EA Sports College Football: The Return of the Decade
Ed O’Bannon, former UCLA player, challenged the NCAA’s rules on player likenesses in games.
It's officially coming back, boys! EA Sports reported via Twitter that EA Sports College Football (formerly known as NCAA College Football) will be making a comeback. It has been a long time coming. With the little information that is, here’s what is known about the upcoming game in this beloved series.
EA Sports released the news of the beloved series making a return on February 2nd. There were a ton of questions about what the game would consist of. Would they just remaster the last released game (NCAA 2014), would they make a game consisting of the most recent years rosters, or would they make a game with fake teams and fake players to avoid legal action from NCAA teams and players?
The biggest reason the game didn't return sooner was because of the name, image, and likeness rule by the NCAA and Congress. For those who don't know, this rule was put in place for the sake of athletes to be able to get paid by endorsements and such. The NCAA has forbidden the payment to amateur athletes of any kind, obviously making the return of the game difficult.
The topic of college athletes being able to be paid has been around for a long time. It most recently got popular by a former UCLA basketball player, Ed Obannon. Nicole Auerbach from The Athletic said, “Former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon sued the NCAA, Collegiate Licensing Company (CLC) and EA Sports in 2009 for the use of his likeness in its NCAA March Madness/NCAA Basketball games without permission or compensation. She also added that this incident with Obannon and the NCAA led to countless other allegations of people going after the NCAA. Since then, the NCAA has found itself under attack for not letting the players receive compensation of any sort.
EA Sports Official account tweeted the big news on February 2
I got to sit down with our own Mr. Steve Kuhlman ad ask his opinion on the rule, "I understand the rule, but the kids are already rewarded with a free education that most kids don't have so they should be grateful, but I don't agree with these multi-millionaire companies making millions of dollars on a college athlete who doesn't see any of that money." On the bright side, since the game is making a comeback, maybe the NCAA and EA are coming up with an agreement on how athletes will be compensated.
What made the wait for this game to return more agonizing, was because this game was exclusive to the older consoles such as the Xbox 360 or PS3. Most of my friends gave their old consoles away, so not being able to play this game for 5-6 years was rough for them.
I was talking to senior Matt Buschelmann about his mood on the return for the game, "I can't wait! I haven't been able to play the game for 3 years because I traded in my Xbox 360 for an Xbox One, so I am very excited for the return.” I also asked him about what he missed about the game, "I miss Road to Glory and Dynasty. Road to Glory was fun because you can go through the whole recruiting process and then dominate in college and stuff like that. Dynasty because you had your hands on a lot of buttons, recruiting, schedule, lineups, etc.”
On the other hand, there are some people that didn't have to suffer for years of not playing the game. One of these people is Stevie K. In my interview with Mr. Kuhlman, he mentioned that he still has his PS3. Looking back on it, that would have been the better decision.
All in all, I can’t wait for the game to be released in stores. It has been a long time coming and I feel like this game is going to have a lot of neat stuff because of the advances in technology since 2014.