Recently I started playing “Backbreaker,” a football game released for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.It’s a fun and engaging alternative to Electonic Art’s “Madden Football” series, and even manages to improve on a few game play issues that have long plagued the more prolific football game.

                  The main problem with “Backbreaker” is that thanks to an exclusivity agreement EA still has with the NFL since 2005, I have to play as the Pirates, Cougars or Assassins and I don’t get to enjoy any actual NFL players or teams.

                  If you’re a serious football fan, this pretty much means Madden is the only game worth playing since 2004 when they acquired the license. This put competitors like the “ESPN NFL 2K” games out to pasture.

                  None of this is new information, and since EA has the rights until 2012, this isn’t going to change anytime soon.

                  Still, it’s interesting to see how game companies have continued to make football games without access to anything from the NFL.

                  Some of them go the route of “Backbreaker” and give you generic team and player names with the option to customize everything, so you can essentially create Brett Favre and his ilk yourself.

                  When “Super Techmo Bowl” received two modern updates with “Techmo Bowl: Kick off” and “Techmo Bowl Throwback” they had to go this route with generic teams, which is interesting when you consider that the original games had the player names and teams.

                  Today though, players can’t destroy the competition with Bo Jackson, thanks to EA’s monopoly.

                  The reason that this is important to players, even those that only care about their annual Madden release, is that this cuts out one of the key aspects to a sound business model; competition.

                  The “Madden” games were at their best when they had to compete with offerings from SEGA and 2K. Without that competition the series has stagnated with games every year that either just update rosters or force in bizarre control changes that only serve to irritate fans.

                  Here’s hoping a change comes about in 2012, because I really want Bo Jackson back in my “Techmo Bowl”.