The Monkey Shack

I work as a marketing researcher, and I love sports. So when I saw the results for a recent online survey conducted by EA Sports and the University of Oregon’s Warsaw Sports Marketing Center, I was naturally intrigued. Then I saw this fact from the survey:

Madden video game players are, on average, "60% more knowledgeable about the game of football” than non-Madden playing NFL fans. Amazing! Now I have proof that when I play Madden I am only really in training for my future NFL head coaching job. This is great!

83% of Madden players correctly knew what it meant to bring an "8th man into the box", compared to only 47% of non-Madden players. Similarly, 59% of Madden players knew what the purpose is the purpose of sending a man in motion before an offensive play, compared to 19% of non-Madden players.

The survey also showed a correlation between the total hours of playing Madden NFL per week and football IQ, as scores increased the more a gamer played Madden NFL. A Madden NFL gamer who rarely plays the game attained an average score of 20.4, less than one hour a week scored 20.9, one to five hours per week scored 21.4, six to ten hours per week scored 22.4 and a Madden NFL gamer who plays more than ten hours a week earned an average score of 22.7.

The only bad news? This comes on the same day as another study conducted by BYU which showed that video games, even non-violent titles like Madden, is closely correlated with "lower relationship quality." I guess I'll turn the XBOX off after all.