Like many other teenagers at the time, I spent a lot of my summer job money on EA Sports games in the early to mid-2000s. Food and board were paid for as were most other things (thanks, Mom and Dad), and it wasn’t as if I had much need for an entertainment budget. Plenty of nights involved basements or posting up at a Steak ’n Shake after midnight and just talking.
When it came to killing lots of hours, and in retrospect, this was the last part of my life I’d have this much free time without having something I needed to be doing constantly, and sports games were the answer. Even though NBA games would own my college days, and I spent plenty of time playing Tiger Woods on my own to change it up, Madden (and especially Madden 2004 and Madden 2005) ruled all in those formative high school years.
Not that winning was ever all that important to me. I got bored chasing perfection or trying to dominate franchise mode or even wanting to beat my friends in single games (of course the Vick Rules were in play). It was way more fun to make trades that would never happen in real life. Every One Red Paperclip style attempt for me started with trading for Quentin Jammer and seeing what I could do next. Trying to build an offense and defense of only Longhorns was a fun exercise. Giving the Browns 10 quality starting quarterbacks always seemed worthwhile.
I was a huge fan of betting on individual milestones playing against my friends. Essentially, it’d be things like $1 for a field goal more than 50 yards, $1 for each turnover, $5 if you can run a kick back for a touchdown and so on. The game itself was worth $5 if you won, but you could do so much in the background that you’d lose and still come out ahead.
In games where there were no bets on the line, that’s when I was probably the least fun person to play against. How many times can I run Engage Eight in a row without being scored on? What if I defend every player but Ricky Proehl so I can see how many yards I can give up to him (Go Deacs!)? Is there a way to win if I drop my linebackers into coverage on every play? It wasn’t exactly Breaking Madden stuff. I never had the patience or the brilliance someone like Jon Bois has, but it made the game more fun for me.
This isn’t to say I was unique in any way. Everybody had their own quirks and ways of stretching the game to its dumb, pointless limits. This is what made sports games, and especially Madden, great. It wasn’t too realistic that you couldn’t mess around and never punt, never kick an extra point or find ways to go 16-0 with a quarterback who threw for 12,000 yards. It didn’t take that much extra work to do it. The way the game was set up almost encouraged you to do so.
All the while, when you were playing with sliders and bouncing in and out of menu screens, there was a soundtrack. This was the best (and worst) part of those two years of games. I have such an interminable memory of doing the Ground Attack running back drill set to Bubba Sparxxx’ “Back in the Mud” that I still hear the song and see the field when I close my eyes at random times, like how people used to visualize Tetris bricks in their brains.
Here are the track listings for the two years:
Madden 2004
Adema – “Unstable”
AFI – “The Leaving Song Pt. II”
Alien Ant Farm – “These Days”
AM Radio – “Taken For A Ride”
Avenged Sevenfold – “Chapter Four”
Blink-182 – “Feeling This”
Bone Crusher – “Never Scared”
Bubba Sparxxx – “Back In The Mud”
The Federation – “Mayhem”
Gob – “Give Up The Grudge”
Jet – “Are You Gonna Be My Girl
Joe Budden – “Pump It Up”
Killer Mike – “Akshon (yeah!)”
Nappy Roots – “Roun’ The Globe”
OutKast – “Church”
The Roots – “Rock You”
Red Café – “May I”
Serafin – “Day By Day”
Soil – “Pride”
Thrice “All That’s Left”
Ünloco – “Crashing”
Yellowcard – “Way Away”
Madden 2005
Alter Bridge – “Open Your Eyes”
Chevelle – “The Clincher”
The D.O.C. vs. Earshot – “The Madden Re-Match”
Earshot – “Wait”
Faith No More – “From Out Of Nowhere”
Franz Ferdinand – “Take Me Out”
Green Day – “American Idiot”
Hazen Street – “Fool The World”
The Hives – “Two-Timing Touch And Broken Bones”
Hoobastank – “Same Direction”
Jazze Pha – “Da Heavy Hittas”
JR Ewing – “Time To Get Dirty”
Midtown – “Give It Up”
The Mooney Suzuki – “Alive And Amplified”
New Found Glory – “This Disaster”
Ozomatli – “Saturday Night”
Strata – “Piece By Piece”
will.i.am – “Go!”
Wylde Bunch – “Last Day Of School”
Yung Wun – “Yung Wun Anthem”
Z-Trip Ft. Soup – “Listen To The DJ”
The music was closely tied to the game, and you could put something on in the background instead and play the game on mute, but the endless repetition of hearing that damn Alter Bridge song was part of the experience. You knew it’d come up soon, and when it did, after a bunch of hours of playing on limited sleep and drinking about 10 cans of Mountain Dew Code Red, it’d be hilarious.
It was hard to pin down to any one sort of genre or type in either year, and even now I laugh at the idea of Chevelle sharing a soundtrack with Franz Ferdinand, Jazze Pha and Faith No More. It’s like Seth Cohen from The O.C. caught a ride with his friend who was really into Warped Tour bands, and they got lost in Atlanta at some point, but all the TVs at the store where they stopped to ask for directions were playing iPod commercials.
Come to think of it, as dumb as it is to say, some of my best memories in high school and college were likely set to a Yung Wun song. Thanks, Yung Wun. Even if Google doesn’t want me to go to IAmYungWun.com because it tells me that it contains malware.
And thank you, Madden, for allowing me to remember that the band Midtown existed, and that I was really dang good at the Coffin Corner Punt drill when “Give It Up” was playing.
