As a 20-year-old intern in the unfamiliar city of Cleveland during the summer of 2004 I found myself with no friends, no family, and most regrettably, no fake ID. So, it was during that summer in the city famous for a flaming river and Jerry Springer that I fell in love with a computer text simulation game.

Indeed, for three months or so, in between wandering the aisles of the Giant Eagle grocery store and making failed plans to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I played virtual general manager of the Chicago Bison in Total Pro Basketball 2003. By year 2027, I was the brainy, prodigal mastermind of a six-time NBA champion that the Chicago roundball fanbase (well, just me) adored. I was the Jerry Krause that Jerry Krause always wanted to be.

And then, in the summer of 2027, I got duped, much like Mr. Krause, with the sudden retirement of my transcendant shooting guard, Anfernee Weatherspoon. I nearly cried. It affected my life, even disrupting my well-being, the emotions waving over and through me: first anger, then sadness, and lastly depression.

Becoming a Gaming Soccer Dad

That something, consisting of an awkward fusion of two former NBA player names and a 2kb data file of career statistics, could jolt me to "just dumped by hot girlfriend" proportions is shameful, yet ask any true connoisseur of PC text sports games and you'd likely uncover similarly sobering stories.

Do Madden fantatics or NBA Live jumpshot masters fret over their personnel like this? Sure, but not in the same way. In the traditional sports games, you control all the players and your individual skill dictates the result; however, in text simulations your impact is decidedly more indirect. You shift from the fleeting striker cracking goals into the back of the net to...a soccer dad. From the virtual sidelines, similar to the gambling addict down 50 Gs on the roulette table, the ball, is literally out of your hands. You just make your best guess, close your eyes, and hope for the best.

To me, that hands-off approach is the biggest draw for me to text simulations. The draw to text-sims is much more than any console-based game. Perhaps I was burned by too many Michael Vick bootlegs or Steve Nash 35-foot 3-pointers in the past. I have evolved in my sports gaming tastes, aging like many professional athletes do, hanging up the sneakers and tossing on the business suit for the high-pressure seat in the executive suite.

And as a result, I have also discovered a significant shift in how I "experience" sports games. While I mashed away at the buttons on the Playstation 2, I got angry and happy in much the same way an adolescent might: intensely for short periods of time. But with text games, with more time to gnaw over personnel or tactical decisions, I tend to savor my successes more deeply, and, as the Afernee Weatherspoon debacle shows, I am capable of moping and brewing longer than any adult should.

A Man's Game: Not for Boys

My assignment with this article is to explain what exactly makes these sports text games ... sexy. Huh? I know, I know, but think what constitutes sexy (don't confuse it with gorgeous or hot!): sleek, smooth, intelligent, spontaneous, perplexing, and, at least upon first glance, intimidating. Text-sim games aren't for the ditzy, lacking-in-confidence types. They're sexy. They're not the equivalents of the cute-faced cheerleader, twirling her hair and popping bubble gum. Uh-uh. They're well-rounded, voluptuous creatures, who spit out the unfocused sports gamers who reset un-victorious Super Bowls due to "computer cheating." Don't send a boy to play a man's game.

Download the demo of any of the Out of the Park Baseball games, and watch yourself gawking at its endless flow of statistics, menu screens, and toggable variables. When navigating through a season of Front Office Football, among the variables is gauging a player's past injustices, be it losing a starting position or getting cut the previous season. In World of Mixed Martial Arts, some fighters may refuse a match simply due to bad blood with an opponent. Ooooh--these games are catty, too.

The Evolution of Sports Fans and Gamers

The fact that sports text games draw a more intellectual and involved crowd comes as no surprise, as many of these gamers tend to devour statistics like the Russians sip vodka. In my opinion, text-sim gamers are the freakiest of sports gamers, the people who can't get their fix only with a gamepad or a handful of Fantasy League teams. As sports videogames have, more or less, existed for the better part of two decades, it only seems natural to have this progression of gaming intensity.

