Bill Walsh Madden91 Edition

Bill Walsh Madden'91

In December 2005, the first ever Bill Walsh League on the Madden91 engine was held.  December 2015 is the ten year anniversary of this league, which saw Miami91 clinch the national championship after defeating Stanford in the Fiesta Bowl, and Clemson losing to Texas A&M in the Orange Bow, in a miracle win for the Aggies. 

The First Undefeated Team

 Nebraska83 and coach Brett bust through a mediocre league for an undefeated season and a 2009 Bill Walsh National Title, but they were not the first team to go undefeated in Bill Walsh College Football.

After the strongest season ever of Bill Walsh College Football in 2003, the 2004 season started off big.  However flaws in the Bill Walsh game itself caused much frustration to players.  The biggest problem was "frame skipping" where the ball is caught after it passes through (or before it passes through) a defenders body.

This problem was eventually fixed for the 2009 season simply by editing the player catching ratings proportionally from 0 to 15 to 0 to 3.  However this solution had not been realized in 2004, and to get away from the "cheese" and problems with the rom, the leagues remaining teams (4 remaining coaches of about 9) were ported to the Joe Montana 1 rom.  Madden91 would have been the best choice at that time, but with standard the Gens emulator, it would un-sync, so this was not an option.

The league restarted and we played many weeks of games on the Bill Walsh Montana rom, but it was a little too dry.  Running the ball did not work as well, and there were not many plays in the Montana playbook, especially runs.  One league game was even played on the Madden91 engine via the new Gens Plus emulator, but eventually the league went back to the Bill Walsh classic rom before the league just died.

Weeks later, rather than try to resurrect a Frankenstein monster of a league that had died and risen more than once, co-champs were declared of the two top teams with the most wins, of the 3 remaining coaches (of about originally 9).  All of the games from the 3 parts of the season were combined in the.final 2004 rankings.

To win a co-championship is like having a tie in the Super Bowl, but it was the best that could be done after so many games were played.  The final ranking system was altered a bit to reflect the nature of the season, since teams played a vastly uneven amount of games.  Rankings were by wins (rather than fewest losses).  You can view the final Bill Walsh 2004 rankings here.  One interesting note I found later after reviewing it was that Texas AM, although they did not have the most wins, they were still undefeated in 9 games, at 6-0-3.  A 1-0-2 record in Bill Walsh Classic plus a 5-0-1 record in Bill Walsh Montana gave them the 6-0-3 total mark.

Stanford (Brett) and Miami92 (Tony) shared their happy 2004 co-championship together without controversy.  The largest reason for this was that there were only 3 of us (Jeff, Tony, Brett) that had been playing in the final third of the season.  John and his Texas A&M team had left after the second part of the season, and did not resume.  Had Texas A&M been playing in the last third of the season when the league had wound down, then they would have most likely been undefeated still, or taken some losses, sank or swam to the top.

Stanford was a solid 7-4-1, and Miami92 was just as solid at 7-4-2, but a Texas A&M team at 7-0-3, or even 7-3-3 would have a higher ranking and better claim to the title than anyone else.  However this was not an issue, as they did not participate in the last third of the season.

Now looking at the quality of John's 2004 Texas A&M team, they did go 1-0-2 on the Bill Walsh Classic rom, and 5-0-1 on the Bill Walsh Montana rom.

Texas A&M in 2004 on their first 3 games on the original Bill Walsh rom,  they beat new coach Jay's Washington91 team, and they tied two of their biggest rivals, Kansas and Clemson81.

As for the Bill Walsh Montana wins, Texas A&M had mastered the passing game and was torching people left and right.  Texas A&M was 5-0-1 on the Montana rom.  The 2004 stats page does not have the BW Montana scores as of yet, but the scores survived in the new forums we had recently moved to (and currently use).  Of Texas A&M five wins on the Montana rom, they were quality wins, including wins over Stanford, Texas81, Clemson81, Kansas and Nebraska 83.

So after starting 6-0-3, we can only guess what might have been, had the 2004 Texas A&M Aggies played the final part of the 2004 season.  However they remain the first undefeated team in Bill Walsh College Football, and one could make an argument that they were the best team of 2004.

Bill Walsh League is born

Going back to fall 1993, my friend Mo bought Bill Walsh College Football, and him, Charlie and Paul had played it for a day or two, and Mo told me on the phone "it doesn't have all the pass interference and cheese like the newer Madden games (92/93).  So I went over to Mo's house and we started playing.  My first play of the game (on defense), was called for pass interference.  My second play of the game I was also called for pass interference.  Already I could see it was loaded with cheese.  Another frustration of mine was that I could not intercept the QB option pitch to the RB, no matter how well I timed it.  It seemed the ball was teleported to the RB.  The game also lacked interceptions, which were nearly impossible.  This meant your noob opponent could drop back and just drill cheese it into coverage for 4 downs until he got a completion, I mean why not, interceptions were banned and pass interference was called very liberally.

In 1993, the yearly Kickoff Classic game matched FSU vs Kansas at Giants Stadium.  This game was a FSU 42-0 blowout of Kansas.  This was also the opening game of our first Bill Walsh league.  My Jayhawks defeated Mo's FSU 9-7.  I won a game kicking 3 field goals, no touch downs.  Regardless of the cheese, good defense prevailed over drill cheese offense.

Bill Walsh College Football

The Bill Walsh College Football Dynasties Blog is dedicated to all the competitors and fans of Bill Walsh College Football, and related 16 bit sports titles, such as Madden and Montana.

Bill Walsh College Football was released in 1993 and it was based on the college football teams of the 1992 season, with the 1992 rosters.  This included 24 1992 teams, and 24 pre-1992 all time great teams.  The game also came with 24 double sided team rating cards.  This was a small improvement over the cool little team rating booklets that had come in Madden91/92/93.