EA Sports Is Bringing Back NCAA Football Video Games

EA Sports says it will be bringing back the popular NCAA Football video game. 

On Tuesday, EA Sports tweeted, “For those who never stopped believing…” as its announcement for the re-launch of EA Sports’ college football video games. Don’t get too excited; no dates have been released just yet. ESPN’s Michael Rothstein also said a date in 2021 would more than likely not happen. 

The last NCAA Football video game came out in 2014, Sports Illustrated reports. Denard Robinson, a former Michigan quarterback, was the face of the video game’s cover. 

“As we look for the momentum that we’re building on in sports, it all starts with the passion of our fans and the opportunities of what they are interested in,” EA Sports vice president and general manager Daryl Holt told ESPN. “I don’t think a visit where I go outside wearing a piece of EA Sports branded apparel, that someone doesn’t go, ‘Hey, when is college football coming back?'”

Rothstein reports that there will be more than 100 Football Bowl Subdivision schools in this upcoming game. EA sports stated that it would use the rosters without the name, image, or likeness of real players as apart NCAA’s rules, Sports Illustrated writes. The NCAA and Congress are currently reviewing the NIL structure.

The game’s revival comes after EA shut down production for the game in 2013 because college athletes took issue with the gaming company using their likeness and images without paying them. The case resulted in athletes coming together in a class-action suit against EA. 

“When we filed the case, we felt very strongly that EA’s appropriation of student-athletes’ images for a for-profit venture was wrong, both in a legal sense and from a more fundamental moral perspective,” Steve Berman, the co-lead counsel in the class-action lawsuit told ESPN in 2013. “These guys were busting their butts on the field or the court trying to excel at athletics, oftentimes to help win or maintain scholarships so they could get an education.”

For those who never stopped believing…#EASPORTSCollegeFootball pic.twitter.com/2vDUYnbXEJ

— EA SPORTS (@EASPORTS) February 2, 2021