Come September 7, when the first Sunday of the NFL's latest season arrives, the league's reigning leaders in sacks (Robert Mathis) and receiving yards (Josh Gordon) will be no-shows. Former All-Pros, Ray Rice and Aldon Smith, likely won't be suiting up for week one, either.

Their absences won't be a result of injury or retirement, which are currently the only ways an athlete's services can be lost in Madden NFL 25.

Instead, commissioner-mandated suspensions will likely keep four of the NFL's star players from competing during -- and beyond -- the league's opening weekend.

Suspensions for unlawful off-the-field behavior continue to dominate sports news, yet they still do not exist in licensed sports video games.
 

Image is everything in the billion-dollar business of professional sports. It is why Playmakers, a fictional pro-football drama, which showed athletes using illegal drugs and physically abusing women, was canceled under pressure from the NFL, despite being the highest-rated event on ESPN, next to the station's live NCAA and NFL telecasts.

"Protecting the shield" is also why late hits, trash talk and pro wrestling maneuvers were removed from 2012's tepid, G-rated NFL Blitz remake. And it's how, against all reality, no amount of hit stick tackles can cause a Goodell-endorsed letter to show up inside a Madden athlete's virtual locker, like they often do for the NFL's hardest hitting defenders.

Because the NFL's chief goal is not just protecting, but also growing, its $10 billion in yearly untaxed income, any line of code or motion captured animation that could possibly suggest to little Johnny and his mother that their favorite athletes are less than saints (the lowercase kind) is being systematically deleted from video games.
 

Electronic Arts' NHL 14 is the only console sports game this decade that has allowed athletes' downtime decisions to impact their gametime performance; the series' otherwise-stale single player experience became much more compelling this year, thanks to these off-ice storylines.

Still, the harshest penalties your created player might face were a slight reduction to his on-ice stamina after partying too hard the night before, or a minor decrease to his shooting stats as a result of signing too many autographs.

These events, disappointingly, were confined to NHL 14's Live the Life mode, leaving the standard, team-building franchise mode feeling comparatively dull.

Franchise mode fans did not have to deal with any difficult off-ice situations, like what the Nashville Predators' faced during their 2012 conference semifinal against the Phoenix Coyotes. Having lost the first two games in Glendale, Ariz., Nashville chose to suspend forwards Alexander Radulov and Andrei Kostitsyn for games three and four, after discovering that the prima donnas had been partying in downtown Scottsdale until 5:00 AM on the morning of Game 2.

The Predators lost that series four games to one, which likely affected the free agency of all-star defenseman, Ryan Suter, who later that summer, signed a 13-year, $98 million contract with current Central Division rival, the Minnesota Wild. The Predators then failed to qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs in their next two seasons, which spurred the departure of head coach Barry Trotz, a former Jack Adams Award finalist.

Misguided Predators fans might say that the franchise's descent into the draft lottery started with those suspensions. In truth, Radulov's and Kostitsyn's suspensions were merely symptoms of team dysfunction, which began when the pair of me-first divas were transplanted into a locker room full of team-first players and coaches, just weeks before the start of the 2012 playoffs.

Locker room health has never been vital to the success of virtual sports teams, but it could become significant, using a simple system governed by three attributes: character, leadership, and will.
 

Players and coaches could be assigned an individual “character” rating, which would determine the likelihood and severity of their off-the-field incidents:

• “A” character -- Never gets into trouble.
• “B” character -- Will make inappropriate remarks to team members and to the media, which hurt the team's morale and the franchise's public perception. Will never do anything offensive enough to warrant a suspension.
• “C” character -- Might have one or two minor incidents in a career, which result in small suspensions.
• “D” character -- Repeat offenders who frequently engage in activities that cause lengthy suspensions.
• “F” character -- Ticking time bombs whose actions will eventually get themselves kicked out of the league.

The “character” rating would be dynamic, meaning it could change throughout a season and over a person's career.

Each player and coach would also have a permanent, unchanging “leadership” attribute, which will determine the chances of that person's “character” rubbing off on other team members:

• “A” leadership -- Can have a significant positive impact on every member of the organization.
• “B” leadership -- Can have a slight positive impact on his side of the ball.
• “C” leadership -- Will have zero impact, positive or negative, on anyone.
• “D” leadership -- Can have a slight negative impact on his side of the ball.
• “F” leadership -- Can have a significant negative impact on every member of the organization.

Some players and coaches, however, are naturally stubborn people, who will remain stuck in their ways, and are unwilling to change their character. This can be represented by three different “will” types:

• “Strong Will" -- Their character cannot be influenced by other individuals.
• “Normal Will" -- Their character can be slightly influenced by other individuals.
• “Weak Will" -- Their character can be significantly influenced by other individuals.

Installing these three attributes would enliven sports games' multi-season franchise modes, which typically offer few surprises and provide little drama beyond random injuries and retirements.

Gamers could no longer safely lock up all the league's best athletes to long-term contracts, if many of them have character flaws or a history of trouble-making.
 

That said, signing nothing but “high character” guys wouldn't automatically yield winning results.

Just look at the Nashville Predators' two previous NHL seasons, which featured plenty of "heart," "grit" and "determination," but not nearly enough talent to consistently win in a competitive Western Conference.

Or consider the 1998 NFL draft, where the Tennessee Titans, desperate for a wide receiver who could keep defensive coverages from focusing on running back Eddie George and tight end Frank Wycheck, selected Utah's Kevin Dyson 16th overall instead of Marshall's Randy Moss, whose collegiate record included multiple jail sentences and a failed drug test.

Dyson finished his seven-year NFL career without any off-the-field incidents, but on the field, he caught only 18 touchdowns.

Moss, who was taken by the Minnesota Vikings at pick number 21, scored 17 touchdowns in the first season of what would become a Canton-worthy, 14-year career.

Gambling on "high-skill," "low-character" players can just as easily backfire, as the Tennessee Titans learned when they chose cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones sixth overall in the 2005 NFL draft; Jones' nine-year career has produced more games lost to suspension (22) than it has interceptions (8).
 

Billion-dollar enterprises like the NFL and NHL continue to do everything in their power to pretend that villains like Adam Jones and Alexander Radulov do not exist.

Perhaps all sports leagues could benefit, by bringing in the millions of gamers who view their products as boring, if this lawyer-friendly, shareholder-approved approach to game design was suspended, and sports gaming's villains were reinstated.