Kobra’s Corner Introduction

First off I want say thanks to Justin Dewiel, Will Kinsler, and EA SPORTS for giving me the opportunity to post NCAA Football 09 and Madden NFL 09 strategies on EA SPORTS World for this up and coming football season.

For those of you who don’t know who I am, let me give you a history of who I am and my involvement with the NCAA and Madden franchises.

My real name is Paul Gleason. I am 38 years old. I have been married for 11 years and have two beautiful children. One is 5 and the other is 2. I currently work for VG Sports, which is owned by Bert Ingley. I have been working for VG Sports since 2002. I am also a member of the EA SPORTS Football Community program and have been part of it since it’s inception in 2003.

I am a well-respected top ranked online player and have been part of the Madden Community for over 8 years. I have written several Madden offensive and defensive strategy guides in Ebook format over the years such as the Pass Balanced, Oakland Raiders,  Run-n-Gun,  and 46 A-B Gap Blitz books. I have released a Madden Strategy DVD.

I worked on the EA SPORTS Madden University in 2005 and am the voice behind the Madden Filmroom video breakdowns at www.maddentips.com. This past year I had the privilege of working on the Prima Madden NFL 09 and NCAA Football 9 Official Strategy guides along with the rest of the VG Sports team.

Like many of you I started playing Madden football in 1992 on the 16-bit Sega system. I can remember the first time I ever played Madden. I called up one of my friends and told him about this new football game on the Sega and asked him if he and the rest of the guys wanted to try it.

At the time, we were all stuck on playing Techmo Bowl Football, which was the best video football game on the market. After we popped Madden in, we were instantly hooked. From that point on we never played Techmo Bowl again. The more I played the game the more I realized if I wanted to beat my friends consistently, I was going to have to study the game like a real NFL coach.

So I started drawing out all plays on paper. I would bring binders to study each play on offense and defense while I was at work.   I wanted to know every thing I could about each offensive play and how they worked against different types of defensive coverages.

On defense I wanted to know who covered who when man coverage was called. Back in the old days, there wasn’t a coach cam that showed the play art. So knowing this type of stuff really put me at a huge advantage over my friends.  I can remember my co-workers thought I was crazy for spending so much time on a video game.  I told them it was a passion and I really enjoyed studying and playing the game.

In 2000, because of the time I put into studying the game, I pretty much dominated my friends.  I started getting bored of just playing my friends. I wanted to play players all over the country. I had heard that you could play Madden 2000 on the PC online for free. So I ran out and purchased a copy of the game.  The first time I got online and played Madden against another human opponent, I felt like I had reached the pinnacle of video game football. Being able to play a human opponent at any time of day brought the game to whole new level.

In 2001, I joined a few Madden Online Franchise Leagues. One of the leagues I joined was called the “BMFL”. The league was run by BlyGimore, who now helps run MaddenMania over at Operation Sports. I was pretty much dominating the league and winning Super Bowls year after year. I think that year we played a total of 5 seasons. I won every Super Bowl.  If I remember right, I went through two seasons in a row without loosing game. 

Bly had asked my why I was so good. I told him I studied plays on paper and recorded my games through an old cam recorder (I still have some of the VHS tapes lying around in my office).  By studying the plays and watching game film, I knew how to attack my opponent’s weaknesses. 

He asked if I would be interesting in doing a weekly segment on the BMFL League Web site called Kobra’s Corner. I told him sure, that was fine with me. I didn’t know anything about how to web sites or anything like that. I was just putting them in Notepad and sending him the images. He would then put them in PDF formation and load them up to the league web site. Over the years, not only the players from the league would read them, but even outside players would come to check them out.

Bly wasn’t able to put them up as quickly as he would have liked because he had other obligations outside of Madden.  Later that year I decided I would try to learn HTML and put my own write-ups on the web so players could view them. I did a search and found a web hosting site called Geocities. I created a web site called “Madden Guides” (www.maddenguides.com), back in September 2001.

I actually launched the site few days before 9/11. I started adding content to the site daily. At first it was just text and images. At the time, my site was the only Madden site that actually broke down the game with images and text. There were few other sites out there, but they only had text. As the site grew, I wanted to add more to the site than just images and text.

I remember I had a copy of Madden 98 on the PC, so I installed it on my computer. It had videos of plays being broken down by John Madden himself. He would use a telestrator to break the plays down. I thought, wow, that would be pretty cool if I could do the same and post video breakdowns on the web. I did a little research on the web and found video and telestrator programs that would let me do just that.

After playing around with programs, I was able to finally post my first video in October of 2001. Mind you the video quality wasn’t the greatest, but at least it was viewable. Over the next few months, I did keep doing Madden strategies with text, images, and videos; I also started adding playbook diagrams, cyber player profiles and other Madden related content.  In a very short time, I was having a lot of traffic come through my site. It got to the point that with all the traffic that the site would get shut off from time to time. I had to keep paying out more money for bandwidth to keep the site going.

In late November of 2001, I lost my factory job because the plant closed down. I didn’t know what I was going to do. Over the next few months, I collected unemployment and started to go to school to learn about eCommerce.  During that time I also kept working on the Madden Guides. 

In March of 2002, a new company had released a Madden Strategy guide. The company’s name was VG Sports. I remember buying the first strategy guide.  Rather than it being a paper guide that you bought at the store, it was in electronic format (ebook). It was less than a MB.  It had a lot of text, but for some unknown reason my computer wouldn’t open it up, so I decided to call the toll free support line. 

On the end of the phone line was Bert Ingley, who was the President of VG Sports. I told him my problem and he was able to get me up and running. During our phone conversation, I told him I was Kobra and I was owner of Madden Guides. He knew who I was and asked me if I wanted to join the VG Sports team as its lead writer for Madden. He told me I could make a little money off breaking down strategies. I told him sure, so I joined the VG Sports.  Over next six months, I didn’t make a ton of money, but I enjoyed breaking down plays for the VG Sports Filmroom.

When Madden 2003 was released in August of 2002, VG Sports released its second Virtual Playbook. With my help, the book was considerably bigger.  The book was a big success throughout the Madden Community and so was the Filmroom.  That same year I joined the EA SPORTS Community Football Leaders Program. This program allowed for me to report on NCAA and Madden earlier than I was ever able to before.  I was able to get an advanced copy of the game, and fly out to E3 in Los Angles to hang out with other NCAA and Madden community leaders.

In 2005 the VG Sports team (Bert Ingley, Bernie Hayes, Ron Jackson and myself), were invited out to EA’s main Headquarters in San Francisco to work on the EA SPORTS Madden University. That was blast and one of my fondest memories of writing strategies for Madden.

At the 2008 EA SPORTS Football Community Leaders Event I started talking to Justin about what I did. I told him I would like to help with the EA SPORTS World site. He asked me if I would like to write strategies. I told him sure, anything to help with the EA SPORTS Football Community.

With that in mind starting next week I will be writing weekly strategies for Madden NFL 09 and NCAA Football 09 for the EA SPORTS World site (I will continue of course to write for VG Sports). Each write up will include text, images, and a video breakdown.  I will also be answering emails here in regards to strategy questions that you may have about the games during the season.

Finally I want to say thanks to you for taking the time to read this article.  I look forward to hearing and receiving your comments about the strategies being posted on EA SPORTS World this year.

For more information on VG Sports, check out www.maddentips.com!

Thanks,

Paul Gleason (AKA Kobra)
VG Sports, Inc.