Upon Further Review #1

Note: This is the first in a regular series of GameSpot Sports journal entries dedicated to real-life sporting events and outcomes, as seen through the lens of sports videogames.

So who saw last night's riveting ESPN NFL game between Chicago and San Francisco? Being a Bears fan, I felt obligated to sit through the first half, as I don't get many opportunities to see Chicago play. It didn't bode well for the game when the best thing you could say was that it was a rematch of the 2002 NCAA National Championship game for former Ohio State QB Craig Krenzel (starting his first game for Chicago) and former Miami Hurricane Ken Dorsey (the 49er's on-again, off-again starter). Watching Krenzel struggle his way to a mediocre win reminded me of my own travails with my Madden Bears franchise.

Like the real-life Monsters of the Midway, my cyber-Bears have seen Rex Grossman go down to injury (though lucky for me, not for the entire season) and I've subsequently been backed into the same corner Bears' head coach Lovie Smith finds himself in these days: choosing between Krenzel and journeyman QB Jonathan Quinn. The rap on Krenzel is that what he lacks in arm strength and mobility, he more than makes up for in smarts. While leading his Buckeyes team to a National Championship, for example, Krenzel wracked up academic honors... as a molecular genetics major, of all things. In stark contrast, I had to look up both words in the dictionary just to make sure I had them spelled correctly.

While this is all well and good for the real world, IQ is an attribute that doesn't really translate that well to sports gaming, especially at the quarterback position. After all, no matter how intelligent the virtual Krenzel is, it's still me running the game, calling my favorite half-dozen plays, and throwing the ball, hoping to thread a miracle or two through double- and triple-coverage. In cases like this player ratings are superseded, for better or worse, by the decisions we as sports gamers make on the virtual field of play.

Then again, my sub-par offensive performance mirrors very closely the actual on-the-field results of my Bears. And people say sports simulations aren't very accurate...