Saul: Madden game to add concussion rules

Peter Moore, the president of EA Sports, recently joined the anti-concussion NFL campaign by… Peter Moore, the president of EA Sports, recently joined the anti-concussion NFL campaign by announcing that his gaming company will make some changes in its premier football video game Madden.

The new settings for Madden NFL 12 will prevent players from re-entering games after suffering a concussion. When concussion safety issues extend to virtual players, things are starting to get a little ridiculous.

There will be no more picking Michael Vick in the sixth round of your fantasy draft just so you can run a five wideout quarterback sneak 80 times a game and then bring him back in even if he gets hurt. Now if Vick goes down with a concussion, he’s done.

It’s “wrong” for the game to allow concussed players to return to the field in the following quarter, Moore said at the World Congress of Sports in Miami.

As another part of the effort, the game’s announcers, Gus Johnson and Cris Collinsworth, will discuss the dangers of concussions when a player is sent to the bench with a head injury.

The game’s namesake, John Madden, came out in support of Moore’s decision.

“Concussions are such a big thing, it has to be a big thing in the video game,” Madden told The New York Times in a telephone interview. “It starts with young kids — they start in video games. I think the osmosis is if you get a concussion, that’s a serious thing and you shouldn’t play… We want that message to be strong.”

Who does EA Sports really think they are helping? What’s next EA?

Are you going to take all of your Fight Night Champion games off the shelves because they teache kids to throw a nice left hook?

Are you going to disallow turning penalties off in NHL 2012 so I can’t send Alex Ovechkin through the glass every time he tries to clear the puck?

Will there be no blood in this year’s EA Sports MMA video game?

These changes to Madden NFL 12 are about as pointless as watching “Jersey Shore” to see if Sammi and Ronnie’s argument that night is finally going to end things.

Kids aren’t buying Madden so they can see clean hits. If people are playing Madden to learn good tackling form, they probably won’t be making a football team anytime soon.

I play Madden because I’m a Redskins fan, and since they won’t win another game in my lifetime, I can at least feel a little bit better when I’m destroying the Packers 72-3, Donovan McNabb has 800 passing yards and Clinton Portis can still find the end zone.

But most of all, I play Madden for that special moment when I can unleash that hit stick on my roommate right when he’s on the verge of thinking he might finally bring down the champion — that’s me.

If Madden and Moore really believe that they are making some noble movement to change the mindset of kids, they should take a step back and look at how sports video games really affect people.

Realistically, Madden NFL 12 will be played by three groups of people: the sport junkies that love to finish their night with some football video games, the gamers who are really into the games and even enjoy playing solo, and the kids who won’t go outside for the first three months they own the game because being good at playing football in a video game is way more fun than getting real exercise.

If Madden and Moore want to teach kids about the proper tackling form, maybe they should take their 2012 game off the shelves completely and encourage kids to spend a year outside actually playing football or trying out for their schools’ teams.

With the looming NFL strike, this could be the best year to encourage kids to try the game of football away from their television screens.

The saddest part of the ordeal is that this decision will receive praise and support from players’ unions and NFL owners alike. It’s just one more reminder of everyone’s constant self-interest and the growing divide between players, ownership and fans that is reaching an all-time high.

So if players can’t hit each other in real life, can’t get hurt in the video games and can’t even settle for multi-million dollar contracts and refuse to put a team on the field, what exactly are we paying these guys for?

If you think you have an answer to that question, you can find me in front of my PlayStation 2. I’ll be playing NFL Blitz.