Not long after Logan Nutzman started streaming gameplay of EA Sports’ new college football game, he had some notable viewers: real-life versions of the digital players he had been controlling.
Some of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas players even had tips — Rebels tight end Kaleo Ballungay suggested that Nutzman throw a pass to the player’s digital counterpart.
“To have the actual players that I was in the moment playing with coming in and telling me what play to run, and who I should be throwing to, or which player I should be looking out for, was really, really crazy,” Nutzman said. “In the moment it was super cool to see … collegiate players accurately reflected in game, because that’s something we’ve never gotten the ability to have up until this new game that just came out.”
EA Sports College Football 25, out Friday, is the first collegiate football video game to hit consoles since NCAA Football 14 in 2013. While NFL football video games have remained a mainstay — most notably EA’s Madden franchise — many fervent college football fans have missed the ability to play as their favorite schools and alma maters.
“I have been waiting … specifically for the college football game to come back for the last decade. It’s my favorite sports series of all time,” said Nutzman, 30, who was among those who started playing early after ordering a deluxe edition that came out Tuesday. “So it was very, very easy for me to jump back in to the game when it launched yesterday.”
The NCAA Football video game series was discontinued in 2013 after courts sided with former players who sued the game developer over using their likenesses.
Previously, EA’s college football game didn’t explicitly name the athletes despite the game modeling players on actual collegiate athletes right down to the jersey number.
A Supreme Court ruling in 2021 opened the door for changes, finding that the NCAA had violated antitrust rules by stopping players from making money. The NCAA quickly instituted a policy that allowed college athletes to make money off of their name, image and likeness, now commonly called NIL. That has led to a flood of sponsorship money that continues to reshape college athletics.
EA’s new football game is now almost certainly the largest example of that, with more than 11,000 players named in the game, according to The New York Times.
A spokesperson for EA Sports confirmed that it paid athletes who opted in to the game a minimum of $600 and a copy of the game.
University of Texas’ Quinn Ewers, University of Michigan’s Donovan Edwards and University of Colorado’s Travis Hunter appear on the game’s cover with the Cotton Bowl in the background.
The game has already been well received by some popular video game streamers, including Kai Cenat and Sketch, who have spent hours broadcasting the game to millions of viewers.
Warren Sharp, a football analyst, posted on X on Monday that it appeared more than 660,000 people were already playing the game online.
Some on social media said the graphics — from the players to the realistic-looking turf — looked exceptional, while others lauded the game's snappy and responsive controls.
Timothy Martin, 25, a sports content creator and former quarterback for Mayville State University in North Dakota, where he’s now a member of the coaching staff, said the game replicates the sport with a kind of realism he’s never seen before. (Mayville is not a playable team in the game, Martin said.)
He has few — if any — complaints.
“They’ve actually exceeded my expectations,” Martin said. “My biggest fear was like the game was essentially like Madden, but the movements and everything of the players feel more realistic than we’ve ever had [in a video game].”
Many others raved about the gameplay and the various modes, which include “Road to Glory” and “Dynasty.” The game also includes a new mode called “Road to the College Football Playoffs,” all of which, according to IGN, intend to replicate the real-world adjustments made to college football since the last title came out. With the new version, users can play against other people over the internet or against the game itself.
“I have personally so much love for the college football series, and even though it’s not called ‘NCAA Football,’ it’s kind of the spiritual successor to that series,” Nutzman said. “So having it come back after 11 years away when it meant so much to me growing up and meant so much to my love of sports growing up — it just feels so awesome.”
