Honoring a decorated employee

In the Summer of 2013, we welcomed in a new member to the team.  We were very excited to have them become part of the family.  Over a decade later, it's more than overdue for a retirement (laughs).  Please stand up and take bow.  NCAA Football 14, ladies and gentlemen.

I don't need to tell you, or anyone else here for that matter, that we had to lean on you for quite some time.  The usual time served is 2 years.  But the laws changed, technology changed...hell, a lot of things changed.  Yet you were always there.  While set in your ways, you knowingly know no difference.  What happened in 2013 was going to happen forever.  

In this world, and the world you created, some things never ended.  Things like the Beef 'O Brady's Bowl.  In your world, it continued to live on.  So did the Fight Hunger Bowl.  The names change, of course, so it always took a moment to look up just what the Russel Athletic Bowl, the BBVA Compass Bowl, and the GoDaddy Bowl were, or what they became.  

The world you created was an interesting one: all 3 service academies spent a few years towards the top.  Some teams were always good.  Some teams fell and stayed there...for decades.  That's not unlike real life, I suppose.  You could say that some of the world you created could only happen in the world you made, right?

Yes, in the year 2036, Minnesota did win the national championship.  No doubt about it.  I didn't coach them.  I didn't have anything to do with it.  You said it's so, and so it shall be done.

Then there's the world I created: starting at Georgia (before they were what they are today), then Hawaii, then Tulane.  I would involve The Woman Formerly Known as Smiley on where "we" should go next.  This made her part of it and allowed me to play it more.  After 2 successful years at Tulane she said, "you can only eat so much gumbo" (a statement from someone who has never eaten gumbo, mind you).  Then 2 years at Northwestern as a challenge, then a long stretch at UCLA.  Back to Georgia, and then another long stretch at Hawaii.  Maybe it was island fever, looking for a challenge, or a tie to my own background, I turned around Boston College.  The final stop was back to the Golden State and Stanford.  

Your attempt to make names was a valiant one, but I think we all know that I do that much better.  I'm grateful you let me edit the players so that the graphics showed the names fly through the screen after a big play.  Let's remember some of these names...I mean, players:

Eddie Bierschwale     Rollo Phlecks     Harry Frosy

Rex Havlock     Ahmad Slippins     Hodge Strunk

Snell DeWitt     Garfield Bortz     Lunnington Lu

Flint Farnt     Cleve Jonker     Dunwoody Pfaff

Thornell Schwartz     Sealy Hunkle     Turk Zeiff

Fyfe Symington     Noah Burzlaff     Norell Pearlnutter

Darn Wilgont     Hap Poppenheimer     Merv Forgsworth

Al Ott     Derik Lawnd     Gilbert Bunthorne

Ash DePung     Shepp Searles     Noah Eeg

The one thing you couldn't do was no fault of your own: you couldn't adapt to the real-world changes around you.  People worked hard to make uniform changes and field changes that, somehow, could work in the game.  You couldn't add new schools without taking one away, of course, so we were left to wonder (or do the work ourselves) how Coastal Carolina might fare.  

The last 2 years have been difficult for all of us.  We're teased with release dates while we continue to lean on you.  Trailers for a new game only frustrated us...until the real date came out.  Real explanations and examples were shown.  We were left overjoyed, and now only waiting a few more weeks until reality is here.  

An oft-used phrase is "you don't know what you have until it's gone" but that doesn't apply, and that's all thanks to you.  A true "above and beyond" service was made, and all of us thank you for it.  In this new game, I will have much that I wished for over the last 11 years.  The one thing I won't have, however, is my decades of success.  But look at it this way - it's a new beginning.  

No one knows what the greatest video game is, but I know one that served its people right up there with the Ms. Pac Man / Galaga combo game in the bowling alley.  That would be you, NCAA Football 14.  A toast - congratulations on your service.

(applause, as the dusty case is opened one last time)