A Madden Nation: Is This What We've Become?

One-hundred thousand dollars for playing a video game. It once may have sounded crazy but not anymore. Thanks to the competition know as "Madden Nation" gamers can make more money playing a few games of video game football than some professionals make in an entire year. The competition not only encourages your people to act out of control but it shows where the current values in our country lie.

Madden Nation is a competition in which the top players of Madden Football meet in a competition. Eight gamers ride on a fully loaded bus which has every luxury you can imagine. They travel around the country periodically stopping to have a tournament. Each player partners up with someone else. If your team loses two straight games, one of your players will play in a 'free agent' game. This will involve you and one person who is trying to make their way onto this bus. The winner remains in the competition, the loser is out. The end result of the competition is a head to head matchup with the two players playing in Time Square, New York. The winner receives 100,000 in cash.

What makes this competition unhealthy is that it encourages youngsters to talk trash and to become arrogant. Sure it's great that you have mastered a game but why boast about it? You shouldn't be yelling in someone's hear or dancing around mocking them just because you won a game. What ever happened to being a good sport? Often the players who talk the most trash are the players who get eliminated the quickest. Rarely do you see a competitor who has class and dignity.

I also don't like the fact that the winner of this competition wins $100,000 dollars. First of all this is entirely too much money for playing a video game. The average teacher in our country doesn't make that much money in two years and they have to go to college. Furthermore the large prize encourages young people to become lazy. Why get a job? If I can master the latest version of Madden, enter this tournament and win, I will be set for a long time. This is what will be going through the minds of hundreds of kids. Realistically though only one person will come out the winner.

One, and perhaps the only, positive of this show is that it allows competitors to meet their favorite NFL players. I love how the contestants get to go to the person's house, meet them, and then play against them in a game of Madden. Then they get the opportunity of a lifetime when the player gives them an autographed copy of their jersey.

In all, Madden Nation is only a sign that our world has lost touch with what is truly important in the world. I only hope youngsters realize that this is only a game. Get an education, something you can rely on!