EA Sports is returning to college football.
After making a college football video game for the last time in 2013, the possibility of the game returning was in limbo. Now, it is not. Daryl Holt, vice president and general manager of EA Sports, told ESPN that the game’s creator will return to space with EA Sports College Football.
“As we seek the momentum we are building in sports, it all starts with the passion of our fans and the opportunities of what they are interested in,” said Holt. “I don’t think there’s a visit where I go out wearing an EA Sports garment that someone doesn’t say, ‘Hey, when is college football coming back?'”
It will – at some point. Holt said that there is no date when the game will return or even a date when the return will be announced, except that it will not happen this year.
To make the game happen, EA Sports partnered with licensing company CLC to ensure that FBS schools, traditions, uniforms and manuals – among other things – were ready for the game. More than 100 teams will be in the game.
For now, EA Sports is planning to move forward without lists that include names, images or likenesses of real college players. Current NCAA rules prohibit athletes from selling their NIL rights during college.
However, these rules are likely to change sometime in the next year – by the NCAA, state legislatures or Congress. It is not yet clear whether the evolving rules will allow the type of group licensing agreement that would be necessary for EA Sports to negotiate with athletes to use their names in the game.
Holt said that EA Sports will monitor the NIL discussion if and when things change, but that it is too early for that to happen. He also said that what happens in the NIL legislation will not change if the game happens or when it ends up on the shelves.
“We will follow everything as it develops and we will be ready,” said Holt. “That will not be a problem for us. But in reality, it is not an answer for us to decide now. We are just as fleeting as anyone else.
“So we make sure that we deliver what our college football players would like to play. And it starts with a very engaging experience, and there are many things we can do to bring the real college game and game day into the virtual world. “
Holt said that EA Sports is still at the beginning of the game development process, building the team and deciding in which direction it wants the game to go. Talks about bringing the game back began more than a year ago, said Holt, and the combination of the company’s momentum with the technology it saw on next-generation platforms like the Sony PS5 and Xbox Series X further strengthened your decision to return to space.
“What we had as plans to grow and expand our portfolio, college football has always been at the top of my list, personally, working with Tiburon Studio where it was made,” said Holt. “So it was an easy conversation to say internally, ‘Here’s how we would approach it in terms of design, and here’s how we can move on.’
“This has been going on for a while and it was certainly not a ‘Wait and see what happens here’, even with the proposed legislation continuing. It is more about what we think we can do around the game and for our [game] players. “
A change from the game’s previous iterations – for now – will be the name of the game. In the previous iterations of the game from 1997 to 2014, the NCAA Football title was used, along with the year. Before that it was College Football USA for two years and, in the first two years of the game, Bill Walsh College Football.
Holt said the plan for the restart will be not to have the name NCAA, but to use only EA Sports College Football.
“It really starts where we see college football going. There is a lot going on and a lot going on in sports,” said Holt. “EA Sports College Football gives us a name and a brand to work around some things that can evolve, as well as what we are really focusing on from the beginning, which are really the FBS Division I schools and the path to the football league American college and the college football championship.
“So, EA Sports College Football, we feel it’s the right name for the product, not just now, but also as we move forward.”
The game, whenever it returns, will be the first college football title since NCAA Football 2014, which had former Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson on the cover.
ESPN reporter Dan Murphy contributed to this report.