After years of fan pleas, college football has been confirmed to finally be returning to the gaming industry, thanks to EA. Previously, EA released a new NCAA Football title every year from 1993 to 2013, although the series was titled Bill Walsh College Football until 1995. Despite typically being well received by fans, the series was repeatedly criticized for using a loophole to avoid paying the student athletes in the game for using their likeness and, in 2014, mounting legal issues finally forced the series into hiatus.
Since 2013, fans have been asking EA for a new college football title, but for years those requests went unanswered, mostly due to the laws surrounding paying student athletes in the U.S. (among other factors). Back in 2019, EA CEO Andrew Wilson said he was open to making a new college football game, citing a California act as being a sign that progress was being made on the topic of paying student athletes.
While the details are currently unclear, EA Sports must have worked something out, as the company tweeted about a college football game returning. The brief tweet reads, "For those who never stopped believing... #EASPORTSCollegeFootball." In an interview with ESPN, EA Sports vice president and general manager Daryl Holt elaborated a bit on the announcement.
According to ESPN, "there is not a date on when the game will return or even a date when the return will be announced other than it won't be coming back for this year." The ESPN report adds that,
"To make the game happen, EA Sports partnered with collegiate licensing company CLC to make sure it had the FBS schools, traditions, uniforms and playbooks -- among other things -- ready to go for the game. Over 100 teams will be in the game."
The rules surrounding player likeness are still complicated and will have to be worked out for EA Sports College Football to have a smooth launch (or any type of launch, for that matter). At the moment, EA Sports is moving forward under the assumption that it will not be able to use the names, images or likenesses of real college players.
At the time of writing, the NCAA still does not allow student athletes to profit off of their likeness while in college, despite publicly supporting the aforementioned California bill from 2019. Holt told ESPN that, "We'll just keep tabs on everything as it develops, and we'll be ready...We're as much passengers as anyone else," which sounds a lot like the approach EA Sports took with its previous iterations of NCAA Football. So, it is unclear how exactly this new college football title will work, but Holt insists that it will.
Sources: EA Sports/Twitter, ESPN