Why spend money if you don't have to? It makes no sense for a company to throw down any amount of significant capital to secure exclusive rights for a product unless they feel threatened. What do you think, EA has enough spare cash laying around to just throw down a third of a billion just to have pro names in their game? You think they're sitting up there in their corporate office going, "Gee, we have so much money and we don't know how to spend it?" Come on now, no company in the world is going to drop that much money for a flight of fancy. The fact that cool cat suggests otherwise is ludicrous. They spent enough money to build a new EA HQ skyscraper in any city in the world, just for rights to the names of NFL players. Think about that.
Since they've secured said rights, the Madden games have been complete . My point isn't that EA made a poor business decision, it's that they know idiots like cool cat will defend their product to the death no matter how horrible it is, so they will just keep cranking out minor improvements or actually worse gameplay year after year and people keep buying it. They had to secure rights, because 2k was destroying them in ratings and quickly gaining in sales. EA would rather buy out with a contract than actually spend the time it takes to make a stellar football game.