Big news today that John Madden’s retiring from broadcasting.

My friend in EA Tiburon called me today to ask how the job hunt is going, and I asked him about the office reaction with the announcement, if they knew the big news in advance.  He’s not on the Madden team, so he told me he only heard about it on SportsCenter.

Will this shake things up for EA’s biggest US franchise?  Maybe yes, maybe no.  It’s complicated, but either way, a change won’t be seen for years.  John Madden and EA renewed an unspecified multi-year contract most recently in 2005.  Unspecified in length, unspecified in compensation.  That said, he takes in at least eight figures.  Yeah, that still a pretty wide-open range of numbers.

Everything else written from here on is hearsay and cannot be attributed to any individual employee or representative of the opinion of the company as a whole.

There are many within the organization who want to oust Madden from the game series.  He’s expensive, and many football fans see him as a joke who doesn’t contribute anything worthwhile.

However, John Madden is the brand.  The football game series is one of the most mainstream and most recognizable in not just the US but the world over, and I can assure you there is a sizable enough fan base who, despite the in your face branding, is ignorant that EA has anything to do with the game and only know the “Madden” brand.  It would be a tremendous risk to remove his name from the franchise and thus confuse millions of potential buyers who may not understand that an “EA NFL Football 20XX” game is a direct continuation of the series they’ve always known and loved.

But!  EA holds the exclusive rights to the NFL until 2012.  If, at any point between now and then, they care to experiment with rebranding, there would still only be one choice for an officially licensed football game on the market, Madden name or no.