Nationalshistory

The National Championship of Madden Football for Playstation 2 has become THE celebrated event of the year for hardcore video football gamers. The Nationals now boast players from coast to coast, participating and competing at the highest level to be called the best. Although the Nationals are the talk of the community, there is a time where members scoffed at the vision of a national tournament.

When I first purchased Madden 92 for Sega Genesis, I was immediately engulfed with the possibility of competing against more than just the computer. Plus, being the avid football fan I am, this was my chance to be a coach, a player, to match wits with others, to see who was the better coach. After playing the game a few times, I immediately wanted to kick off a mini NFL. I introduced the idea to two of my friends and they were interested also. I made up schedules, and decided we could pick two teams, one from the NFC and one from the AFC. And we would play the NFL schedule of those teams. At that time the game did not offer season play, or franchise mode, just plain exhibition play. I developed a spreadsheet to calculate our stats and keep our records. We were off and running! Even though it was only three of us, we considered ourselves a league. We did that for several years until the game switch platforms to the Playstation. Soon we met other ballers that were into the game as much as we were. That's when the PFL was formed in 1997.

Forming the PFL made me thirst for more knowledge about the game. I decided to go to the internet and search for whatever I could find about Madden. I wanted to see if there were any other lunatics out there that had a Jones for the game as bad as I did. To my surprise I find several sites about the game. All of them were based around PC play. The net had plenty of PC leagues, but there was no one on the net that had a Playstation League. I immediately saw my chance to break in with something different.

Knowing absolutely nothing about web design, I was off to the bookstore to find some books and software to learn to build web pages. I soon developed the first PFL website that was launched in February of 1997. I thought the web site would be good to advertise what we were doing in South Florida, while being a message center for the PFL ballers. What I didn't realize is that the start of that website, would lead to the creation of Nationals.

I saw some other websites had bulleting boards where guys that visit their site could post messages and have discussions. This is what blew our website open because ballers that found the site could drop messages about all sorts of topics that related to the game. The first guy to find the message board was Air Attack. We developed such a strong relationship communicating with other via message board, we feel like we have known each other for years. Air Attack's indirect impact on the Madden Community is very significant. For it is though Air that I met Player-Coach who has helped me turn Nationals into more that just a video tournament. In the early days of the message board, ballers would always leave tips for each other. It was nowhere nearly as secretive as it is now. Guys would ask questions like, how to defend the SS Pressure. And immediately we would all go into the lab and bring back our remedies to help each other. It is ironic how the message board was the vehicle I credit more for bring nationals together, but once Nationals was born, gone were the days of freely discussing strategies.

The message board was also a place for ballers to come and proclaim their greatness. Thus the inspiration for a championship begins. When I first posted the unveiled web site, I thought I was definitely one of the best ballers on the game. After all, I was pretty dominant in my local league, just about anyone I played, I usually won, and there couldn't be any group of ballers in the nation as serious as we are about the game. So after seeing guys come on the board proclaiming their greatness, I used to wish that there were some way I could meet this person and test my skills. More and more ballers started talking about how good they were, and sharing strategies and discussing the game. So I threw the question out to the community back in 1997, what if there was a national tournament? Would you go? Some ballers said yes, more said no. I remember guys leaving post stating "to even consider going across the country to play a VIDEO game, is absurd, and would never work." I thought to myself, it is absurd but it just may work. I knew that I would do it, so there has to be some knuckleheads out there that feel like I do. So I gathered up all of the emails from all the PC League, and everyone that visited the PFL website. Anyone who had an email I could get I logged it in my address book. I searched AOL profiles for anything that said Madden. And I sent out nearly 200 emails to see who would be interested. First there was 2 Bold, then Bulldog, Air Attack, Big Dose, all saying they would be down. So I began planning.

I announced that I would have the tournament in Ft. Lauderdale in February of 1998. But after doing the research, I noticed that the cost to fly to Miami at that time of year would be over $300.00 from nearly any market. The hotels were very high at that time of year as well. It would have cost an average of $600.00 for a baller to attend, I knew that we would not get a lot of ballers if they had to pay that much. So I decided I had to bring the tournament to the ballers rather than the ballers to the tourney. I knew guys like Red Rza & All Star would come, and Terminator would make the trip also. I knew Darth Moulie was down as well as Playmaker. I needed a location that those guys could get to and not be too expensive, yet, have a large PFL representation also. Bling! Bling! Atlanta! We could take the 10-hour drive, or fly, and the cost for the flights were reasonable, plus the guys from New York could drive as well. So I went for it, and guys started showing interest.

There was still quite a bit of skepticism at first. I remember Red Rza and Darth Moulie calling me several times to make sure it was certainly going to happen. They kept asking how many ballers are we going to have? They were concerned it would just be them and no one else at the games. I assured them it would be worth their while to make the trip because the PFL was bringing 8 ballers and we had just met these guys from Atlanta that had a league also and they said they would have 6-10 easily.

That's when a Winky White called me. He told me about the BFL and how good they were and he wanted to make sure that the tourney went through because they were looking some other comp to beat up on. He predicted that the BFL would win the tourney and that he and a guy name Fruitman would probably play in the title game. I thought to myslef, wow, I thought we had trash talkers in the PFL with The Creator and Teddy B, and Kevin Fox. But this guy made them look humble. Although he was quite confident, he was also a great help. He pledged support from the BFL on the spot, and boy did they deliver. He put me in touch with Fruitman and D. Rob. We began talking, and I knew we were on our way. It would happen. A National Championship. Now I just need to get more ballers.

Darth Moulie and Playmaker were really important to me. It was important that they come, because that would give us credibility to say we had representation from the west coast as well as the east coast. As the days drew close, I began a mad hype campaign. I hit ever site I knew furiously dropping post, and sending emails about the games. I coined the championship the Madden Games. I envisioned an Olympics of Madden. But after talking to Winky White about the games and the direction and future of the games, he kept using the term Nationals. And the more he said, the more I liked the way it sounded. It reminded me of what we used to call our college band fraternity national convention. And I wanted the Madden Games to be a convention type event as well, with workshops, clinics, and the whole nine. So I piggybacked off Winky and began to push the name Nationals.

The BFL set a standard for what hosting nationals should be. The sight of D. Rob driving up to the Westin with a car load of TV's still rings in my mind. They helped make the event a success with their hospitality and support. And the way the first Nationals played out with Winky and The Creator battling it out to the end capped a weekend that was filled with excitement.

We learned an awful lot that weekend. We learned that you may not be as good as you think, because there are others across the nation that take this game as serious as you may. We learned that it is truly amazing that the passion for this game can create friendships that may last a lifetime, we learned that we had captured something very special, and the ambience and feel of Nationals was an experience unlike anything we imagined. We learned that a good football game is a good football game, whether it is on the gridiron, of the video screen.