i am the nephew that ted panos speaks of in this article, and i need to make a few things clear. now, teddy's recollection of the somewhat questionable pass interference calls is accurate, however there is much that he fails to mention. For one he was playing with the dallas cowboys(his true favorite team, he is NOT the pats fan he pretends to be). The cowboys were ranked so high on the 94 version of the game, that i was forced to play with the all madden team, which was in fact ranked lower than the cowboys!! The dallas offensive line was so good that upon snapping the ball my d line was pushed 6 to 8 yards back off the line of scrimmage. This made it impossible to stop emmit smith and the run. Panos would easily get 6 yards per carry which made for long boring time consuming drives.

As we all know, this conservative style of play is not what madden is all about. And teddy also enjoyed eating up the clock, waiting till the play clock was down to 1 before snapping, and punting, (who punts in madden?) It seemed as though my uncle was living out some sick, perverted coaching fantasy through madden 94 and at the same time ruining the game play experience for me. That is a boring way to play madden. The game was meant for long bombs, punt returns for touchdowns, and basketball like high scoring. What kind of sick 30 + year old man runs out the clock with the lead on his 13 year old nephew???

So, when i was on offense i would call hail mary's and when the ball was thrown, i would run into his defensive backs and dive on the floor, which resulted in pass interference calls. And when he tried to run away from the receiver to avoid this i would simply catch the long pass. There were many memorable 80 yard drives for me using this method. So, sorry Teddy if i ruined your madden experience or made it any less realistic. But it's a video game my friend. Maybe you should have coached pop warner instead to help fulfill your little coaching fantasy.

For the record, Teddy also used to cheat at tecmo bowl. All in all, those were some good times...

To set the record straight, I never cheated at Tecmo Bowl. The darn game was so simplistic (there were only 4-plays to choose from) by today's standards, you couldn't cheat if you wanted to.

I will say this however. The worst I ever felt in my life was the Christmas Day I beat my nephew in the family Tecmo Bowl Championship. There were 9 of us, battling it out for hours in a round-robin tournament. (In case you haven't yet figured it out, we're such a competitive family, it's not even funny...there's something perverse about it to be honest)

It came down to me and my nephew (who was probably only 9 or 10 at the time...I was 24 or 25) in the title game...me with the unstoppable 49ers, him with the Giants and that damn Lawrence Taylor who flew around the field at warp speed.

Anyway, a nip and tuck affair came down to the last play when a dump pass to Roger Craig (remember that play? the one where he swung out of the backfield for a short dump pass?) resulted in me just barely getting into the end zone as the clock expired. I jumped around and screamed like I had just won an Olympic Gold Medal.

And then I looked over and saw my nephew with a total look of devastation...I swear, he would have cried if not for the fact all of our cousins were in the room. I've never told anyone this before, but I never felt like a bigger piece of you-know-what in my life. I always wished I could have taken that play back and just thrown an incompletion to let him win. It wasn't until about 2-years later that I finally got over the guilt.

You know what finally did it? Those ridiculous pass interference calls in Madden '94!!!

I think I'd feel worse about using the "grind it out offense" with the Cowboys in Madden. I mean who can use the "Evil Empire" of football to beat a 13 year old kid???

We were never too big on the football games in head-to-head matchups (although Tecmo Bowl WAS a favorite- I always played as the Raiders because they had the most diverse plays with a total of 2 different runs if I remember right- one to Bo Jackson and one to Marcus Allen).

"Our" game during that time was the old NHL '94 for the PC. We'd have endless 11-10 games. Ah- Pavel Bure of the Canucks with his world class speed would always win the game for me in the end. At one point Bure was outlawed from being chosen and then I found that the Nordiques could be equally unstoppable under my control...

They just don't make games like those anymore...

Loved NHL '94 except for one thing. Remember how you could crash your player into the goalie on a breakaway, and the goalie would get called for a penalty. Worse, your opponent could score a goal on such a play and still get a power play. Talk about reason to throw the controller at the TV!

And yeah, Bure was amazingly fast. Lemieux and Jagr were unstoppable when on the ice at the same time. But I loved controlling Lindros, cause he'd just barrell through people.

Ahhhh..the good ole days!