In a thoughtful article titled "Instant Re-Players - From Sports Fans to Video Game Players: A Cognitive History," (http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/papers/kemper.html) author Tom Kemper charts how the core qualities of a sports fan -- simultaneously calculating hypotheticals, running statistics and player tendencies through their mental calculators -- translate quite well to video gaming. "The sports fan is fluidly moving backward and forward in the narrative of the game, and reformulating values as the game unfolds," he writes. Mr. Kemper goes on to state that sports fans are drawn to Madden, Winning Eleven, etc., because they simulate not only the gameplay but also the experience of watching sports on television, with commentators, analysis, and instant replays.

But alas, aren't we an ever adapting and evolving sports fan? Mr. Kemper's article, presented at an MIT communications conference, appears to be from the early 1990s, long before the Internet, the proliferation of Fantasty Leagues, and our society's sharp decline in attention span. In my opinion, his emphasis on recreating the actual "television" experience is a bit outdated and in need of an update. Other than the most loyally supportive sports fans, how many sports fans sit through entire television telecasts of other team's games? This is unlike our fathers or grandfathers who would park in front of the radio or television and ... just sit and watch a 4-hour baseball game. Or tennis. Or the Olympics. It was the only gig around. Most modern sports fans, adept at refreshing ESPN.com and knowing players only through our Fantasy League rosters, are drawn to more than just the games themselves. Throw in the cultural impact of shows like PTI and the ubiquitous sports talk radio,  and I believe it shows that we as sports fans have become more demanding of our teams, often thinking, given the chance, we could -- damnit! -- do it better ourselves.

Enter text sports games.

The Wikipedia-esque element

As stated, couple the declining interest in the actual games themselves versus the games' results, plus our thirst for Fantasy League sports, and we have a market, albeit a niche one, for text sports games. Currently, only a few companies are producing text games, though that is not very different from the console side, eh? Out of the Park developers produce its annual baseball game, plus a couple of boxing games; Sega/Sports Interactive produce Football Manager and NHL Eastside Hockey Manager; Jim Gindin releases Front Office Football series; and Grey Dog Software releases college football, wrestling, and mixed martial arts games. Other games and companies have come and gone, as well, including a horse racing game.

Due to their existence on the PC, the games are very much subject to change, if not from the developers themselves the players themselves. In this respect, text sports games have a very Wikipedia-element to them. In fact, while console games have tremendous online communities like our own at Operation Sports, they can also be polluted with immature banter and fanboyish blabber.

Text sports games, perhaps because they require, ummm, reading, naturally weed out those types of gamers. Thusly, one of the best parts of divulging oneself into a text game is experiencing, analyzing, and improving the product itself with other thoughtful gamers. In addition, the game developers are usually very active on the message boards. For example, in the buildup to the release of Total Extreme Wrestling 2008 earlier this year, developer Adam Ryland kept a running development journal, (http://www.greydogsoftware.com/forum...ad.php?t=29560) detailing the game's different features, explaining things like the game's five different levels for drug testing.

That said, as much as I've talked up the steep learning curve of these games, sports text simulations have made significant strides over the past five or so years in creating a user-friendly design. Most mimic the look of Web pages, and most consoles games these days pack dense Franchise/Dynasty modes. The crossover would not be as daunting, as it would have in the genre's early days, when you were essentially pouring through robust, Microsoft Excel-sheets. In fact, many games have thorough Help sections -- some even allowing you to always right-click and find an explanation of what to do or what it is. Also, there are active communities which are always willing to help.

Flying Solo on My PC

Still, sports text sims are not for everyone, in the same way some men attract sexy women, while others just look at them, intimidated and confused. Are sports text games sexy? Sure, why not. I prefer to view them as the sports industry's heavy reading, the equivalent of USA Today versus The Wall Street Journal, or Harry Potter versus War and Peace. They're not for everyone, but as a long-time console gamer (I still log insane hours on my PS3, though exclusively online or multiplayer), I have shifted nearly all of my single player time to PC text sims. And, yes, there have been many other Anfernee Witherspoons along the way.

Alas, I like to view sports text sims as the venues to fill my athletics addiction. This belief is especially re-affirmed when games are produced by people like Mr. Gindin, who said he prefers not selling his games at retail because he can tinker with his original product for months, years. In an interview with Gamenikki.com (http://www.gamenikki.com/g3/features/Josh.php?id=10), Mr. Gindin says what many frustrated console gamers would love to hear from their own favorite game's developers:

"There's no pressure to sacrifice function for glitz."