College President Will Buy Your Textbooks for a Year if You Can Beat Him at Madden NFL

If you’ve ever seen a movie about college, you know that the dean or president or whoever is always the villain, and if you can beat him at his own game, the day will be yours.

And so it is at Columbia College in Missouri, where the villain is the perfectly named President Dr. Dalrymple, and his game is Madden NFL 25.  

Dalrymple (who actually seems like a pretty fun guy and not much of a villain) has issued the video challenge below to students at his small private college, promising to buy one pupil’s textbooks for a year if he or she can win the school’s Madden Challenge on Oct. 17 and then defeat the president in a one-on-one showdown.

How big of a prize is on the line here? A recent survey of students found the average cost of books for an academic year was about $1,200. Of course, there’s no way to quantify the value of knowing the president had to cut a check for your books himself. (If he also had to carry your books to your classes for a week, turnout for the challenge would probably triple.)

The audio production on the “epic trash talk” video isn’t the best, but you have to give Dalrymple points for zingers like: “You can play as any team you’d like—the St. Louis Rams, the Dallas Cowboys, the Chicago Bears. You can even choose a professional team.”

Since students will be competing on last season’s copy of Madden (not the new Madden 2015), it’s doubtful this is a paid partnership with Electronic Arts. But we’ve put in a call to the college to find out and will update if we hear back.



Arian Foster and Marshawn Lynch Play Their Own Fathers in Hilarious Ad for Madden 25

EA Sports goes back to the future with this dumb-in-a-funny-way spot by ad agency Heat for Madden 25. In the '80s, we're told, two guys playing an early version of the football video game decided to spawn offspring whom they'd be able to use in the game somewhat. Thus were born current Houston Texans running back Arian Foster and Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch. (The fathers, "Darian Foster" and "Marshawn Lynch Sr.," are played, of course, by Foster and Lynch themselves.) It's a somewhat convoluted concept that comes across as well done, right on target for sports and video game obsessives, and a nice way to celebrate the Madden franchise's 25th anniversary—even if the kids' gym workouts are over the top in a way that feels a little like Old Spice's Terry Crews was their personal trainer. Credits after the jump.

CREDITS
Client: EA Sports' Madden 25

Agency: Heat
Creative Directors: Warren Cockrel, Anna Rowland
Senior Art Director: Mark Potoka
Senior Copywriter: Ben Salsky
Content Producer: Vera Kacurova
Account Director: Eddie Garabedian
Senior Strategist: Daniel Teng

Production Company: Hungry Man
Director: Wayne McClammy
Executive Producer: Dan Duffy
Line Producer: Rachel Curl

Post Company: Arcade Edit
Editor: Christjan Jordan
Executive Producer: Damian Stevens

Visual Effects Company: The Mill
Visual Effects Supervisor: John Leonti

Music Company: Beacon Street Studios
Composer: Andrew Feltenstein