Vote For Madden ’12 Cover Athlete

This year's Madden NFL videogame will rely on you to help choose its cover athlete this year.

That's right, you can vote for your favorite NFL player.  The one with the most votes will be on the cover of Madden '12 when it's released in August.

This might sound a great idea on paper but I have my doubts about the execution.

Here's how it works.  Each NFL team has a player representative.  Fans are being asked to go espn.com to vote.  It's a bracket-style tournament that started on Monday and runs until April 26th.

Some of the big names are there such as Michael Vick, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers and Matt Ryan.

But Danny Woodhead? He's the Patriots standout guy?  Really?

Carolina's player rep is Jordan Gross.  Who the hell is that?  Well, he's an offensive lineman.  An offensive lineman as the Cover Athlete for Madden?  Wow.

The Seattle Seahawks are so bad they don't even have a player that's worthy enough.  The "12th Man" is their player rep.  The 12th man!  That's right, a digitized version of three fat fans that look like they're wearing Vanilla Sky masks.

EA Sports released a statement saying:

• Candidates from each NFL team were selected and seeded based on a variety of criteria including on-the-field performance during the 2010 NFL season, their visibility within their franchise and community, and their personal career journey.

That's a garbage excuse for choosing players that have made little impact on the football field.  Garbage - just like this game in the past few years - garbage!

Click thumbnail for full size of the bracket:

Bracket image is a screenshot from ESPN.com