Maddening Nation

ESPN has gone to new heights to showcase talents that are good nowhere else but in a niche market.
World Series coverage? Yes.
World Series of Poker? 8 straight days of it.
Bass fishing. World's Strongest Mammoth. Billiards. Bowling. Women's Collegiate Rowing.
Why not?

A few years ago they hopped on-board with the Madden video game wave... about a decade late... and started hosting and broadcasting nation-wide tournaments. This is a major culture in the US gaming circles. I totally understand that.
When I was in college at Central Washington University (GO CATS), myself and 10 other dorm-mates did similar things. We spent hours running tournaments (I've won a couple) and practicing and talking sheeeeit to each other. It was a riot.

In watching the Madden Nation Finals the other day, 12minutes I'll never get back, I noticed how intense the...
1) Smack-talking was ("Don't even TRY that, SON" and "STUPID, try it again, DUMMY, see what happens, FAM'LY!", and that's the very tame stuff), as if they were about to punch each other in the face...
AND
2) How truly dumb the players were. My sad favorite was a fat, dumb kid from Tampa named "Bud." Bud is 19 years old. He weighs in excess of 300lbs. He plays videogame football. He is, in the link above, the kid at the far left of the group.
When they did the "player profile" interview, it went like this...
"My nayn Jayng Jone. When I's bo'n, m' mama inna hos'i'al jus' call m' Buud, so das what I'm called. Buuud."
"At firs' I wan' be a psychologis'. But then I wa' like, nah, I jus' wanna be free, so I kep' gamin' and look at me now."

So I think his name is James.
And he wanted to be a psychologist, and instead, NAH, decided to "be free" and turn it up for some video gamin'. He came in 4th. In the nation. Hopefully he'll parlay that placing into a career in Madden coaching or Madden play-by-play commentary or Madden Summer Camps for kids.
Or no, he can't.

It's truly the funniest TV show on right now. It's unintentionally so, but when a 20 year-old from Philly, with waxed eyebrows, wins the whole thing, and talks about getting plasma TVs for every room in his mom's basement, you know we need to bring back the Draft.




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