I would like to think of myself as pretty smart when it comes to the NFL. I know alot about the history and how the game is played. I have always played the Madden NFL games. Between playing the video game and watching the football games every Sunday on TV, I think I stay well informed on what going on around the league. I keep track of all the stats and transactions around the league.
Sometimes I wonder if I would know as much as I do if I didn't play the video game and only watched the games on TV. To help answer my question I found that Oregon State University conducted a study that tested 15,000 NFL fans. Some of the fans play Madden NFL video games and some didn't.
After reading this article I was pretty impressed with the results of the study. I does show that people who play the Madden NFL video game actually do know more about the NFL. When I think about it I realize that I do learn quite a bit from the games. When your playing the video game, you are learning a lot about how the game is actually played on the field.
Take a few minutes to read this article on the study from the University of Oregon about NFL fans.