I’m ashamed of myself.

Here I am, a 30-year-old married man — a full decade-plus removed from my high school days — and yet I still can’t shake the itch. I can’t explain it, I’m not proud of it and I feel really pretty disgusted with myself for my bad habit.

But considering that I’m not strong enough to fight my addiction, I just have to give into it. To kick an addiction, the first thing you have to do is admit you have a problem. The second thing you have to do is be willing to change.

I’m not.

I’m going to keep playing John Madden Football whether it makes me feel good about myself or not.

What is it about this game — this silly little video game — that has gotten into so many people’s blood?

Thursday morning I waited impatiently for the clock to strike 10 in the morning so I could go buy the latest edition of EA Sports’ brilliant new addition to the classic Madden series. I was sickened by my own excitement. Like I said, I’m not a kid anymore. These sorts of things shouldn’t really put a hop in my step.

But it does. And when 10 a.m. rolled around, I was at a local electronics store, shelling out $64.64 for the "collectors edition" of Madden 2005. I could have gone for the cheaper version, but after spending literally hundreds — actually, it took me five years to get through college, so it’s probably in the thousands — of hours playing the game over the years, I figured dropping a little more cash for a nostalgic turn on my PlayStation2 was worth the extra scratch.

I had thought of making up all kinds of excuses for why I was at the store the second it opened to get my hands on a video game. I thought about some elaborate story I could regale the cashier with, talking about how I wanted to surprise my son Alex with the game because he had worked so hard in the yard during the summer and because I was proud of him for doing so well in his summer reading courses. That should get the cashier to smile and throw him or her off the scent of my freakishness.

Of course, the simple fact that I would think of such a story — Did I mention that in real life, much to my mother’s chagrin, I don’t have a son? Or a daughter, for that matter? — makes me even more of a freak. When I mentioned that I might trot out a story for the cashier, my wife just shook her head.

I’ve always loved football video games, all the way back to when I was a kid. I can remember one Christmas Eve during the dark, pre-Madden days when my father and I were amazed at a new Atari game I had received in which you could tell all four — FOUR!! — of your linemen which way to block. That Christmas we were snowed in the house and couldn’t get out of our driveway, so we were just stuck at home. Just me and my father playing a video game. It is one of my happiest memories as a child.

Maybe that’s why this freakish love of video football games is so ingrained in me. I’ve graduated from Atari football to Tecmo Bowl to Madden in all its glorious forms, and the love affair doesn’t seem to be lessening. If anything, it’s just getting stronger.

But here’s the thing. I noticed at the electronics store that I wasn’t alone. There was a big table set up in the front of the store with accessories and hint books for the game, and there was a whole group of guys milling around, all looking for Madden 2005. I walked into the store at 10:04 – that’s four minutes after the store opened — and I got what I believe may have been the last available "collectors edition." The "collectors edition" features three older versions of the game to go along with the 2005 version and includes some other bonus features. And I think I got the last one.

A couple of other guys looked at me enviously because I had gotten to the copy first, and I started to think to myself, "See, this is why the terrorists hate us. They live in the blazing desert and live in cave hideouts. Americans can walk into a Best Buy and be the subject of dirty looks for picking up a video game."

In my shame of not only being a 30-year-old man buying the game for myself — actually, there were a couple of other guys who looked older than me who seemed to be doing the same thing — I decided not to trot out the story about the fictional Alex and his fictional summer reading class. I decided I was just going to step up and be a man and not worry about what anybody thought of me.

So I promptly went to the cashier, avoided eye contact at all costs and quietly paid for the game before putting my head down and shuffling to the door. I was stopped by a security guard who removed an alarm tag and exclaimed, "Wow, you got the 'collectors edition.' We don’t have many of these."

I thought about telling him that I had been on board with Madden since the early 1990s, but instead, I just nodded, smiled, took the game back and walked out the door.

I spent the rest of Thursday reminding myself just how much I suck for being so jacked about a stupid video game. But you want to know something? Playing the game still fills me with joy and excitement and happiness, three things that everybody should feel every single day. Playing Madden 2005 only has me more excited for the upcoming season, and it has done it in a way that real live preseason football can’t. Madden takes me back to my childhood and gets me excited about the purity of the game.

Forget all the holdouts and whining stars of today’s NFL. It’s the game that matters most, not the things that go on around it. Of course, the fine folks at EA Sports have incorporated all the off-the-field business aspects of the NFL into the video game over the years, something that I find to be entertaining as well. But the game still is the draw, which is exactly what it will be in the NFL for as long as people itch for the next fall Sunday to roll around.

So I stand before you a 30-year-old freak, someone who is a little less ashamed of himself than he was when he started this column. I realize where this hop in my step comes from and why John Madden Football continues to be such a touchstone in my life.

The thing is, a lot of you out there know exactly the feeling I’m talking about. Sometimes, it’s good to be a freak.