Upon reading this headline, you're probably asking yourself. . ."Who in the heck is Norman Sas?"
According to Pro Football Talk, Norman Sas is the man who is responsible for inventing one of the greatest games of all time. I speak, of course, of "Electric Football."
Yes, half of our readers are probably still confused.
Electric Football is a game that is played on a field that, basically, amounts to a big metal box. The "players" are little plastic figures with adjustable settings in their bases that determine which direction they will move. When both players have made their adjustments for their players, the play starts. The "movement" is accomplished by, for lack of a better term, turning on the board. Flipping the switch causes the board to vibrate, and the players move according to what adjustments the players made pre-play.
In the end, a play looks a little something like this:
As you can imagine, plays rarely worked out exactly the way the player had envisioned. But, damn, was it fun to try.
Sas invented the game back in 1948. Nearly 20 years after that, he struck a deal with the NFL to put team colors and player names on the players that were included with the game.
I'm sure that plenty of you folks out there either had or have an Electric Football setup. Does anyone still break it out occasionally? Does this bring back any memories from your younger days? Heck, if you want an Electric Football game, they're still available for purchase if you look around the interwebs. There's even a website dedicated to it.
And Norman Sas made it all possible. He passed away on June 28 at the age of 87.