Gaming at the Game

Madden NFL 09Image via Wikipedia

By this time there is a good chance that you have already made your Wal-Mart purchase at exactly one minute passed midnight.  You then proceeded to call out of work the following day.  Since then you have been locked in your mother’s basement, talking to countless strangers through a UFO-like headset, honing your skills for, well for what exactly?!?

Get your ass out of the basement and down to the lot.  Madden 2010 is (or it should be) coming to a tailgate near you.  Cornhole, ring toss, and beer pong are classics but none of the above allows to you whoop on the day’s upcoming opponent like Madden 2010.

Tailgaters are already bringing big screens down to the parking lot.  And if you are there for a 1 pm kick-off is there anything really worthwhile on the tube?  This fan (and I can’t be alone here) can only take so much Chris Berman on the ESPN pregame show.  So put the TV to good use and hook-up the Madden.

Start a season tournament with your fellow tailgaters, with the playoffs and championship game timing up perfectly with the season’s last few home games.  At the first game collect entry fees.  Winner takes all or maybe 2nd place at least gets their entry fee returned.

To add excitement for those tailgaters not playing, divide them up into sides and make it a drinking game.  Touchdown, drink.  Interception, drink. Fumble, drink. Field goal, drink.  Hell, running play, drink; passing play, drink.  The drinking game possibilities are truly endless.

And if the home team losses the real contest, well play another game before heading home.  Get your revenge on.  What better way to sober up before heading home than some Madden?  A chance to kill off the leftovers and wait out the traffic.

So start a new tradition this season.  Bring some technology to the tailgate games.  Playing Madden right before kick-off might even give your Madden obsession some meaning.  It’s like you are truly part of the team.

You already have the jersey on.  They may be mustard or sauce stains on the jersey, but stains nonetheless.  And you are only a few hundred feet away from the stadium where the animation characters are appearing in reality.  Sounds pretty sweet to me.  Oh yeah, and the wife (or for those basement dwellers, mom) can’t yell at you for getting your Madden on!

September 20 it will be the Eagles and Saints at 10am in the lot and then Eagles and Saints at 1pm in the Linc.