Respect IS Worth Fighting For
Let me say that my comments this week aren’t necessarily going to be ones that I haven’t already shared before. In fact, they are definitely ones that I’ve had before, but I find them important enough that I’d like to go over them again just because of a recent “occurrence” that’s kind of driven them home to me.
Sarcasm and teasing are part of any game. You taunt a little, you get into the other players’ heads, and you make them react to you differently than they would react to any other players. You make yourself a threat on the field, and suddenly you’ve got some control of the other team’s focus. Sometimes that’s by making yourself look more important on the field than anyone else, or sometimes it’s by just being in the way as often as possible. Mind games are a part of any competition.
I can take jibes and jabs, and I dish them out just as easily. But there is definitely a point where things get a little out of hand. Competition creates frustration that can easily spill into heated problems if you let them. And there is definitely a time when a loud-mouthed punk starts to grind on you.
Disrespect. It always comes down to disrespect. When you start to disrespect your opponent, that carries it too far for me. I’ll admit that I’ve often fallen on the wrong side of that coin. Winning tends to make you feel that you’re more superior, and even better than the people that you’re playing against.
But once you lose that sense of respect… Things all start going downhill.
I don’t tolerate disrespect. Not to me, not to my family, and not to my friends. It’s a moral standard that I’ve tried to hold up for as long as I can, and it’s one that even some of my closest friends have a hard time keeping track of. I never say anything to my friends in an effort to disrespect them. When it comes to those closest to me, I am fiercely loyal, some may even say “blindly” so.
But perfect strangers… I always try to remain respectful at the first. On a blank slate, I try to look for the positive outcome. I expect to respect, and to be respected. But that’s not always the case. Some people just have no respect for others, and it shines through only far too easily.
When a person disrespects me, that’s when the gloves come off. That’s when I get angry, and boy, people don’t like me much when I’m angry.
But I have to wonder to myself… Is that such a bad thing? To fight for respect, either for yourself or those you care about? Is that wrong?
Entire wars have been fought over respect. The war for America’s independence was fought, not just for freedom, but fought so that the world would respect our right to freedom. America was ridiculed, put down, until finally we got tired of it and fought back in a war that we had no right to win.
Sometimes, I think that getting angry about disrespect is the absolute correct response. Of course, violence doesn’t always solve everything, but I personally believe that there are some times when it is completely justified. Sometimes, a person just needs that one person to stand up to them and say “No.”
In a permissive world that we live in today, it’s rare to see people stand up to bullies outside of fiction. Why do we simply fall prey to the whims of those whose voices are the loudest, and whose whining is the most annoying?
I refuse. I refuse to be intimidated by stupidity, and I refuse to let jerks tell me what to do just because they think they deserve it.
If it comes down to a fight, so be it. That will work for me just fine. Because respect… That’s something that I think is worth fighting for.
My Distaste for Madden 08
A little while back, I wrote up a praising review for NCAA 08, which is still one of my favorite games. (A buddy and me have been playing it about every week, and are into our third season in the Dynasty mode. He got into the PAC-10 while I’m still in the WAC, but I did beat him severely in the BCS championship game, effectively shutting down his undefeated season. Badaboom.)
In any case, I said that when I got a hold of Madden 08, I’d give you guys my review, so here we are. I’ve played through for the past month or so, and I’ll tell you that it was a much different experience than the NCAA gridiron.
The first thing that I noticed was the theming. Whereas NCAA was all about the engrossing experience, pulling you into the game from the beginning with fight songs and chanting, Madden is all about the edgy, raw look of the NFL, with hard-hitting music and more “grafitti-inspired” art schemes. I used to play NFL Street a lot, and so I can see where some of the blending is coming from there.
The menus work well enough, with all the standard modes available, but I really wanted to dive right into the Franchise Mode, specifically because I figured it would compare nicely with the Dynasty Mode that I was familiar with in NCAA.
Right off the bat you can either jump into the draft, or just go into the teams. The draft is interesting enough, of course, the NFL equivalent of “picking teams.” The problem that I saw, however, is that instead of dealing with just stats and availability, you have a “salary cap”, which is true to life, but there’s all kinds of penalties when you want to get rid of one player in favor of another. Because the manual has a very limited explanation of the process, you’ve got to do it by trial and error, which was a huge pain in the rear. My first foray had me with a negative salary cap, and I couldn’t even tell if I had all the players that I needed. The interface just wasn’t really user friendly.
I thought that making your own team would be kind of fun, mostly because you would be able to customize all kinds of things. Well, it was possible to customize just about all aspects of the stadium, but the uniform designing was more difficult then it had to be. Compared to the streamlined and clean process in NCAA, the menu design just felt unnatural and annoying. However, there were a few more options as far as customization was concerned that were relatively absent in NCAA, so take your pick.
