ULTIMATE NFL TOURNAMENT

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Round One Has Begun!

1/30/25 -- One down. 31 to go.

The first league has been completed. No play-in games needed. The biggest surprise seems to be the performance of the (previously) unbeated 2007 New England Patriots. They finished 4-4, tied for third place. Through tiebreakers, they finished with the highest seed among those headed to the 1.5 Playoffs.

The only Super Bowl champion in the first league, Oakland '76, finished in first place. The Raiders, along with the surprising 2018 Kansas City Chiefs, are headed straight to the Second Round.

Interesting to see how other Super Bowl teams do in comparison to the ones in League 1.

The Tournament is HERE!

1/14/25 -- Welcome to the start of the biggest NFL tournament of all time!

This isn't a 14-team NFL playoff. This isn't a 16-team Super Bowl "tournament" like 1982. This is the big one. 309 teams are in the biggest tournament in sports history.

Using Madden 12, it took years to perfect game sliders, adjust player attributes based on statistics and common opponents, and determine the best way to decide which teams earned a spot and where and when they will play for the best and most fair results.

There have been many such Madden tournaments in the past. They litter YouTube with their complete games and artificial-looking graphics. But, in many cases, these teams were crafted by gamers who are great at coding but don't have a true understanding of football history. In many of these cases, one team (or both) is contolled by the user themselves.  That is the exact opposite of fair.

There is no such bias in this tournament.

Yes, I'm a fan of certain teams. But, as I designed each player on each team, I used statistics and tendencies based on the team's playbook and schemes.

As a testing platform, I created several Super Bowl teams that competed against each other in real life and pitted them in cyberspace. In my final result, I recreated eight different Super Bowls; six of them had the same result, with all six games progressing similar to their real-life counterparts and all six final scores coming up close to the actual scores. In one, the wrong team won, but only because a field goal was made instead of missed. Only one of the eight had a completely different result which, to be frank, falls within the basic parameters of chance and history. If you need more info on how I built these teams, and how I solved the dilemma of old teams with smaller players competing against modern teams with larger players, you can check out the FAQ.

Now, certain that each team will perform how they would in real life, the tournament is about to begin. Game one will be run tonight, with the 2007 New England Patriots hosting the 2010 Pittsburgh Steelers. The first round will take months, and you can follow along as it goes.  After around 1,500 games or so, Round Two will get underway.  Follow it all here.