As someone with inside information, I am going to squash this now.
Frank Cooney, who owns The SprotsXchange, NFLDraftScout, and powers my website, FBGRatings.com, is a very close, personal friend of Mr. Madden. He has been on "the bus" several times and the two go way, way back. John actually was never really involved with anything regarding the game. His daughter, in fact, does all of the licensing surrounding his name. Whether the man is around or not (let's hope he still has many years ahead of him) will have no bearing on the use of his name for this video game title. The fact that he has already given the green light to his daughter to license his name at HER discretion means that the game produced by EA will most likely bear his name for as long as EA needs it.
This would fall under the "title recognition" theory as well. The fact of the matter is that John Madden will not even have to be alive among us to still have the video game bear his name and likeness.