On The Big Game, Electric and Madden Football

By Allen Bacon, The Daily Bosco

Good News. Now you don't have to watch the Game We Can't Say The Name Of Bowl on Sunday.

This is because Madden 25, the Video Football Game by EA Sports has run a game simulation and it has predicted that, SPOILER ALERT, the Denver Broncos will beat the Seattle Seahawks 31-28 in an exciting and close game.

So now you can do what I do and record the game and watch all the commercials and the Bruno Mars Halftime Concert without actually having to watch the game itself.

Before you scoff, this is the 11th year that the Madden Video game has run a simulation.  In the past ten years, the game has successfully picked the winner eight times.  That's an 80% winning percentage.

Which got me to thinking about a few things related to this topic.

First of all, it's great to know that if the weather gets so brutal that it is impossible to play the game on Sunday, that the two teams could actually play the game via Madden 25, because the game is so realistic you could watch and not realize that you are not witnessing a real game.

In this variation of Madden 25 each member of both of the team's Offenses and Defenses would take turns playing against each other.  We, the viewers at home would watch the game at home as if we were watching the real thing and Bruno Mars could do his halftime show in a studio someplace.

The Best thing is that we can still have our parties, our office pools, and watch the commercials.

I of course, do not play Madden Football very well.  In fact I could possibly be the worst video game player on the planet.  Especially when it comes to football simulation.

I believe this had it's roots when I was a kid and tried to play Electric Football or Vibrating Football.

For those young people reading this who don't know what Electric Football is, you are definitely missing out.

This is where you would place plastic figures of football players in position and turn on a vibrating board and then the excitement would begin.

I don't believe I ever won a game of Electric Football.

I would routinely get my vibrating butt kicked by my good friend Gary Cotter who always had to be the Chicago Bears.  I of course was the Los Angeles Rams.

Gary was the master at Electric Football.  Somehow his players always went in the right direction and he would run the score up on me and didn't care.

As far as my players, you would turn on the vibrating board and it was uncanny.  They would always go east and west and many times south, but never north like they were supposed to.

My passing game was nonexistent.  It was too much of a hassle to load the quarterback's arm with the felt football, and try to aim the ball at one of your vibrating receivers only to have the ball go flying clear out of the stadium.  So I stuck to the running game which was also a disaster.

So I am afraid to even try Madden Football.

But I am glad that the game is named after my all time favorite Sports Commentator.

I liked John Madden for two reasons.

First of all he was the King of the Telestrator.

Sometimes in garbage time, when the game was out of hand, he would get creative with the Telestrator.

My favorite Madden highlight with the Telestrator was when he was showing the route he was going to get out of Anaheim Stadium after the Rams game.  With his Telestrator highlighting the route with the help of an aerial shot provided by a blimp, he showed how he was going to take his bus out of the parking lot up the 57 Freeway over to the 5 Freeway and out toward his home in the San Francisco Bay area.

Another time he was circling barbeque ribs, chicken and steaks he wanted to eat from the Anaheim Stadium Parking lot's various tail gate parties.

I also liked John Madden because he took a big custom bus everywhere as opposed to flying.  Which made it hard for him since the Pro Bowl is played in Hawaii.

It is extremely hard to get to Honolulu by Bus from the main land.