Third sound, third sound: The Washington Post notices something that a lot of us could've told them, that playing Madden games makes kids' comprehension of football better. But it's still worth note, especially because it gives you a player's-eye view of the field. Growing up on TV football spoils you, but also makes it impossible to read the field. The Post:

By giving its players entry to the playbooks and the details of defenses, the Madden game has narrowed what once was a daunting divide between those fans who had played football and those who never did. While baseball and basketball have always been easy games to understand, the barrier football had to regular fans is they often had no idea what really was going on.

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While [Georgetown Day School junior Alex] Boyce said he is a casual player of Madden, playing once or twice a week, he can still turn on a Washington Redskins game, glance at the players lined up and immediately tell if the defensive team has its "nickel" defense, in which five players line up in pass coverage, or "dime" defense, which uses six players against the pass, on the field.

Rick Conner, the football coach at Linganore High School in Frederick, says his sixth grade son gets up at 8 in the morning to squeeze in a game of Madden before he leaves for school, only to play for several more hours once he gets home. "The fact he is more attuned to schemes and plays is amazing," he said.

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"These kids know what a split formation is. They know how to float a zone because of this game," Conner said, using coach-speak for an offensive formation and a method for beating a zone pass defense.