Hi, Fulcast friends. It's your Blue and Boy Ryan Nanny here bringing you a very special episode of the history of fun, a podcast from our buddies over at Polygon.

Why are we bringing you this? Well, you may remember that there used to be a video game simulator of college football called NCAA insert year here.

Now a lot of people don't know this, but there's actually a pro football version of this game as well called let me see John Madden.

Foot, did I get, yes, that's correct. History of fun is going to tell you all about the origins of the Madden series, including the fact that John Madden himself could have made a shitload of money off of this game and just didn't because he didn't feel like it.

We hope you like the episode and if you do subscribe to the history of fun for even more explorations of the things you love.

Hello and welcome to the history of fun when we explore the hidden back stories behind the things you love to do.

My name is Russ Frustre continue. I'm joined by Allegra Frank. Hey, Allegra. Hello Russ. How you doing? I am very awake as always.

Very awake if it seems like Allegra is sleepy for three consecutive episodes. There's no reason that the case.

We are also joined by Chris plant. Hey Chris. Oh, hello. How are you? You know, I'm doing well. Chris, whenever it's your episode, I feel like I have to walk on eggshells to make sure that I don't accidentally reveal the subject that you're talking about.

And this episode is no different. Let me tell you the subject. An elevator pitch. There is a curse on millionaires, a super bowl winning football coach whose biggest regret is not buying stock options.

And a man named trip. Is that short for anything? Tripp Thalamu. Tripp Thalamu. Yeah. Yeah. I see. I think that's it. Anyway, so this is the story of Madden NFL football. You're in the game. E eight sports. It's in the madden. Yeah, sure. So we're going to start this by talking about trip.

Packings and just so everybody's on the same page. This is not a full history of like everything. Madden because that would be a book. We're going to just talk about kind of origin. This is chapter one is chapter one of the madden book. Welcome to episode one of our new madden podcast. One of 32 limited series.

We're going to knock on it.

Makes no sense. Adrian has nothing to gain. Tripp Hawkins. He's born in 1953 and they're like, what will we name this child? They're like trip Hawkins. They're like, perfect. That is a great name. His last name was like the parents last name wasn't even Hawkins. They just don't know. Absolutely not. They were Bart and Bartha.

Brown. He is born to them. He's a fun fact. Not everything this episode is true. He is technology,

he's a very young age as a baby as a we babe. He's also a football obsessive, but he's a nerd. And I say like, I'm a nerd like 2018 nerds are cool. Have you seen Big Bang?

VVT. VVT. Do you watch VVT? Do you even watch VVT? He loves the 1967 game Strato Maddick, which is kind of like D&D.

Okay, it's just like a tabletop game, but for football. I've played Strato Maddick. It's really. I thought it was for baseball. Maybe both. I think there's a football version.

There's definitely a baseball one as well. It's actually pretty interesting. The best way I can describe it is like, yeah, as you said, it's like D&D. So you have like actual players based on real players. And you would like roll dice to like see if they got a hit or something.

And they had advantages like in buffs, right? Yeah, like one would be good at stealing bases or one based on their like real world stats. It was pretty interesting.

There you go. Dorky. Dorky is hell, but it might have been the baseball thing. But anyway, he loves football. So this is from a very good feature on ESPN titled by the franchise. And we'll be citing that or sourcing it throughout this.

This is episode. He's a bright and cautious teenager. Hawkins created Strato Maddick knockoff and attempted to start a business around it. His next-door neighbor in California was former AFL president, Milt Woodard, who gave Hawkins this opportunity to send a proposal to the game to none other than Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt.

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