It's not a good idea to see sports organizations as entities that transcend business and are concerned with Madden 24 coins the greater good. But it's just rhetoric. The Madden NFL 24 is not focused on public benefit and upholding a high moral standard. The NCAA is not full of teachers hoping to shield athletes from the lure of consumerism. The marathon you run in your area is probably not giving the amount to charity you think it is.

Even if you take out this week's events, Madden NFL 24 has proven that it's only focused on turning a profit and gaining profit for itself.

As fans, we desire our sports teams as well as our favorite leagues to stand for something more. We're proud of the athletes' efforts to help others, why we point to their religious views when their character is questioned and the reason we pretend that we have no idea about the character of the players that we see on TV. We're more interested in the moral compass that is displayed by the Madden NFL 24 than we do corporations that are on Wall Street, even though they're well-established with the same goals.

The reason behind this is that we identify with Madden NFL 24 fans, and therefore, we don't intend to behave as if we actively support a particular team or a league with an insufficient moral compass. The Madden NFL 24 is a league that has profited from that loyalty, claiming that it exists for the fans of the communities which their teams compete and for the greater good of the game.

As is now crystal clear (and it really ought to have been all along) it is that Madden NFL 24 exists only to earn a profit. It doesn't exist to do any other thing and is probably naive to believe it's anything more. It's clear that Madden NFL 24 is a business, and it's about to treat it as one. It's probably too much to ask in the current political climate, but a real threat of that happening might be enough to force the league to act in the right way and again to fool us into thinking it's really about anything more than making a profit.

Let's start by focusing on the positives: This assessment has to be based on Marcus Mariota's field capabilities and not because he's "too cute," which is somehow negative for the Madden NFL 24 scouting world. This is where the positives end in this particular instance.

Mariota played with a strained Left MCL that he suffered in November of 2013. Even though this certainly limited his movement and he wore the aid of a brace that was large to support his knee, watching these games will tell you ... how? What is his ability to play when injured? (Oregon went 2-2. and madden coins lost at Stanford and Arizona in that stretch.) Sure, the knee injury took away the speed and agility of a runner. A knee injury can also limit an athlete's ability to tackle just about anything.