the loud sound of the rattling metal and the players would jump around with no rhyme or reason and the runner would be "tackled" and we'd shut the switch off to get ready for the next play.

"Huh," my mother would say. "It's just like real football. I can't tell what's happening at all."

Thanks, Norman A. Sas. Great game.