Disclaimer
From FootballIdiot
The "League" is a fictional entity of my creation, which is presently played out in the Madden 2008 video game for the PC. It represents an "alternate reality" of professional football.
Several of the venues are real, while others are fictional. The Toronto Grudlies play at Synergystic Stadium, which is actually a fictional arena which existed in Front Page Sports Football Pro 98.
History
While serving in the Marine Corps in the late 80's/early 90's, I had a Commodore 64 with a copy of Accolade Software's 4th and Inches. I created my own custom team, populating it with the personalities of Marines whom I was serving with. We would have competitions in the bachelor barracks on the game, and I would always end up matched up against the "Bruisers," who were a stock team in the game. They were superior and I frequently got beaten.
When I obtained a PC, my first software purchase was a game by a new company called Sierra, titled Front Page Sports: Football. This version didn't even ship with NFL teams, but with an entire league of fictional players. I again programmed in my "29 Palms Desert Rats" and also the Bruisers, whom I placed in Chicago, and gave other cities teams to populate the league. This was also when the Toronto Grudlies were invented... I needed a name for a team in Toronto, and I remembered an old video game called "Gruds in Space" for the C64 and Apple, so I used this name. I never played against them and subsequently forgot about them when I stopped playing after a few seasons.
In the mid-90's when I got out of the Marines, I was in Walmart and saw a new version of the FPS game, Football Pro 95. Bought it and installed it. I recreated some of the key teams from the last time I'd had the game, but as I'd left 29 Palms in real life, I figured I'd make a similar move in the football universe as well. That was when I remembered the Toronto Grudlies, so I chose that as my team. FPS FB95 had a "fantasy draft" which released all players to a pool and could then automatically draft them, so I did that. Then I worked on building a contender.
I lost my first game 40-0, the next game like 32-0. Kept learning and adapting. Chicago came to town.... the same team who'd thrashed me so many times as a Desert Rat. I was 0-7, but this game was different. It ended up being a defensive battle, culminating in a goal-line stand and I held on to win 14-10.
The league just continued evolving with me.... I made the playoffs, got bounced from them.... came back the next year, got into the Super Bowl against my old team, the Desert Rats, but I'd made them too good. They beat me 28-20.
That loss made me hungry. The team played its best football, breezing through the season and the playoffs, but unfortunately the Rats didn't make it to the Super Bowl to give us a shot at revenge. That would come a few years later. We won the Super Bowl against a good Los Angeles team.
The next season began the real rivalry with Detroit. They beat me twice in the regular season... I couldn't do anything right. Then we met in the conference championship. I breezed to a big lead early, but they came back. The second half was just the opposite, a defensive battle. Neither team could move the ball, they managed to get a 30-26 lead early in the fourth quarter and it felt like being down by three touchdowns. I managed a long 50+ yard field goal, to make it 30-29. That's when the gravity of this game hit me. One point deficit.... that's enough to send all 53 players home for the entire summer. Like Al Pacino says, "that inch is the difference between winning and losing.... between living and dying!" I had no success moving the ball and gave it up on downs, all they had to do was get another first down and the season was over. That's when their running back, Dino Snider, fumbled the ball and we got another chance. Managed to get the ball moving, out of time outs, ran the kicker onto the field for a 50-yard field goal try as time expired. When it went through... talk about pandemonium, this is why we play this game.
