Thoughts on Peyton Hillis Winning the Madden ’12 Cover Vote…
Cleveland fans just showed why they are the best in the country. To put it simply, we want our guys to win more than anyone else does. Period.
That’s something everyone likes to say about their home team, but now Cleveland has proof.
For the first time ever, EA Sports and ESPN conducted an online vote to see who would grace the cover of the popular Madden football video game. Cleveland fans, knowing full well there is a pop-culture curse associated with the Madden game cover, went for the win anyway.
We now have metrics, hard data, in the form of online tallied votes, that Browns fans want it the most, no matter what “it,” actually happens to be.
Hillis registered a win of 66% to 34% over Michael Vick in the tournament style final, or should I say, Browns fans registered a win of 66% to 34%. Hillis was also able to defeat Gillette spokesman Matt Ryan, and Super Bowl MVP Aaron Rodgers, or should I say… you get the idea.
In an era where social media campaigns rule, fans of the players who lost to Peyton Hillis sounded off with a fantastic cop-out: They didn’t want to win because of the Madden Curse. How comforting. But Browns fans made no such excuses. In the one competition where our fandom and passion would determine a winner (as opposed to the actual talent represented on a playing field) we would not be denied.
Maybe its because we all wanted to win something, anything, so badly. Maybe its because we love an underdog, and celebrated him in our #10-seed Madden representative. Maybe its because we wanted to stick it to vote host ESPN, for their continual denial of our passion, pain, and existence.
Maybe its because, if someone was willing to join a legion of Browns fans collaborating through a dedicated Facebook Page, educate themselves on how to disable their internet browser’s cookies, open 50 tabs loaded with the online voting page, and force themselves to vote thousands of times per day, they just wanted it more.
Nobody wants it more than Browns fans. Its like this desire, or this need, is in our blood. It’s with us all the time.
I hope that every player who puts on a Browns uniform realizes this, how special it is. Browns players have made it to the Mecca of fan want. They couldn’t be playing for people who want them to succeed more than we do. If they were to deliver a winner, no city could love them more than Cleveland could.
And if fan desire was the one and only thing needed to win a Super Bowl, well the Browns would have 40 by now.
EA Sports asked the fans who they wanted to win the most; when you think about it, there was no way we could lose.
Congrats Peyton, we earned it, and go Browns…