Jackson has become the seventh running back named as a Mut 22 coins cover athlete. He follows Eddie George (Madden 2001), Marshall Faulk (Madden 2003), Shaun Alexander (Madden 2007), Peyton Hillis (Madden 12), Adrian Peterson and Barry Sanders (both Madden 25).
Before the cover unveiling, The Undefeated's Aaron Dodson caught up with Jackson to talk about the Tecmo Bowl days, how Bo Knows came to life and his Madden return and much more.
Edited to improve clarity and length.
What does it mean to you to be a cover athlete for the sport, 35 years after the start of your career?
This has been in development for a long time. The moment had to be the right one for my brand. I worked with the Madden team to get things sorted out, complete all the i's connect all the dots -- once we got that done, the rest was just going along with it. I knew that somewhere in my past I'd done something right so that I could be considered one of the great athletes from the past thirty years back. Madden continues to believe in me to think of doing something like this.
Your history with video games goes to 1989, when you were the mainstay on the stage at the Tecmo Bowl. What was it like to see yourself as a virtual person back then?
I'm still imagining myself playing as a player in the Tecmo Bowl. I'm still playing that video game. I've got the machine that I can play the game on. But it's in a box in storage. It's iconic. It really makes me feel good that cheap Madden 22 coins I have grown men aged 40 and older saying"Hey, my friend and I were involved in the most intense conflict of our lives, because we both wanted to be you in the Tecmo Bowl when we were young. So our parents took the game, and my dad put it away in his tool cabinet. It was not playable for a whole month since the fight was so intense. I hear it a lot. At exhibitions for sports memorabilia, I see people will come up with this video game. They say, 'I still owned the device to play it on. My kids play it. My grandkids love it ... and everybody still argues about who is gonna take on the role of Bo Jackson.' Tecmo Bowl ... that was an enormous amount of technology in the past. It's now viewed and it's like, "Wow it's an old-fashioned.'
