Last month, the NFL extended its exclusivity license with EA – originally scheduled to expire after next season – through 2013. You may recall that deal as the thing that killed the NFL 2K series back in 2004, and which ensured that Madden would be the only football title since then to use official NFL teams, players, logos, and all the other things that matter to NFL fans. The Madden series is a juggernaut, having sold 85 million copies since its debut in 1989, making it the 8th most popular game franchise of all time, and 6 million copies for Madden 2010 was considered a down year. Now, EA faces an unfamiliar situation. The clock is ticking down to midnight tonight midnight seven days from today, when the NFL’s Collective Bargaining Agreement with the Players Association is set to expire. So if the team owners insist on a lockout and the 2012 season vanishes to the heartbreak of fans everywhere, what happens to Madden 2012?

The bottom line is that EA will still publish the game, and it will still launch in August. Through the licenses it has with the NFL and the NFLPA, it will still get to use all the players’ names and likenesses. That’s actually not something to be taken for granted. When the CBA expires, so do the rights for almost all other sponsors to use the players for anything. You won’t see Ray Lewis hawking Old Spice on TV anymore, certainly not in his capacity as a Baltimore Raven, and probably not at all. But EA’s deal with the NFLPA – a separate deal from the one with the NFL – extends their rights through 2012. So if the season is a bust, Madden will still ship in a form you would expect. However, it would obviously be absent its week-to-week roster updates.

EA actually talked the NFL into reducing their licensing fees, obviously fearing that a lost season would hurt sales of the game. Other sponsors haven’t been so fortunate to get a break from the NFL, but EA’s deal, signed in 2004, was worth $300 million over five years and has been extended a few times. This is believed to be the hugest license deal behind the TV network contracts, which combined are worth $20.4 billion through 2013. These are the sort of stakes that make the NFL more willing to negotiate terms with sponsors, and are cash cows from which the team owners have guaranteed income, which is considered by many to be insurance in the event of a lockout next season.

I’m actually not so sure that a lost season would be so fatal to Madden 2012′s sales. First of all, it’s one of those titles that the true fans are always, always going to pick up. But also, football is the most popular and most passionately enjoyed sport in America. If, Flying Spaghetti Monster forbid, there were a lost season, it would be nothing less than traumatic to the legions of fans. Sure, there would still be college ball. But I would think the fans might want to cling, almost in a state of denial, to anything NFL they can get. I can see fans defiantly Maddening like they’ve never Maddened before, celebrating their devotion to the football league that’s been taken away from them, while cursing the names of the team owners every time there’s a shot of a stadium luxury box (seriously, if anyone can explain to me how the owners’ grievances are at all justified, I’m all ears). Substituting Madden 2012 for reality could be a silver lining for EA, especially since their license costs have gone down.

I’ve actually never bought a Madden game in my life, but without a 2012 season, I could see myself fighting back resentful sniffles as I sat and played all the games that would never be played for real. Hell, the lost 2012 season could play out exactly how I dreamed it would, and there would be no cold dose of reality to prove otherwise. Maybe the Eagles would even win the Super Bowl.