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The EA SPORTS Madden NFL Franchise
as a Teaching Tool for Business Students
Paul Swangard, Woodard Family Foundation Fellow
Managing Director, James H. Warsaw Sports Marketing Center,
Lundquist College of Business, University of Oregon
Program Goal
To develop a teaching module that leverages existing videogame technology to better teach basic business concepts to undergraduate business students.
Why the EA SPORTS Madden NFL Franchise?
The NFL-themed videogame provides a compelling software platform that will resonate with the target audience. The game already includes play modes that
could be utilized to develop a basic business simulation that is often used in business school curriculums.
Curriculum Details
The pro-of-concept project is a single term/semester module for undergraduate business students in the Fall of 2008. The course will include foundational
lectures on many of business aspects of the NFL including marketing, management, accounting and finance issues. The featured component will be a team-based
activity in which multiple student groups will become owners of the same NFL team. Using the franchise mode in Madden NFL, students will make a variety of
business and player decisions and then simulate each week of competition. Results each week will provide the instructor topics to connect the simulation
back to the business curriculum. At the conclusion of the season, student teams will all have finished the season with different win-loss records,
different player personnel issues and different business results. Those results provide a wonderful context to discuss the role of business decision-making
in the business of sports.
National Rollout
The vision of the pilot is to create a module that could be rolled out to other business schools and linked to other NFL franchises. The EA SPORTS Madden NFL
Franchise provides scalability and local relevance to accelerate the rollout as appropriate.
Timeline
June 2008 WSMC staff meet EA SPORTS Madden NFL team in Florida to launch project
June September 2008 Curriculum development
September December 2008 Pilot class delivered at the University of Oregon
January 2009 Pilot review
Spring 2009 Additional schools/franchises identified
Fall 2009 Second phase rollout to additional schools
Program Support
The project has received the generous support of the following organizations:
Downloads
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