After an eight-year hiatus from college sports, Electronic Arts (EA) Sports announced plans to relaunch the famed NCAA Football video game for next-gen consoles.
In a press release from EA Sports, the video game franchise said they decided to relaunch after receiving countless fan requests to revive the game. Some thought of the announcement as a hoax, like UNO professor and EA Sports fanatic Andrew Stem, until realizing numerous sources confirmed the relaunch.
“I didn’t think it was real,” said Stem. “I was like, well, it’s not April Fool’s day but there’s no way this is a real thing.”
NCAA Football fans like Omaha native Nick Kueny are excited for the return. Keuny reminisced on memories from playing the previous versions either by himself or with friends and family.
“When I was younger, I used to bust out the PS2 and play with Nebraska [against] whatever team they’re playing, like, this week just to predict the game,” said Kueny. “Sometimes it’d work good in my favor, sometimes it didn’t.”
Kueny and Stem were left in a world of shock when the EA series canceled the famed college football series. With no college football renewals, Stem expanded his video game habits into the FIFA, or professional soccer, series.
“Every year, there was a new college football game. It was time to go pick it up, you know, even if the graphics haven’t changed much, even if they play hasn’t changed much, like you just got to have the newest most up-to-date version of that game,” said Stem. “When it stopped, it was like ‘what am I gonna play now?’”
EA Sports canceled future installments for the college football video game in 2013 due to legal battles with the NCAA and former college athletes. The NCAA placed restrictions on college athletes being compensated for their name and image likenesses being showcased in the game.
In the previous NCAA Football versions, accurate team rosters featured each player’s image likeness in the game, only excluding the name. This left fans spending stressful hours applying the final touches to the team rosters.
“In order to put everybody in the roster, like in theory, the linebacker number 47 is a person and we all know who that person is, and a lot of people go through and spend painstakingly effort to, you know, change the names of the rosters,” said Stem.
For future college football video game installments to avoid legal disputes, Stem said student-athletes should be given some compensation for their image likeness featured in the game. Some states, like California, have passed laws granting incentives for a student-athlete likeness used in branding, such as video games.
“Hopefully, with all these name image and likeness bills that are going on both in the states and at the federal level to try and figure that out, they can get it all worked out,” said Stem. “They can improve licensing and, eventually, they’ll be able to just have the guy’s name right in the game.”
Nebraska is currently working on passing the “Nebraska Fair Pay to Play Act,” or LB962, to grant student-athletes compensation. Section 3 of the proposed law provides a clause issuing that players should not be penalized for earning compensation for the use of their name, image or likeness.
“You get thousands of guys, and they’re not going to make very much per copy,” said Stem. “If you can get them a little bit of something – or somebody had floated the idea of even just giving them their own free copy of the game. There are a lot of guys who would be happy just to get a free copy of the game and not have to spend $50 or $60.”
EA Sports is slowly in the process of developing the game, as states gradually legislate the student-athlete image likeness clause. As long it’s dealt with nationwide, both Kueny and Stem believe the NCAA will give EA Sports the thumbs-up to move forward with the game.
“I guess what the NCAA just allowed [them is] giving the green light for [the game] to return,” said Kueny.
“I think once they kind of get this licensure deal, they’re just gonna’ roll with it, because you know, and then EA wants to make money. They know they’ve got a product that people have been clamoring for a long time,” Stem said.
The new video game installment gives college football fans something to look forward to. Football and EA Sports fans like Kueny can, once again, fulfill their dreams of running down the virtual football field.
“I just think it’ll be just good in general for fans of college football. It’s just get more excitement for people ready for the college football season,” Kueny said.
EA Sports announced they’ll rename the video game series to EA Sports College Football, retiring the well-known NCAA Football name from the previous versions. Fans will have to patiently wait as the expected release date is yet to be determined.