In older Madden games, you get a radio broadcast that talks a lot about the different teams and players. I thought that this was a good thing, yet another example of how to “pull the player in.” This is a fictional franchise, after all, and the goal should be to bring the player into this universe as if it really mattered. That’s what gets them coming back.
Instead, all you get is two little newspapers, which cover stupid little things that the teams do. The local paper covered trivial things like the naming of a new team Captain, and even when I accidentally pressed the button to alter the uniforms, and then cancelled out. How dumb is that?
Then you have the national news, especially in the pre-season, which doesn’t really matter. You hear about specific players and what-not, but it’s just blah text, and you don’t get the full-page screenshots that NCAA’s ESPN Magazine puts up.
And that’s probably a good thing, especially considering the way that the game looks.
The first thing that I noticed was that the players looked squatty and indistinguishable. You can adjust some of the pads and things that your players are wearing, but most of the time it’s just kind of a guessing game, and you have to just be able to tell by the numbers. The the players just plain look weird. Where the NCAA game really shows you the physical difference between a lithe wide reciever and a strong-shouldered halfback, Madden just makes them all look the same, and it’s kind of disappointing.
Right off you get the back and forth between John Madden and Al Michaels, which was a sorely disappointing second to the lively and interesting banter between Brad Nessler, Kirk Herbstreit, and Lee Corso. To be honest, I prefer just not listening to Madden himself at all. I think they ought to hire Frank Caliendo to immitate Madden and put some life into the play-by-play. At least Lee Corso is good for a laugh now and then, and has some character in his speech. Madden talks like he’s not even really watching the game.
You’d think that professional players would play better than the kids in college, but apparently not. Each game that I played felt sluggish, as if the players were on a molasses field. My running back, though he was supposed to be really good, couldn’t even break through the defensive line, like, ever. I never lost so many yards.
The computer’s defense got a killer boost, though. They shut things down repeatedly, pushing me farther and farther back, until I had to get some miracle throws to push ahead. I’ve never been one to sit there wondering if “maybe this time he’ll catch it.”
The stats don’t even matter – As a test, I made my guy a top stat on everything, and tried him out at DT – He broke through the offensive line three times in the whole season. Because of that, I made up different teams with different star players just to see what would happen.
The game becomes more of a battle against frustration instead of against the opponent. Yes, its the NFL, and its supposed to be difficult, but how many times does a star reciever with perfect stats drop the ball? How many times does a near-perfect offensive line let everybody through? How often should a quarterback get sacked? And why is it that every other team in the league has cornerbacks that can run faster and catch up to my perfect receivers, where my perfect corners can’t ever catch up?
Part of the problem, as I see it, is that the computer cheats its way into the win or, at least, into a really close game. This is something that I’ve noticed as a trend in a lot of games, but it just feels wrong to me. If you’re good at a game, the computer shouldn’t have to cheat to catch up. There shouldn’t be a sudden surge in stats just because you’re beating it. That’s just plain AI bull.
Ever game felt more like a chore than an enjoyable experience, and I found myself actually wondering why I was bothering to play the game at all. It just didn’t feel fun anymore.
So, for those of you out there with PS2s, who still want a good football experience, I’d recommend NCAA 08. I’d pass on Madden for the older console, because apparently Madden already passed on us.
-Kyle
Is Football Sportsmanship in Jeopardy?
Okay, here’s a fun little tidbit to worry about: In Montgomery County, Md, police are currently invesigating cuts on several high school football players’ hands, resulting from a razor blade in hand during the post-game handshake. After the Magruder (Rockville) team beat out Blake High School (Silver Spring), 55-7, someone connected to Blake High decided he’d cut up the hands of some of the players. According to witnesses, the attacker sat on the Blake bench, but was not wearing a football uniform.
So what do you think about that? When did sportsmanship get completely thrown out of the window, to the point where we’re going to injure the other team for beating us? How did that conversation go?
“Hey man, you’re gonna be sorry for beating us.”
“What?”
“You score on us, and I’m gonna slice you up.”
What’s next? Are we going to start banning the post-game handshake completely? Perhaps we’re going to get players sharpening the bolts on their facemasks so there’s a nice cutting edge to them. That’ll show ‘em.
To me, not only is that poor sportsmanship, but it’s just plain stupid. What exactly was this guy trying to accomplish? Great, now he’s cut a few players, their hands are sliced up, and an entire town is angry. And when this guy gets caught, (don’t think he won’t), the judge is going to throw the book at him, because this is the kind of thing that needs to be stopped right now.
On that same note, we had the incident with Wyoming college football coach Joe Glenn who gave the one-fingered salute to the Utah Utes after their admittedly unsportsmanlike decision to use an onside kick with a 43-0 lead. Is football just falling apart?
I love this game. I think about it a lot, and I wish that I could play today. But it seems like the standards of the sport on every level are really falling. Right now, I just wish we could play some clean pick-up games and not worry about all the stress of the high-level sport. Just the players, the street, and respect. That’s all you need.
Well, and a field.
- Kyle
