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In past years I've used the Saturday before the Super Bowl to handicap the field for the next cover of Madden NFL. Since the last time I did that, EA Sports put the honors up to a fan-voted, 32-player tournament in 2011, and on Thursday announced it was doubling that field to 64 for 2012. More »
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With 18 seconds left in the first half of Super Bowl 43 and the Cardinals on the doorstep, James Harrison picked off Kurt Warner and barreled 100 yards for a touchdown, dancing along the sideline as he went and narrowly breaking the plane of the end zone before Larry Fitzgerald dragged him down. As referee Terry McAulay went under the hood for the replay, he and the fans at home watched cameras track Harrison from the sideline, from the end zone and in super slo-mo as he crossed the goal line. That we all had definitive looks at this pivotal play was no accident; it was the product of months of preparation by NBC, and additional cameras meant to capture every angle. More »
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The document below is a November confidential summary obtained by Deadspin of something called the Spring Professional Football League, which presents itself as a non-hostile NFL alternative, to be built on the bones of the several leagues that have tried and failed before. More »
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So, yes, humorous Craigslist postings are usually fake. But on the off-chance this one's not, and because it's funny enough to deserve it, read the tale of one sad Brooklynite who took to Craigslist to find a football tutor. He needs a crash course in what it's like to be a quarterback, and his very relationship may be at stake. More »
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So much is made of NFL 2K5 and the blaze-of-glory conclusion to its rivalry with Madden NFL that it's easy to forget another title once threatened EA Sports' glamour franchise. In fact, the Madden team also feared NFL GameDay until the end. More »
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The U.S. Army All-American Bowl is Saturday, and the surfeit of hype has produced a surfeit of bitchy entitlement on the part of some of those players who've been invited to participate. There are only so many jersey numbers to go around, you see, and that's creating a bit of a problem: More »
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We're doing a season-long NFL roundtable with our friends at Slate. Check back here each week as a rotating cast of football watchers discusses the weekend's key plays, coaching decisions, and traumatic brain injuries. More »
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Chet Holzbauer can't remember any other gift from that mad Christmas Day scramble 20 years ago. As far as he knows, the cacophony of torn paper came to a stop, like the needle coming off a record, when he and his brother unwrapped Tecmo Super Bowl. More »
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Remember the Bud Bowl? The PBR Bowl is kind of like that, only less aimed at convincing underage kids to drink. More »
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Jason Gay has compiled the handiest of handy guides at the WSJ today: "The 32 Rules of Thanksgiving Touch Football." If you wanna be the Kennedys, you've gotta study up. A sample: "7. No footballs with wings or propellers or tails or streamers. Here's a good rule: If the football would make Dick Butkus throw up, don't use it." [WSJ] More »
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Football. [Baltimore Sports Report] More »
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Per Jim Gardner of 6ABC in Philly, the Penn State Board of Trustees has voted to remove Joe Paterno immediately. Longtime assistant coach Tom Bradley will take over as Paterno's interim replacement. A press conference is scheduled to begin any minute. We will update accordingly. [@Jim_Gardner] More »
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"She got her pants pulled down and still kept going. She's down at the four-yard-line. Wow." More »
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Kimlon "K.J." Dillon is a senior running back and safety at Apopka High in Florida. He's also a star hurdler on the school's track team, so he never really has to run those final five yards for a touchdown if he doesn't feel like it. More »
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This diagram is supposed to be from the Houston Oilers' playbook in 1993, the one season Buddy Ryan spent as the team's defensive coordinator. It depicts a special goal-line formation Ryan designed for the end of the half or the end of the game—situations in which there were "less than 15 seconds," in Ryan's words, according to the rest of the playbook page posted at Smart Football. You'll notice that there are 14 defenders. The idea is to allow the offense to run a free play, which more than 11 defenders would presumably be able to stop, with the understanding that a penalty has to be taken. The purpose is to force precious seconds to waste away, leaving the offense with less time to maneuver. The wonder is why Ryan stopped at 14 players, or didn't just punch Kevin Gilbride in the face again. [Smart Football, via @dhm] More »
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As multiple lawsuits have been brought in multiple venues by multiple former college athletes—some of whom are actually more recognizable as professional stars—I've tried to pull back to the big picture of what really faces video gamers and (principally) EA Sports in the parade of litigation over unauthorized use of likenesses in sports video games. More »
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A reader sent in this video of a Texas U6 team getting a pep talk from its coach before a game. He exhorts the Frisco Gators to push hard, be tough, and "hit 'em in the face as hard as you can." (One of his kids corrects him—"in the chest"—to nervous laughter from parents.) But before the face- or chest-hitting can commence, a team prayer that no one gets hurt. More »
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Bit of a speed bump here in just the second week of what I'd hoped would be a regular feature. Our commentator is AWOL. I'm still uploading the video so you can see what Madden NFL 12 predicts for this week's marquee matchup between New England and San Diego. More »
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Is there any body in American higher education more unaccountable and capricious with other people's lives and millions of dollars than the BCS? Why, sure! This week brings a new round of made-up educational rankings from the otherwise essentially defunct U.S. News. (Did you know that No. 22 Boston University Law School is empirically better than No. 23 Indiana University-Bloomington Law School? It's a fact.) More »
