As I write this the chilly winds of a Nebraska February howl angrily outside, spraying my bedroom window with light swaths of subzero bitter and sharp snow.
Aside from enjoying the warmth and coziness of my dwelling, anyone who knows me knows what else I’m doing.
Thinking about football.
Duh.
Yes the bitter chill of February will fade giving way to March and finally April.
April can’t come soon enough around here and not just because of the weather. April means the spring “game”. A game that needs put in quotes because this game is technically a scrimmage. A scrimmage that draws an enormous amount of fans from not just all over the state but in some cases the world.
As crazy as it sounds that 85,000 Nebraska fans from all over the world would converge on Lincoln, NE for a glorified scrimmage, the game will actually be a notch crazier this year.
This will be the public's first chance to see a brand new coach lead the Huskers out of the tunnel for the first time.
The last several spring games with a new coach have all been sellouts.
Regardless of who the coach is I have the same thought every year. This thought always occurs to me as I take in my surroundings while watching the spring game.
Looking up at the sky which appears to be blue for the first time in years, replacing the cold overcast and permanently gray skies of winter. The sun shining bright, and if I’m forgetful, burning a yearly reminder about sunscreen around my wrap around shades. A cool spring breeze is all that remains of winter.
Amidst all of this the same thought occurs to me. “Why don’t they play football here in the spring?”
Sure it’s been tried before but I’ve never seen it in person. And yes there's Arena Football. Don’t get me wrong I LOVE Arena football. As I type this I’m counting down the days until March 27th, the first Arena game. By it’s very name though Arena football doesn't exactly take advantage of the beautiful outdoors of spring.
In the spirit of the criminally footballess spring I am moving forward with a fictional spring league of my own.
Before this footballess spring injustice sprang to mind I was sitting in the living room. The Xbox 360 was spoken for as usual. I began perusing the net for a PC based football game I could play sans Xbox.
This search took me deep into the night.
Finally, I stumbled upon Front Office Football 7 described as a “spreadsheet” game. I think that does the game a great injustice. Sure there are no graphics and it’s basically a football “Tycoon” game. But a spreadsheet is something you use to help balance your checkbook, or other simple such things, not micromanage your own Pro Football Team. Even the “Tycoon” moniker doesn’t do this game much justice. The game is so complex and deep. As a programmer I can appreciate the complexity of the algorithms behind the scenes even if there are no gameplay graphics to drool over.
Despite the impressive depth of this game, by the time I had put the demo through its paces, this spring football idea had crept into my mind and I had to admit Front Office Football 7 wouldn’t do the trick.
I may pay for Front Office Football 7 eventually, but any league I make out of it won’t be a “spring” league.
The Teambuilder website allows you to upload a logo and edit just about every aspect of your fictional team, including picking a stadium for your team to play in.
Before I jump into the teams I’m making in Teambuilder, I should take a step back. Around the time the UFL was stumbling out of the gates, several other leagues were in the works, some more intriguing and memorable than others. None of these leagues played a single down (except the UFL) but one such league’s concept caught my attention. So much so that I remember this never-to-be league’s concepts to this day.
The concept was to play in moderate sized college towns with big name programs. Nebraska and Tennessee are the only that I can remember. I’m sure if I had the desire I could do some digging and could find the name of this almost league, but for now I like the idea of letting the mystery live on (at least for a while).
In addition to using the stadiums of some big name college teams (which you can decide to use in Teambuilder ) these teams would adorn the colors of their home stadium (Red and White for Nebraska, Orange and White for Tennessee) and the roster would feature former players from that stadium’s university. I recall that they even specified that only former players who earned a degree could play in this league. That is so much the right thing to do no wonder this league never played a down.
The final nugget of interestingness is that the teams would have no mascot, nicknames or logos. Teams would just be “Nebraska” or “Tennessee”. I know this sounds lazy or perhaps unexciting, but I find the desire to do something so different, so simplistic it’s borderline genius. I like the idea of focusing on the location, the venue, players and especially the game of football itself.
The other reason this appeals to me is that I’ve spent my entire life creating fictional teams and leagues. At some point fatigue sets in. You can only come up with so many team names to go with Lincoln, Omaha, Sioux Falls/City etc. before the mental team name generator gears in your skull grind to a halt.
This seems to happen whenever I find another football game or football sim. I get so stuck on thinking up names and things for this newest league it sometimes feels like that annoying song that is stuck in your head. When all is said and done I vow never to fall into this “New League” trap again. Sooner or later I’m knee deep in the “New League” creation cycle and I’m laying in bed thinking ‘Lincoln….Ravens?.....Lions?.....”
So the idea of a team just called “Nebraska” with simple uniforms that tie into the local team seems brilliant to me.
Work has already begun on this spring league but as you may recall the point of all of this was to make a league I could play on my computer. Lucky for me I have a tecmo league I could play, but I'm hankering to start a Front Office Football 7 league. I’ll have to come up with 32 team names and locations...it’s going to be a long night….
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