Reality TV For Husband

Husband really has gotten to be much more generous with the TV as of late. He usually makes it so that I can watch all of the dances on Dancing With the Stars and all of the performances on American Idol. Naturally, when the commercials come on, he starts flipping the channel until he finds something that he also likes (or sometimes, like last night, I make his "commercial show" be something like Mulan)...that way, we both sort of get to see what we want.

In any case, no matter what we watch, husband generally doesn't like "reality TV". Or let me re-phrase that: up until LAST NIGHT, he didn't like reality TV. While flipping through the channels, husband happened upon the "Madden Challenge".

This is where they pick ten of the best xBox Madden NFL Football players in the world (that's right, the ENTIRE WORLD) and organize a tournament. The participants play pretend football with each other while also being taped for a special on ESPN. There are apparently three different rounds, all with different rules about how you can be eliminated from this formidable contest.

There were many things about this tournament that I found to be HILARIOUS (besides the fact that it made Husband so delighted, he could barely contain himself):

1. Several of the participants looked like they had never picked up a real football in their lives. Several of them were little, tiny, skinny white boys with molester mustaches.
2. At one point, someone was talking about "throwing the game" because he was scared of another participant.
3. In the time leading up to their scheduled game, the participants were allowed to "study the playbook".
4. There was actual trash talk.
5. The participants were allowed to use their "gamer name" that is registered with xBox live as their name throughout the tournament. That means that there was a "Maddog" and a "T-Roy".
6. There was a "coach camera" where they could go into the corner and talk to the camera about their strategy against other x-Box-ers.
7. Several of the players actually cried when they were eliminated. It's a video game tournament, you wuss. Come on! You're on TV! BE A MAN!

While watching all of this was fun for Husband, we made a command decision that he could never be involved in the actual tournament no matter how good he gets at the xBox. This is obvious for many reasons: he would have to travel around on a bus with other stinky xBox players (they travel to a different location for each round of the tournament), he would have to wear a football jersey that is too big for him (of course, he would look lots more manly than the skinny mustache boys), and he would have to turn into a complete nerd.