Last week, the Madden community found out who the greatest player of all time is. Even if you were to separate what seems to be two short generations – PlayStation 2 and next-gen – there is no doubt that the greatest is Problem.

He cemented that status by winning the 2009 Madden Challenge championship, his second in three years. He's the only player to win two Madden Challenge titles; add the three other regional titles, and he ties Big Gene for most Madden Challenge tournaments won overall.

Oh, and let's not forget that he won a regional on the opening weekend for four consecutive years, which is also a record.

This guy could have stopped in 2007 when he won loads of money at all of the events, capped with his first Madden Challenge championship. Others would have stopped for sure. But I think he knew there was more to play for, including the distinction of greatest of all time.

Greatness was on the line and he captured it. And he did it with a punishing defense.

People that don't follow Madden see competitive play as 42-38, lots of throwing, lots of touchdowns, lots of trash talking. But when they see Problem, sometimes they get confused.

This is the best player in the nation? And he barely wins 14-3? And he doesn't yell and scream after every 2-yard run?

Yup.

I remember talking to Problem a long time ago about how he visions a match taking place. If I remember correctly, he envisions the situations of handcuffing his opponent's offense. From there, he wills himself to capture moments of success. If he knows he can hold an opponent to three points, a 7-3 final works.

I didn't truly understand this until I went to the Orlando Madden Challenge – and I had seen and been covering his tournaments for about four years. In his first six games, he gave up a total of 20 points; four games were shutouts.

Against Jet Steele in the Finals Tournament last week, he couldn't get a touchdown after four possessions. That didn't matter. He held Jet to just three points and took a 9-3 lead, which soon ballooned to 22-3 thanks to interceptions and third-down stops.

For all that he's done against his competitors, I'm starting to wonder whether he's the most dominant North American player in a tournament game. Before you say Ken, Isai only cared some of the time. We could go for days about JSB battling everyone. And I'll let someone else tell me whether fRoD is in this discussion. The answer to this probably won't be known for a while, when whatever next generation steps in and plays their games of choice, and we can look back at this current generation of players and games.

With that in mind, if we could list the five greatest Madden players of all time, who would they be? The community has barely started to talk about it, now that the top position has been sealed. Most believe the No. 2 spot is also locked in -- that would be Big Gene. After that? There's a load of players all with championship credentials.

I'd probably go:

• Problem
• Big Gene
• Sandman
• Fool
• Chow

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