EA Considered Changing Madden 09 Cover Athlete

Coming out of the class action lawsuit that the retired NFL players won against the Player’s Association was an interesting sequence of questioning around Brett Favre being the Madden 09 cover athlete. You can check out the full story at Gamepolitics. Apparently EA had made the decision to put him on the cover before he retired, then when he did they considered switching to someone else. Instead they stuck with him and sculpted the marketing angle of him representing the 20 years of the franchise around that.

(Questioning being made to EA exec Joel Linzner)

Q: Right. And you chose to put on the cover of that a retired player at the time, right?

JL: Uhm, well, Brett Favre at the time we decided to put him on the cover was not retired, had not announced his retirement. He subsequently announced his retirement. We thought about replacing him to have an active player. But the logistics of making the packages are kind of complicated, and we decided to stay with Brett Favre. And I think as most people subsequently know, he revoked his retirement and is currently an active player with the New York Jets.

So at this point it seems likely the cover athlete for Madden 10 has been determined we just won’t know who it is until around the NFL Draft. I just find it somewhat naive to think that EA didn’t plan in advance for the possibility of Favre retiring with his history of waivering back and forth for attention.