I'm a Superstar!!!

Okay, friends and readers, I have to level with you. The Fastball Up and In (baseball term)--aka high cheese--is struggling with a small addiction. I recently purchased Madden 06 for PS2. Now I know that this game is so old that I paid like thirty bucks for it. Still, my heart was longing for a fantasy draft of real NFL players (something only superdorks long for...I know, just let me be cathartic for a moment). But in the game was something I simply neveer expected to find...

Create an NFL Superstar is the stuff of lives lost. I mean it. I am hooked. I created my HB by choosing his parents (no lie--my dad was an NFL RB and my mom was a hand model). Then I chose his size and his college (Bama of course). I waited and was drafted by the Buffalo Bills with the 24th pick of the 3rd round--the good news is that I went on the first day of the draft; the bad news is that I went to the team with Willis McGahee, Travis Henry, Tyrone Wheatley, and Shaud Williams. Needless to say I had some fighting to do to get into the depth chart.

So the game factors your popularity, visibility (pretty low in Buffalo), exposure, appearance (I'm hot...people want to be like me), expectations, and some other stuff; as well as updating your skill stats as you practice and improve. Every season you improve or decline as you practice or don't. You have an agent that can help or hurt you. You have to do interviews and those get graded. You have opportunities to get movie deals and become a superstar. It's like the Sims meets the NFL.

Needless to say, I am not sleeping enough right now. Days are packed with job and house work; nights are full of my RB and his dreams of the Probowl. Meanwhile, my brain is quickly losing its edge...Curse you John Madden.

God Save the Cheese...he really needs it now.