The Madden Files – 2011

Hello sports fans! Welcome to the Madden Files, where I’ll regale you with my exploits on NCAA 12 and Madden 12, played on the outdated PS3. Originally I was playing NCAA/Madden 08 but my Madden franchise stopped working after about seven seasons.

Why are you doing this?

Great question. It gives me the opportunity to live in an alternate reality. Right now the 49ers are trash and my fantasy team is mid. This way I can create a world that’s more to my liking.

Why should I care?

That one’s tougher to answer. Hopefully you’ll be marginally entertained by this and maybe even inspired to create your own alternate reality.

Methodology

Okay, here we go. I’ve started a Dynasty on NCAA 12 with the Minnesota Golden Gophers. I’m about ten years too late to the party to create my own university because EA no longer supports the team builder servers. If I were to create my own university, I’d be the Hamline Pipers, the school I got my MFA at. Hamline is in St. Paul, MN, so the Gophers are the next best thing. Also, they started out as a 2-star school playing in a very tough conference so I thought that’d be an appropriate challenge.

The goal is to turn Minnesota into a football factory that wins national championships and churns out pro prospects for the Madden game.

Each year I’ll create up to two recruits (and max them out at 85). I’d like to start with recruits that represent my friends in the Immersion league, so let me know what position you’d play. So far I’ve created QB Adam Franssen, WR Josh Hammond, and I have plans to create HB Jason Enright, K Ben Pershey, and WR Jesse Garcia. I want to follow the careers of these recruits even if I don’t get them to Minnesota or sign them to the Colliders in the pros.

I’ll keep track of everything in a database, because it’s a dumb and silly excuse to stay in practice with coding.

For the pros, I swapped out all 32 NFL teams for 32 fantasy football teams from the SCUFFLE Immersion and SCUFFLE DyNasty. Every team was created as a cupcake team, so we’ll see which squads improve the fastest.

Since pro stats don’t matter after the regular season, I’ll be simulating the playoffs in Madden.

Alright, let’s get into the inaugural 2011 season.

Minnesota Golden Gophers

I gave the Gophers an A-schedule and that is the minimum I’ve set for myself (moving forward it will be A+). The 2011 Golden Gophers are a pretty weak squad, but did have a couple of seniors in the 80s. Their overall rating was 81, and they were ranked as 81 on both offense and defense. However, my starting quarterback, Marcus Stephens, suffered a catastrophic injury early on, leaving the offense in the hands of 67-rated sophomore QB Kerry Harmon. I cannot express to you how much this guy sucked. He could not complete any pass over 20 yards or so, and were it not for a somewhat decent tight end who could catch slant patterns where the ball was thrown slightly behind him, then Harmon would have been utterly useless.

Regardless, that forced me to rely heavily on running back Matt Lane (in the membrane). Lane was extremely fun to play with. He was only an 83 overall, but he had some headstomping power that I appreciated. The stats tracker only gave him credit for something like 12 broken tackles on the season, but it seemed like he was getting that in every game. Generally, running the ball was far more fun in NCAA 12 than in NCAA 08. Lane was in the running for the Heisman for much of the season, but unfortunately he got injured for a few weeks and dropped out. He still finished as a Second Team All-American, along with my DT Marcus Henderson. The biggest sadness, of course, was that Lane was a senior, so I only got one glorious season with him an he wasn’t rated highly enough to go pro.

The Gophers went 10-3, including a Capital One Bowl victory over the South Carolina Gamecocks. They lost to Syracuse 49-47 in one million overtimes, lost to Michigan 17-14 in OT, and lost 17-10 to a surprisingly good Illinois team.

Recruiting was particularly challenging for head coach Kelly Krebs, despite all the success and finishing the season ranked #9. While Krebs recruited plenty of players, there were no players with a better than 3-star rating. Krebs surpassed expectations with his one-year initial contract, but with the seniors graduating and a poor recruiting class (ranked #41), the team is actually taking a step back for the 2012 season in terms of talent. Their best recruit was a 3-star kicker named Erik Richardson. Jake Durbin was a goddamn disaster, converting only 12 of 20 kicks for a long of 40 yards.

Boise State won the national championship, and QB Danny Dickson of Ohio State won the Heisman. Despite being a 96-overall, he did not go pro, thanks to a glitch I learned about in NCAA 12. They ask you if you want to export your draft class before the players returning screen. So if you export it then (like I did), then it doesn’t get saved properly and Madden just generates a default draft class. They ask you again after they Players Leaving screen and THAT’S the time to say yes. EA has been shit for so long.

Batavia Colliders

The Colliders play in the NFC West, along with the Fransburg (r)EvoLUtion, Cleveland Battery, and Bestine Banthas. The QB play league wide was dismal, so much so that Colliders QB Greg McLain made the Pro Bowl and was named the Quarterback of the Year despite throwing for less than 3,000 yards and 17 touchdowns.

The clock seems to move much faster in this version of Madden, so scoring was way down. McClain had nobody to throw to. One guy, Brendan Polk, has an injury rating of 45 and was hilariously injured every other time he was tackled. Needless to say, he missed significant time over the course of the year.

With passing difficult to accomplish thanks to crumb bums all around, I had to rely on my running back. Jyhe Holliday, whose first name I’m not 100% sure on how to pronounce, ran for 1400 yards and 16 TDs en route to winning all the awards (Pro Bowl, MVP, Offensive POY, Offensive ROY, RB of the Year).

I’m frustrated by playing defense, because the corners run towards the ball when it’s in the air, and then inexplicably stop and let the WR take a couple steps and catch it. I’m not sure if it’s a skill issue or if I just need better corners. But getting interceptions is much harder in this version, which is probably for the best since I’d routinely get 12 interceptions a year in Madden 08.

Most games were low scoring and close, but I did manage to go 13-3. Given that all the teams were rated about the same, I was surprised to see the Colliders run the table and win the Super Bowl. So that goal is checked off for head coach Amari Jenkins.

Looking forward, the Colliders need a wide receiver. Precisely zero of my wideouts can get open which is why my top two receivers were tight ends. Bleak.

I’ve learned that the scouting is extremely important in this game. I’m going into the draft with very little information. In the old game you could get a sense of how guys might be even if you didn’t scout them, but not so with this version. LEARNING CURVE!

Sadly I won’t be drafting imported players this year, but I’m looking forward to adding talent. On to 2012!

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