Why Are People Blaming John Madden For Concussions? Video Games

Legendary NFL coach John Madden died on the morning of Tuesday, December 28. While many took the occasion of his passing to celebrate the man’s coaching, broadcasting, and video game legacy, others used it as an opportunity to call Madden out for his part in turning “brain injuries into a video game.” The takes were incendiary enough to take over sports social media and websites for days.

The concussion discussion following John Madden’s death seems to originate from a pair of sources. The first is a tweet from independent Journalist Marcy Wheeler, posted on the evening of Madden’s passing. The tweet reads, “Everyone eulogizing Madden: How many concussions could we have prevented had he not turned brain injuries into a video game?” Wheeler, who specializes in civil liberties and national security matters, lists her football and head trauma experience as playing as the star monsterback on a powderpuff team and six years of rugby, during which she played through at least one concussion. She also says a fellow rugby player died on the field.

Then on Wednesday, December 29, a history professor at Dallas College named Dr. Andrew McGregor offered his opinions on John Madden via his Twitter account, currently set to private. His initial tweet read, “I have lots of opinions on John Madden. The creation of the Madden video game was not a great development for the U.S. It further glamorized violence and dehumanized Black athletes, helping to establish plantation cosplay that has grown worse in the era of fantasy football.”

The thread, archived over at Barstool Sports, eventually resolves to the same sentiment expressed by Wheeler, albeit with a puzzling racism angle applied. “The key here,” McGregory writes in the thread, “is consumption of the sport as distorted reality. Video games dehumanize players, they create fantasies of super teams and notions of control and management (replicated in fantasy sport) where we control and manipulate rosters and players. It’s deeply problematic.”

Dr. McGregor’s tweets have been widely panned and criticized by fans of both the sport and the video game series. Many objected to his calling the Madden franchise “a digital plantation” that uses players names and likenesses for profit while encouraging fans to disregard the humanity behind them, and by extension their health. In response to such extreme tweets, many also point to a tweet by the doctor from 2017, in which he talks about playing Madden with his brother, as evidence of hypocrisy.

The responses to Marcy Wheeler’s tweet are, as one would imagine, pretty harsh. There are plenty of embarrassingly misogynist replies, some name-calling, and several people suggesting that EA’s Madden NFL series actually prevented brain injury by giving those interested in the sport a safer, non-contact way to play. In response to the question, “do you think the video games give people concussions,” Wheeler replies, “No. I think the video games led fans to think the real sport was a video game.”

To be fair, the National Football League hasn’t had the best track record when it…