Electronic Arts announced Wednesday it is teaming up with the NFL Players Association and Discovery Education on a program called EA Sports Madden NFL: Football By The Numbers, aimed at teaching math and science to students between fifth and ninth grades.
The program/plan combines football concepts with math and science principles including physics and probability. One lesson, for example involves throwing the football, broken down by the velocity and angle required to complete each pass. In another lesson, players pretend to be a defensive coordinator, using probability to choose the right play and stop an opponent. The program will kick off on December 1. It's free to any math and science teacher seeking to incorporate Madden into their curriculum.
"We've always strived for Madden NFL to be a teaching tool for the sport of football, and now we're marrying the art of the video game to the science behind our young fans' favorite sport, teaching them both the fundamentals of the sport and the math that fuels it," says Anthony Stevenson, vice president of marketing at EA Sports.