EA Sports Announces 'Madden NFL 23' Cover Athlete

By Brian Jones

The cover for Madden NFL 23 has been revealed. On Wednesday, EA Sports announced that the legendary coach John Madden returns to the cover of the video game. This is the first time Madden has been on the cover of the Madden NFL franchise since 2000 and comes five months after he died at the age of 85. 

While Madden is known for being a successful coach and broadcaster, he is also considered by many a video game icon. The first Madden NFL game was launched in 1988, and the franchise became the top NFL video game on the market. Back in January, ESPN spoke to Madden about the history of the video game, and he took a look back at the earlier version of the game. 

"The first memories that I have were with Trip Hawkins — when he came to me and he wanted to do a computer game," Madden said. "He impressed me by the fact that he graduated from Harvard and made up his own major, and the major was computer games. And I thought anyone who could use a computer in those days was a genius. You know, the word genius went with computer. And so, I said, I'll give him a chance because I was looking for a type of computer thing that I could use for coaching."

Madden also talked about the evolution of the game over the years. "If it's in the game of pro football, we wanted it to be in the video game," he said. "When I was first involved, it was drawing up plays and players. I let them have my playbook and gave them an understanding of what a playbook is. Then it became a thing where we would pick up players, their words and stuff like that as we went along. But I think the biggest thing was when we received the film from the NFL. Until then we had to go get the plays and the offense and the nomenclature from different cultures."

Madden was the head coach of the Oakland Raiders from 1969 to 1978 and led the team to a Super Bowl title in 1976. After a coaching career, Madden went on to be a broadcaster for ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox and won 14 Sports Emmy Awards.  A release date for Madden NFL 23 has not been announced yet, but a full trailer will be released on Thursday, Jun. 2.

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