In the first few weeks, the campus is stuffed to the brim with new students and their big dreams. Over the next few weeks, that number drops off a little and crowds in the cafeteria thin considerably. There are a few theories for this phenomenon, some of them are less charitable than others, but I think we all know the real reason – late August is when the new Madden comes out, and we all are suddenly very busy.
This year’s Madden is…well it’s Madden, especially on the PS4/Xbox One where this year’s version is mostly just last year’s with an updated roster. On the PS5 and Xbox Series X however, it looks better than ever. The grass textures are incredible. I really love the BoomTech system and have watched a lot of funny videos on YouTube of small players trying to tackle bigger ones. Madden is the premier football video game for fans of the professional league, though for folks more invested in the NCAA, College Football 25 may continue to be the game for you.
Football is as American as the Stars and Bars, and highways. In other countries, what we call soccer is referred to as futebol, and what we call football is called “American Football.” While the sport is becoming increasingly popular in other countries such as the UK and Brazil, it is still very much tied into the American identity.
The first game of what we would call modern football was played in 1862 between Rutgers and Princeton Universities. The fledgling sport combined elements of rugby and soccer. In the sports formative years, it was played without pads and was spoken of as going into battle. This is no accident, accounts from the era seem to say as much – with the end of the Civil War, and with the Western Frontier “conquered,” football was an opportunity for college age men to prove that they were masculine and tough in the same displays of violence as those men who were older siblings and fathers.
Madden fans can feel the similarities in the gameplay. Between downs, the player picks the plays but it feels like choosing a plan of attack on a battlefield, which all makes perfect sense if you can frame your understanding of the game through the eyes of its creators.
One of the earliest schools to play the game on a professional level was Carlisle Indian Industrial School. This was a school where Native Americans attended in an effort to force them to assimilate with the culture of their colonizers. Despite being generally smaller than the players on at the white colleges, Carlisle managed to end their time playing college football with a 167–88–13 record (the best record of any retired college football team). These players offset their smaller physique by inventing trick plays that would go on to be core components of modern football, including the overhand spiral and the sneak play.
American football is a fall tradition, as is the new Madden game, and both can be important parts of a Thanksgiving celebration. Thanksgiving is also a tradition in the US, but can be a time of grieving for Indigenous people. Many voices from these communities have called for the holiday to be celebrated in ways that remember these cultures, their contributions to society, as well as the violence perpetrated against them. We can also celebrate the influence that indigenous people have had on football as well.
