Madden uses bracket-style contest allowing fans to choose cover athlete

The NCAA Tournament might be winding down to a finish, but the Madden video game has caught a bad case of March Madness.

While the NFL and NFL Players’ Association argue about minor details such as divvying up billions of dollars and whether an 18-game regular season would cripple 80 percent of their players within 10 years of retirement, Electronic Arts isn’t going to let something like the lack of an actual football season get in the way of producing their most popular video game.

Aside from being recognized as one of the most profitable video games in the market, Madden is known for the infamous curse befalling the athlete who graces the cover.

As the old proverb states, there only are three things one can count on: death, taxes and the Madden curse … or something like that.

Whether it’s Michael Vick breaking his leg after appearing on the cover of the 2004 edition or Donovan McNabb tearing his anterior cruciate ligament and meniscus in his right knee in 2006, the curse has been well documented and has countless believers.

This year Madden has decided to remove some of the blame from themselves and put it squarely on the American public, as they have partnered with ESPN to allow fans to vote, bracket-style, on this year’s cover athlete.

The curse has reached such proportions that Terry Foster of the Detroit News wrote a column urging Detroit Lions fans to refrain from voting for defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh, because the organization is cursed enough as it is.

Fortunately for Lions fans, Suh didn’t make it past the first round of voting, losing to Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, as the competition just entered the second round.

I commend the brain trust at Electronic Arts for taking the discussion away from the looming lockout and coming up with a creative and outside-the-box way to interact with fans and market the game.

My only complaint resides with the cast of players fans are limited to choosing among.

For example, the Carolina Panthers were represented by offensive lineman Jordan Gross, hardly a household name.

The Seattle Seahawks representative wasn’t even a player, but their fans know him as “The 12th Man”. The person on the cover should be someone gamers can’t wait to try out on the digital field. What would “The 12th Man” offer, lessons on how to cheer? We know how to cheer.

That said, kudos to Madden for keeping their game in the news and finding a way to turn March and April into football months.

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