College Football Season Is Here!
The release of EA Sports' College Football 25 is the first sign that it's officially football season.
On Tuesday night, I attended a very cool event at the Wasserman Football Center. The Men of Westwood, UCLA’s official NIL collective, hosted the event to celebrate the release of EA Sports’ College Football 25.
This year’s game may be the most highly anticipated video game release of the year. In fact, early sales numbers indicate 2.8 million copies have already been sold, and 2.2 million of them paid an extra 30 bucks for three days of early access.
That’s because EA has not made a college football video game in 11 years. The last version of the game was EA Sports NCAA Football 14, which debuted in 2013, and it played on the XBox 360 and the PlayStation 3.
This year’s game is the kind of game which sells consoles. Why? Because if you want to play it, you will need one of the latest consoles in order to do so. It won’t be available for the XBox One or the PlayStation 4 or any older console. Nope. You will need either a PlayStation 5 or an XBox Series X or Series S to play it on.
The game was available to be downloaded as early as Tuesday, though if you want a physical copy of the game, you had to wait until Friday to buy one.
So, the Men of Westwood held Tuesday night’s event to celebrate the release of the new game. In the team meeting room on the second floor of the Wasserman Center, a few large TVs were set up, each with an XBox Series X hooked up to it. Not only were attendees able to play the new game, they were able to play it against some of the guys featured in the game because the event brought together attendees with the UCLA football team like Bruin quarterback Ethan Garbers and running back T.J. Harden. On the defensive side of the ball, senior linebacker Oluwafemi Oladejo was there as was Jay Toia and Devin Kirkwood. So was incoming freshman linebacker Isaiah Patterson.
I even got to talk to Garbers about the game and this year’s team a little bit.
So, why did the game go away?
Recall former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon’s antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA. Ed filed the suit after seeing players resembling him and his 1995 National Champion teammates in a copy of EA’s NCAA Basketball 09. Of course, the NCAA lost that lawsuit.
But even when the NCAA worked out the current NIL framework, the game did not return immediately. The dust had to settle and the economics had to make sense for the game to return. Front Office Sports has an article that goes into full detail about how the game disappeared and eventually was able to return.
It’s worth noting that Andy Schwarz, an economist who had been working on NCAA antitrust issues throughout the early 2000s, is quoted in the article as saying:
“It has bothered me since the day the NCAA canceled their license with EA, that Ed O’Bannon got the blame for the game going away. I was there and EA was eager to go forward. The plaintiffs, Ed among them, were ready to move forward, and then the NCAA decided to take their ball and go home.”
The loss of the game was devastating to fans. Personally, I’ve always felt that from 2002 to 2013, the NCAA Football series was always better than Madden — and there was no comparison.
Meanwhile, the court losses for the NCAA piled up. Another case the NCAA lost was Alston v. NCAA which determined that the NCAA's rules prohibiting the compensation of student-athletes were illegal and players are now allowed to market their name, image and likeness as a result.
Eventually, EA announced they were bringing the game back and they offered each player an amount of $600 plus a copy of the game for allowing EA to use their name, image and likeness in the game. Players were required to opt in in order to be included in the game.
Even then, EA opted to try to do things the right thing for fans of the game. After announcing the game was coming back, EA’s original plan was to release the game in 2023, but the release was pushed back a full year to this week’s release. The delay was “necessary to ensure that their development team can build the best college game possible with the detail and the gameplay that they are known for delivering to fans.”
It’s worth mentioning that my old SB Nation colleague Matt Brown has covered the return of this game extensively on his Extra Points blog. He has a whole section devoted to the return of the game and it’s definitely worth checking out. He also wrote a review of the game on Polygon which is worth taking a few minutes to read.
At Tuesday’s event, I asked a few people what percent of this year’s UCLA team opted in to the game. One estimate I was given was “about 99%.” So, that great news!
I can personally confirm that the in-game Rose Bowl field now sports the Big Ten logo instead of the Pac-12 logo, reflecting the Bruins’ changing conference alignment. You can also choose the throwback unis that UCLA wore last season. Hopefully, this means that they will re-appear in 2024.
The Rose Bowl itself looks as great as ever. Earlier this week, I found a video online of the Bruins’ Rose Bowl entrance and showed it to my wife who joins me at all our home games. She immediately noticed the same thing that I did.
Let’s put it this way: Apparently, EA Sports is anticipating the return of Bruin fans to our home games now that DeShaun Foster is leading the program instead of Chip Kelly. Alternatively, some may just put it like this: “The Rose Bowl is never that full.”
Well, from what I’ve read, over the course of a season in the game, your home attendance will rise and fall based on your team’s on-field performance. So, that will be interesting to see. After all, EA Sports’ longtime motto is “It’s in the game!”
The only coach in attendance at Tuesday’s event was Assistant HC, Passing Game Coordinator and Safeties coach Brian Norwood. When I mentioned how full the Rose Bowl looked in game, he showed optimism, saying “Let’s hope it’s that way for real!”
The event also brought out some old friends.
Former Bruin Donovan Carter was there as were some other longtime Bruin fans I hadn’t seen in person since before COVID.
While conversing with some other attendees, I asked Carter whether he would have taken what EA has offered the players back when he played for the Bruins. There was no hesitation from him. He would have jumped at anything which was offered.
It wasn’t until I went back upstairs to the auditorium that I finally got a chance to play the new game. I have to apologize to Ethan Garbers for my pathetic quarterback game play. I made him look like Dante Moore by throwing not one, not two, not even three but five interceptions in the first half. Ouch. Sorry, Ethan!
Of course, those picks led to four touchdowns by my opponent and the halftime score was 28-0. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to the arrival of my Xbox Series X console so I can really start the process of winning UCLA’s second national championship — and I’m really looking forward to playing all of our new Big Ten opponents. I will probably write a full review once I’ve had a chance to play it a bit.
Finally, be sure to check out the Men of Westwood and do whatever you can to help support UCLA’s student-athletes.
Go Bruins!!!
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Bruins are officially in the Big Ten. It was weird watching a classic UCLA football game last night on the Big Ten Network.
Okay, just what the hell was this?? It's like Deshaun didn't even try to prepare but instead just pulled his speech outta his ass. This is somewhat embarrassing, and not how I wanted our four letters introduced to Big10.
https://x.com/collegesportso/status/1816156260804239479?s=42&t=N-lt5_p0Ighzwcv4UYCfpg