Legendary NFL coach John Madden has died on the morning of Tuesday, December 28th. While many took his death as an occasion Celebrate the coach, broadcast and video game legacy of man, others used it as an opportunity to call for Madden’s contribution to “turning brain injuries into a video game.” The footage was deadly enough to keep hitting the sport’s social media and websites for days.
The discussion of a concussion after John Madden’s death appears to have drawn two sources. The first is a tweet from independent journalist Marcy Wheeler, published on the evening of Madden’s death. The tweet said, “Everyone commends Madden: How many concussions could we have prevented if he hadn’t turned brain injuries into a video game?” Wheeler, who specializes in civil liberties and national security matters, lists her soccer and head trauma experience as playing as the star monsterback on a powderpuff team and six years of rugby in which she had at least one concussion. She also says a colleague rugby died on the field.
Then on Wednesday, December 29th, a Dallas College history professor named Dr. Andrew McGregor gave his opinion on John Madden via his Twitter account. currently set to private. His first tweet read, “I have a lot of opinions about John Madden. The development of the Madden video game wasn’t a great development for the US. It has further glorified violence and dehumanized black athletes and helped establish plantation cosplay that got worse in the era of fantasy football. “
The string, archived over at Sport bar stool, eventually dissolves into the same sentiment that Wheeler expressed, albeit with an enigmatic approach to racism. “The key here,” writes McGregory on the thread, “is consuming the sport as a distorted reality. Video games dehumanize the players, they create fantasies of super teams and ideas of control and management (recreated in fantasy sports) where we control and manipulate cadres and players. It is deeply problematic. “
Dr. McGregor have received widespread use and criticism by fans of the sport and the video game series. Many objected to his calling the Madden franchise a “digital plantation,” which uses player names and likenesses for profit while encouraging fans to disregard the humanity behind them, and thereby their health. In response to such extreme tweets, many also refer to a tweet from the doctor in 2017 in which he said talks about playing Driving me crazy with his brother, as evidence of hypocrisy.
The reactions to Marcy Wheeler’s tweet are, as you can imagine, pretty harsh. There are lots of embarrassingly misogynistic responses, some verbal abuse, and several people suggesting EAs Madden NFL Series actually prevented brain injuries by giving those interested in the sport a safer, non-contact way of playing. In response to the ask, “Do you think the video games give people a concussion,” replies Wheeler, “No. I think the video games made fans believe that the real sport is a video game. “
To be fair, the National Football League doesn’t have the best record when it comes to the dangers of traumatic head injuries. Amid a deluge of concussions in 1994, the NFL formed the Committee on Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and appointed a doctor with little experience in brain research to head the committee. In December of that year, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliablue called concussions a “pack journalism problem,” suggesting that the media was making too much ado about a relatively minor problem. That same year, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman pulled a knee to his head in the 1993 NFC championship game, a game he can’t remember to this day, and Chicago Bears defenseman Merrill Hoge, withdrew after a concussion made him unrecognizable for a short time, his wife and son.
There is an excellent timeline of the NFLs persistent concussion crisis on PBS.org. It cleverly breaks the league’s long history of trying to minimize the dangers of head trauma as the medical community slowly learns more about those dangers. Recurrent head trauma, say the medical experts, can be too chronic traumatic encephalopathyor CTE, which can cause memory loss, aggressive behavior, motor neuron disease, depression, and thoughts of suicide. Doctors who examined Andre Waters and Terry Long, two former NFL players who committed suicide, found signs of CTE in both.
The question of whether repeated head trauma is hazardous to health has been answered. Yes. A lot. And the NFL has gotten a little better, actively warning of the dangers of concussions and making rules to try to contain its frequency rather than casually waving it off.
Back to Marcy Wheelers and Dr. McGregor’s autopsies with John Madden. Though the NFL’s history of dealing with head trauma has been bad, Madden has long spoken about the league’s lax attitude towards players receiving a concussion. ESPNTaylor Twellman of ‘s Taylor Twellman tweeted in response to comments that Madden was an instigator, a video of the man commenting on the risk of concussions in 1993.
“I think if a guy has a concussion or has a concussion, he shouldn’t play anymore,” says Madden in the clip. “They always talk about boxing being archaic, but if a boxer passes out, he can’t fight for another month. And sometimes in football we say, ‘Oh, that guy has a slight concussion, he’ll be right back.’ I don’t know if I ever agreed to that. “
How EA’s Madden franchise deals with head trauma and injury as a whole has slowly changed over the years. With early registrations, players injured during a game would result in an ambulance taking the field and hilariously pushing other players out of the way to get to the wounded man. The ambulance was then taken away Madden 2001when the NFL glorified injuries. The Hit Stick, which allowed players to perform stylish, hard-hitting tackles, was removed shortly after its introduction Madden 2005 because the NFL believed it was promoting violence. There are no more retirement injuries in the game. And concussions were known as “head injuries” in the past.
Those in-game head injuries meant a player could potentially miss a few quarters in older versions Driving me crazy Games. That changed in Crazy 12, in which players with a head injury would be sidelined for the remainder of the game, with commentators Gus Johnson and Chris Collinsworth discussing the severity of head injuries when such injuries occur. Head injuries are still in play to this day, but they are not referred to as a concussion. However, that’s a mandate from the NFL, and not Madden.
The NFL seems interested that the series doesn’t get too violent. But by keeping the word concussion out of the in-game discussion, I can see how anyone might think that it is sending the wrong message to football fans.
Yes, football is violent. People get hurt. Players experience life changing trauma. The blows are hard. The risk of injury has deterred me, a five-foot high school student, from joining the Dunwoody Wildcats. i still play Driving me crazy every year, and I’ve never had the feeling that my head was hit, was okay.
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