Now EA [] comes groveling, offering the NFL a sweetheart deal to give them an extra year to their monopoly, in exchange for less royalties from a game they expect to not sell as well. Newsflash to the NFL and the NFLPA: Madden 12 will sell just fine, even if you don't have a season. Madden will become the season for a lot of fans sick of your shenanigans. Hell, it could wind up being one of Madden's best season's yet, and you just gave EA permission to keep more of that money and have another year on their contract. If these are your negotiating skills, then I really wish I was the head of the player's union right now.

Of course, maybe they're on to something. The NFLPA is holding EA to their contract, as they should. Maybe the player's should be looking a little more closely at that deal with EA as well. What would happen if the NFLPA decided to not continue working with EA and refused to let player names and attributes be used in a game that had the rest of the NFL license? I'll tell you, EA would be screwed, and by extension, so would the NFL. The Madden deal is a huge revenue stream for both of them. What it seems like could happen, is the NFL, NFLPA and EA could wind up in a Mexican standoff. But this time, there's a fourth party and all guns are pointed at them: the fans.

I am not in favor of these exclusive sports licenses. If EA and 2K and whoever else could make competing NFL games, we would have seen some serious advancement in the genre by now. Or at least some options for people who don't want to play one company's interpretation of the sport. It seems like everything the NFL has been doing, from signing this exclusive EA deal to the cockamamie plans to expand the season to 18 games is really only about one thing: money. Personally I'm tired of it and I'll be buying my overpriced beer and nose-bleed seats from purveyors of rounder ball sports from now on.