These games nowadays are just so technically sound that theyre a learning tool, says Tim Grunhard, an All-Pro center for the Kansas City Chiefs in the 1990s who now coaches high school football in the Kansas City area, where he encourages his players to use Madden to improve their knowledge of football strategy and tactics. Back when I was playing football, we didnt realize what a near or a far formation was, we didnt really understand what trips meant, we didnt understand what cover 2, cover 3, and cover zero meant, Grunhard says, charging through jargon thats comprehensible only to Madden players and football obsessives.
These days, Grunhard says, high school players have a much deeper understanding of offensive formations and defensive coverages, a development he attributes to their long hours on videogame consoles. It just seemed to help out, he says. The kids understood where the counterplay or power play was going to open up. Or the middle linebacker lining up for a blitz where the gaps were going to open up.
No wonder younger quarterbacks are finding more and more success at the college and professional levels. This season, a 19-year-old freshman started for USC, a perennial Pac-10 power. In the NFL, rookie quarterbacks are entering the league and excelling immediately at an unprecedented rate (think of the Steelers Ben Roethlisberger, the Falcons Matt Ryan, and the Ravens Joe Flacco). In decades past, young passers sat on the bench for a year or two while they mastered reading NFL defenses. Now, having learned to differentiate between zone and man-to-man coverage over the course of years on their Xboxes and PlayStations, the rookies are less in need of such apprenticeship.
Its one thing to suggest that videogames may be making us smarter. Its another thing altogether to say they might be making us better athletes. But when you add it up, the evidence starts to look pretty overwhelming. At the Pop Warner Super Bowl in 2006, the winning team had 30 offensive plays, which it had learned through Madden. (I programmed our offense into Madden to help me memorize our plays, one 11-year-old told Sports Illustrated. It was easier than homework.) Dezmon Briscoe, an all-conference wide receiver for the University of Kansas, credited Madden 2009 with teaching him how to read when defenses roll their coverages move their defensive backs to disguise their strategy. Chuck Kyle, a high school coach who has won 10 state championships in football-mad Ohio, has programmed his team USA playbook into Madden and uses it to teach players their assignments. So have coaches at Colorado State, Penn State, and the University of Missouri, among other schools. An offensive lineman for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers used the videogame as a preparation tool for an entire season, scouting his opponents digitally. While even-more-sophisticated software is available for virtual sports training, coaches and players at all levels of football say that Maddens off-the-shelf simulation is good enough.