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What is ESPN prattling on about right now? We condense your morning SportsCenter to its essence. More »
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Remember Demetry James? The man whose breathless narration of Greg Jennings 99-yard, broken leg touchdown in Madden NFL 10 amassed 5 million YouTube views has joined Kotaku and Deadspin to announce our video preview of the NFL's biggest game each week this season. [NSFW language] Today, we're going back to the matchup that started it all: Saints vs. Packers. But this time, the Saints are without a key piece of their defense. More »
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"Yolanda Jones was the only adult arrested after the fight at JC Turner Field in South St. Petersburg. Jones told police she was trying to protect her cheerleader daughter who had come under attack. The coach, who is also Jones' daughter, said she joined the fight too. 'We started fighting, because that other girl didn't like my mouth,' said Darricka Maddox." [ABC Action News] More »
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As the NFL lockout dragged all of the spring and much of the summer, Madden NFL 12 figured to be the only football coming to your TV this year, until a month before its release. From its conception, the game was meant to be a salve for the hurting hardcore fan, not a song for those who tune in only for Super Bowl commercials. Freed of the need to build features marketed to the indifferent, this was supposed to be the Madden for a lifer, if not a lifetime. More »
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Earlier this week I got several versions of a small talk question I always field this time of year: "I haven't played Madden in X years. Should I buy it this year?" More »
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In the online multiplayer era of sports gaming, I have been a Grinch-like hermit, rarely venturing forth into it except to ragequit and rant that none of what they do reflects reality, and to get off my lawn. Madden, which has a culture of elite play spanning about a decade, television shows celebrating it, and a cottage industry of strategy advisors supporting it, is one of the more intimidating environments for a newcomer. Brutal experiences early on can kill not only fun, but a desire to return. More »
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This has been an obsession of mine ever since Cowboys Stadium appeared in Madden NFL 10—hit the Jerrytron, the arena's massive scoreboard, with a punt. Tennessee's A.J. Trapasso did in a pre-season game in 2009, causing a brief foofaraw over its size and how low it was hanging over the field. More »
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Simulation-quality sports video games all now ship with some kind of solo career mode, in which you create or control one player throughout his entire career. By far, this fantasy experience is most underserved by the football games. NCAA Football 12 made a substantial effort to upgrade its career this year, and although Madden NFL 12 does add some new features with "Superstar," it remains inexcusably neglected next to the rest of the product. More »
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They have all the secrets to make you a better Madden gamer. "SUPERIOR KNOWLEDGE OVER THE COMPETITION," says the website. "DOMINATE ONLINE." More »
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And so it begins, with the "games" for which ownership demands you pay full ticket price to ensure regular-season attendance, but they're not really games at all. They're practice sessions at which understudies replace the stars just after the performance begins. If not before that. More »
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Meet Joey Bouchard of Centennial, Colo. The Denver Post will tell you everything else you need to know about this gentleman: More »
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As mentioned in tonight's Sports Final, Charles Aaron "Bubba" Smith died today at the age of 66. The first pick in the 1967 NFL draft, he won a Super Bowl with the Baltimore Colts and played for both the Raiders and Oilers in a nine-year career. Then, he pursued the life of acting, the highlight of which was several turns as Moses Hightower in six Police Academy films. More »
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The National Football League's players approved a deal with the league owners this afternoon, ending a four-month lockout that had threatened the regular season and cast a shadow over development of one of the NFL's signature licensed products, EA Sports' Madden NFL. The game is on shelves Aug. 30. More »
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It's a thing! More »
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Not too many people know about the drop kick rule in pro football—it's one of those things Bill Belichick ordered Doug Flutie to do so that the Patriots might rub the league's nose in it. Essentially, one can punt the ball through the uprights for an extra point or field goal. But modern offenses now have no use for a sneak-attack field goal. More »
]]> http://deadspin.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5817855&view=rss&microfeed=true The executive producer of Madden NFL quietly stepped down this week after less than a year on the job. He is the third senior-level Madden developer to leave the title in the past two months. But Phil Frazier and his… [Kotaku] More »
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Without fail, every time I bring up this job with folks outside the business, the topical jokes start rolling. Whatever the latest controversy or embarrassment is in sports, people ask if that's going to be simulated in the next edition… [Kotaku] More »
]]> http://deadspin.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5808592&view=rss&microfeed=true You may have heard of him. (This video, uploaded in March, has more than 6 million views.) Sexy Sax Man is quite the guerrilla artist, barging in bare-chested on food courts, laundromats, Walmarts and college classrooms to belt out… [Kotaku] More »
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Beat on a quarterback for 45 minutes of an NFL game and you'll see a different guy in the fourth quarter. Some start forcing every throw. Some will run like hell. Some go catatonic.… [Kotaku] More »
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Ben Haumiller's got a job for me. Several jobs, actually, but they're all in NCAA Football 12's new career mode, the "Coaching Carousel." Haumiller, the game's producer, explains it all using an offensive coordinator named Owen O'Cain as an… [Kotaku] More »
]]> http://deadspin.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5806666&view=rss&microfeed=true The Big Ten's ridiculous division names will be getting a makeover—probably thousands of them—thanks to NCAA Football 12.… [Kotaku] More »
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