Pro football players are addicted to football games, as a means of wish-fulfillment — by "managing" the team, they can be free of the rule of their coaches and bosses. Maybe this explains the amazing success of The Sims, which, on the face of it, should be dull as hell: While away your free time away from the office by simulating an existence as a shlub with a day-job and a drive to acquire consumer goods on credit. You'd think it'd be the last thing you want to do. But it's not. When you're a Sim, you can tweak your existence a smidge, discover what life would be like if you took Path A instead of Path B, try the alternate universe on for size. The idea of football players playing themselves in licensed video games is neat and recursive, like the episode of the Simpsons when Mr. Burns runs into Krusty buying Krusty-O's at the supermarket and asks where he can find the "Burns-O's."
"It's always a trip," Carr says. "The first time I saw myself in a video game was in college (at Fresno State) when I walked into a Best Buy store and some kid was playing with me. That kind of trips you out a little bit."
For every 12-year-old kid who spends countless hours in front of a television playing video games, there's a group of 300-pound offensive linemen challenging each other at everything from Madden NFL 2003 to the action-packed "Halo: Combat Evolved."
(Thanks, Lawrence!)
