And your mom told you to stop playing video games.

Now comes a study from the EA Sports and the University of Oregon’s Warsaw Sports Marketing Center, that says playing Madden makes you smarter.

Smarter about football, anyway.

According to the survey of 15,000 NFL fans and Madden players, those that play Madden are 60 percent more knowledgeable about the NFL than those who don’t play.

Madden players got the answers to 22 of 36 questions correct, compared with only 14 by the non-Madden players.

Is there a better marketing tool for EA and its Madden franchise, now celebrating its 20th year, and the NFL? EA’s challenge is to convince more NFL fans to buy video game consoles.

“We’re making better fans,” EA Sports President Peter Moore said. “We deepen their knowledge.”

That, Moore says, should be good for the NFL: “They’re more likely to buy merchandise, more likely to buy NFL Sunday Ticket.”

Madden Bowl XV is being played in Tampa this evening.