About the Creator

The creator openly acknowledges how much early WAU depended on favoritism toward Mac Walls. He wanted Mac to be the GOAT while leaving enough competition for an apparently close argument. Some challengers received weaknesses, scandals or unfavorable outcomes that kept them from overtaking him.

That preference influenced the original McCauley Rules, Jaxson’s early cheating storyline, Levi Cross’s cheating, Cody Harrison’s career and departure from Seattle, and early historical GOAT rankings.

Making Mac the consensus GOAT is now the creator’s greatest creative regret. Mac received enormous achievements, longevity and few meaningful scandals. Loaded supporting teams, seasons without playoff appearances and the absence of a three-peat could have complicated his reputation, but the creator did not originally use those weaknesses effectively against him.

In retrospect, he considers Mac too perfect. Despite Mac’s importance as the first character, the creator rates his character development as middle-of-the-road.

Starting over, the creator would make Matthew Hall the original GOAT, then give Jaxson Walls or Cooper Maddox an opportunity to take that position. This is his retrospective preference; the existing careers and rankings remain the published history.

Old Jaxson had become so dominant that his accomplishments threatened to settle the GOAT debate. The creator still wanted Mac first. The McCauley Rules helped give the fictional public a reason not to treat Jaxson’s achievements as an automatic claim to universal recognition.

“I made Old Jaxson so insane he would just be G.O.A.T… I didn’t want him to be G.O.A.T, I wanted Mac so that’s why I added them.”

— The creator

Player safety was not the original creative motivation.

The rules survived three complete WAU rebuilds. Asked whether they eventually became independent of their original purpose, the creator answered:

“They didn’t, I just expanded the idea.”

— The creator

He kept expanding the idea because he liked the storyline it produced. Its scale and consequences developed over time; they were not all planned at the beginning.

Jaxson is the creator’s favorite character and the one he considers his best creation. He also thinks Jaxson receives disproportionate attention in WAU discussions. Jaxson has more memorable quotations and interview material than most of the cast, which helps keep him at the center of those conversations.

The first Jaxson was almost mythological: eleven championships, very little public dialogue and only about three occasions on which he spoke. His overwhelming obsession with Mac ultimately destroyed him.

The creator became dissatisfied with how little personality existed beyond football and that fixation.

The next version had much of modern Jaxson’s recognizable personality, but Arizona took Mac’s place as his obsession. He was deeply insecure and bitter about the Cardinals not drafting him.

The creator strongly disliked this version. Changing the target had left the same problem: an obsession remained central to Jaxson’s identity.

Modern Jaxson is arrogant, combative, passionate, relentlessly argumentative, intensely petty and extremely confident. He can be humble, although football discussions rarely bring that side out.

The creator distinguishes pettiness from obsession. Jaxson still holds grudges, including against Arizona, but they do not occupy his entire life. He can hate Mac without being consumed by him.

Jaxson overtook Mac as the creator’s favorite when character interviews became a significant part of WAU. His interviews were the most enjoyable to read and the easiest to write. The creator particularly values the contradictions in his personality.

Jaxson was not deliberately designed as a fictional version of the creator.

In the original version, Jaxson wanted or orchestrated both Spygate and Bountygate. The creator attributes much of that decision to Mac bias: making Jaxson a cheater supplied an easy argument against his GOAT claim.

He later disliked the contradiction between Jaxson demanding respect and personally arranging cheating that undermined his legitimacy. An intermediate revision made Jaxson completely innocent. He neither wanted nor participated in the cheating, removing much of his responsibility.

Jaxson was already hated, controversial, arrogant and highly visible. The creator wanted many people to hear about Bountygate and immediately assume Jaxson had organized it. His intended public reaction was:

“Obviously HE would cheat.”

— The creator

Jaxson’s silence strengthened that assumption. Public suspicion and his actual role were different parts of the story: he knew about Camden’s operation and protected him, but did not confess to organizing it or deliberately arrange to take the blame.

The original objective was to damage Jaxson’s reputation enough to prevent him from becoming the unquestioned GOAT. The final revision gave the creator a more believable conflict involving loyalty, continued success, cheating and public assumptions. That conflict developed through the revisions.

Cody Harrison was conceived as a major challenger to Mac. An earlier version reached approximately fifteen Super Bowls. The creator decided that was excessive, particularly while he still wanted Mac to remain the GOAT.

Mac needed a compelling head-to-head argument against Cody. The desired result was a Super Bowl victory over him. Seattle and Tampa Bay were both in the NFC during Cody’s Seattle career, so the creator needed a believable move that would put Cody on the other side of the championship game.

Cody’s departure for San Diego served that purpose. The ownership conflict involving head coach Caleb Walls supplied a reason for him to leave.

The Seattle storyline expanded into franchise dysfunction, conflict with ownership, organizational decline and lasting hostility toward the man who would become NFL commissioner. Those became parts of the history surrounding the move. The original objective was arranging a Super Bowl matchup that strengthened Mac’s GOAT argument.

Hunter Walls was originally intended to be the creator’s final character. He wanted to finish WAU on a high note with someone capable of becoming its greatest player.

Hunter inherited Old Jaxson’s fixation on surpassing Mac’s legacy, but the creator took him in a different direction. Old Jaxson could not see beyond the obsession. Hunter eventually recognized that he could move on rather than spend his life persuading everyone he was superior.

Early WAU had spent years establishing Mac as the consensus GOAT. Having the fictional public suddenly abandon that position when Hunter surpassed him would have felt artificial to the creator.

His solution was to put his former favoritism into the public itself. Mac’s defenders would keep protecting his reputation even when later quarterbacks achieved more. Hunter could surpass records and build a superior résumé without automatically receiving public approval.

This was a practical continuity repair. The creator recognized that his earlier preference had become embedded in the universe and needed a believable way for opinion to evolve. He did not originally plan Mac’s protected status as an exploration of sports mythology.

Levi Cross was deliberately made an extraordinary football player without becoming the unquestioned GOAT. Early Mac bias influenced that decision too.

The creator wanted something different from another arrogant player who talked too much. He chose to make Levi a genuine villain: someone already good enough to win legitimately who chose to cheat anyway. The PED storyline was not intended to mean Levi needed drugs to become great.

Levi was conceived as a villain. Gunner Rhodes occupied a different role as the more imposing final boss. The creator intended those roles to remain distinct.

Jason Harris was inspired by Nolan Ryan: exceptional longevity, extraordinary statistical production, an intimidating competitive reputation and notorious confrontations. His win–loss record does not fully capture those accomplishments.

Ryan never won a Cy Young Award. Harris never won NFL MVP. That parallel was part of the creator’s design.