For those of you too young to remember (or even be aware of) electric football, it was a pre-video age, mechanical football game that "transformed a vibrating sheet of metal into a thrilling and sometimes exasperating tabletop game."
Mr. Shores said Mr. Sas may have also been drawn to football because of one of the frustrations of the technology: the vibrations tended to steer figures unpredictably, often into clumps that resembled a pileup at the end of a football play. The unpredictability--and the effort to mitigate it--came to define electric football as much as its tiny felt footballs, which were easily lost between sofa cushions.
Electic football was characterized by lineman rotating in tight circles, players unexpectedly running out of bounds or dropping the ball for no reason, and defensive players unable to find--, or too slow to catch--, the player with the ball. Its ongoing influence is known to anyone familiar with Notre Dame football.
Of course I remember electric football. The little cotton football, players not exactly running precise routes. Memories.