College Football 25: could this be the US’s most anticipated sports video game ever?

SPorts Video game releases are usually dull affairs. New versions come out every year, and aside from roster updates and a few gameplay tweaks, they don’t change all that much from edition to edition. Unlike Grand Theft Auto aficionados, sports game fans don’t plan midnight release parties.

But EA Sports College Football 25, which launches worldwide on July 19, is no typical game. It may be the most anticipated sports video game release ever in the U.S. And to understand why, we have to go back to the beginning.

EA Sports started out making college football video games all the way back in 1993 on the Sega Genesis. Other studios would venture into college football, but by the late 2000s, EA Sports’ NCAA Football franchise had established itself as the market leader. The games were generally well-received by critics and commercially, with the latest iteration, NCAA 14, It is reported that around 1.5 million units will be sold.

But the NCAA Football franchise had a problem that had nothing to do with critics or consumers: the courts. (The terminology surrounding the game can be confusing to non-college sports fans. The NCAA is the governing body of college sports in the United States. The NCAA Football franchise takes its name from the organization.)

Franchises like Madden, NBA2K or EA Sports FC negotiate rights not only with professional leagues, but also with their respective athletes’ unions, allowing the game to display the likenesses of teams and athletes. But college students are not defined as professional athletes, and the NCAA’s policy in the 2010s prohibited players from earning financial compensation for their skills.

While previous NCAA Football releases featured real teams, such as the Ohio State Buckeyes or Florida Gators, the athletes were simply referred to as QB #7 or RB #21, rather than their real names.

But you didn’t have to be Hercule Poirot to figure out that, for example, QB #15 in NCAA Football 2009 just happened to be the same height, weight, hair color, and skills as Tim Tebow, the real-life quarterback of the Florida Gators.

The athletes found out, too. In July 2009, former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon led a class-action lawsuit brought by college athletes who alleged that the NCAA, EA Sports and the Collegiate Licensing Company had used their likenesses illegally and without compensation.

EA Sports and CLC reach settlement out of courtwhile the NCAA appealed after losing the lawsuit. Instead of making EA Sports pay athletes for the use of their likeness, The NCAA decided to cancel its licensing agreement with EA Sports in 2013with multiple colleges and major schools quickly following suit. The franchise had never had real players, but now it would have to do without real teams or conferences, and without brands pulling their sponsorships due to the game’s narrower reach. EA Sports felt the series was no longer viable: NCAA 14 was the final game in the series.

Until now. In February 2021, EA Sports released a tweet that shook the college football world to its core. The game came back.

In 2020, it became clear to leaders in the college sports industry that the NCAA’s strict policy against athletes cashing in on their name, image and likeness rights wouldn’t stand up to political and legal scrutiny. In July 2021, the NCAA formally changed the policy, allowing athletes to earn money by appearing in commercials, promoting products on social media and, yes, appearing in video games. With a way for athletes to earn money for their participation, schools quickly agreed to participate in the revamped NCAA Football series. More than 11,000 players, real players, are set to appear in this year’s game.

As the game’s launch date approaches, colleges across the US are getting excited. Mississippi State Hosts Launch Party in the 9,000-seat basketball arena, where fans are invited to play the game with current and former Bulldog athletes. The main NIL collective that UCLA supports is organizing a similar event. This also applies to smaller programs, such as Georgia Southern and State of San Diego. Other schools, like Boise State, connected to the video game to announce new uniforms for their soccer teams. EA will also have developers on RVs to install Topical scripts for the real teams in the fictional world, so that the student-athletes who play games late into the night can also do their film study (the real playbooks are not available to regular gamers).

These events are meant to bridge the different groups that make up the College Football 25 community, from new fans to fans approaching 40 who still remember the franchise’s past. If you’re wondering why your coworker booked a last-minute vacation or is slow to respond on Slack, they’re probably focused on taking North Texas to new heights in dynasty mode. There is a group of dormant gamers and NCAA fanatics who haven’t picked up a controller since the game hit shelves in 2014. But the passion for the game remains; over 120,000 people tuned in to a fictional National Championship streaming on Twitch during the pandemic.

That deep love for the franchise extends to the people making the game. Christian McLeod, EA Sports’ director of production, said in June that the entire development process “has been a labor of love for everyone on the team.”

The project is especially rewarding for McLeod because he chose a less traditional career path. McLeod, a self-proclaimed college video game “diehard” since the early 1990s, originally worked as a chemical engineer and wrote about sports video games on the side. Developers liked his work and eventually contacted him to join the NCAA football team as a designer. Other prominent figures in the project’s development and design also came from outside the games industry.

“I really believe that if you’re really passionate about something, especially in the games industry, you have to bring that passion with you,” McLeod said. “We can teach you how to be a designer. We can teach you how to be a producer. We can’t teach you passion.”

That passion fueled the momentum behind the game’s return. When the series was shut down, a fan group launched a mod called College Football Revamped, which continued to update the game on PC. Other game studios reportedly tried to shut the project down with lawsuits. Instead, EA hired several people from the Revamped team to help create College Football 25.

The new edition isn’t just for fans in the US. For the first time ever, fans outside of North America can easily play the game without having to worry about region locked hardware.

One such avid fan is Ben Parker, from Bishop’s Stortford in England. Parker told me he first discovered American football through the Madden series.

“I was already a huge football fan, but Madden really taught me that there’s so much more to American football than meets the eye… it’s like a human version of chess, which I found fascinating,” Parker says.

Following the NFL made Parker aware of the college game. “I decided to buy a copy of the 2006 Rose Bowl on eBay. That was the year with Vince Young, Reggie Bush, Keith Jackson as the announcer, the setting of the Rose Bowl … it was perfect. And it was just incredible drama to watch, even so many months after the game itself, that I thought, ‘I need to know more about this sport.'”

Parker managed to get his hands on an imported copy of NCAA 2006 on eBay, which he played religiously. Parker and many other Europeans and South Americans I spoke with believe the video game could be another way for college football to gain a larger international audience, especially since access to live broadcasts outside the U.S. can be difficult.

While analysts expect the Madden series to still sell more copies than NCAA College Football 25 due to the NFL’s massive national and international popularity, sources at schools and in the licensing industry are confident this year’s college release will perform well commercially.

That would mean a new generation of fans would connect with the passion not just for the video game, but for college football as well. And maybe it was worth the wait.