EA sports recently announced in a tweet the NCAA football will finally return in video games. This means the ability to play as the Tennessee Vols on the latest console generation. The last NCAA football game to come out was NCAA Football 14 in July 2013 and was released on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Since the release there have been two new console generations with the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X coming out last year in November. After nearly a decade without these games fans are hungry for the return of this series.
The NCAA games published by EA SPORTS originally stopped producing the games after there was massive pushback from the players and a lawsuit ensued as the players received no compensation for their likeness. Although EA didn’t use the names of the players they did use the same numbers and likeness of the players.
The lawsuit in question was O’Bannon v. NCAA. In the lawsuit former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon filed against the NCAA for using the likeness, numbers and names of players past graduation with no compensation. The lawsuit was settled on August 08, 2014 in O’Bannon’s favor as the NCAA was ruled to have been violating the antitrust laws and now has to provide student athletes with additional aid up to $5000 more a year as included with their scholarship packages.
The new EA Sports College Football game announced it will not use any likeness of the current players, so for people that attend the University of Tennessee Knoxville, you won’t see current players such as Harrison Bailey and Josh Palmer. The game will how ever feature the stadiums, uniforms and over 100 different NCAA-affiliated sports teams through the Collegiate Licensing Company. This means we will see the Neyland Stadium in all its glory
No information has been received if other sports in the NCAA will receive the same treatment and come back. EA Sports College Football is expected to release in 2023 on home consoles and pc.
Good Game Gene 