The coach of the Louisville Cardinals is blaming the latest Call of Duty game for his team’s most recent loss.
Charlie Strong said the team could have had a shot at making their way to a bowl game at the end of the season, but instead they wanted to play the game that millions of others are losing sleep to.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 set a new one-day record when it launched this month, beating out two previous Call of Duty games that also set then-records for launch day sales.
The franchise has become one of the most popular in video game history. Of course, stories rarely focus on how such a phenomenon affects gamers’ day-to-day lives.
Louisville is now 5-5 after losing to Pittsburgh by 7 points. The team had managed a three-game winning streak up to that point.
Strong told his players, “In about a week or so, you’re going to be throwing that video game away, but we let a video game take control of us.”
Strong said he was completely unaware of the game until he noticed some of his players talking about it on Twitter and on the field. He said one player stayed up all night playing the game only to skip school the next day.
So, as with anything else, Call of Duty is an obsession and can lead to trouble. It’s just too bad that it was Call of Duty instead of Madden. Maybe if the team members had been playing virtual football it would have been an asset to their performance.
Is it likely they will throw the game away in a week as Strong said? Highly unlikely.
