After a long and confusing road, the NCAA recently passed a vote allowing college athletes to paid for their name, image, and likeness. While this opens the door for endless opportunities for student athletes, this also opens the door for something else – the NCAA Football video game franchise. A painful drought could be coming to an end very soon.
What Happened in The Drought?
With NCAA Football 14 being the last EA Sports-made college football video game, it’s safe to say fans have been in a drought lately. It’s crazy to think that it’s been 6 years since we last had a college football video game. Despite this indefinite hiatus, college football fans found a way to survive with the tools that they had. Before each season, a community on Operation Sports creates custom rosters with updated player names and overalls. Then they upload the rosters to the “Roster Share” section of the game so anyone could download them. For people that don’t have Xbox Live or PlayStation Network, an online file can be download to a USB drive. Which then can be transferred to your Xbox 360 or PS3.
What Happens Now?
It seems to be that EA is all in on reviving the NCAA Football video game franchise, expressing interest after California passed the “Fair Pay to Play” law.
“Our position is we would love to build a game. If there’s a world where the folks who govern these things are able to solve for how to pay players for the use of their name and likeness and stats and data, we would jump at the opportunity to build a game in a heartbeat,” EA Sports CEO Andrew Wilson told Jason Gay of the Wall Street Journal last week.
As much as we want EA to release NCAA Football 20 today, that simply isn’t the case. At the very least, we won’t see glimpses of a new college football game until 2021. The NCAA is kind of like the government in the sense that new rules and laws take time to be put into effect. So yes, we are still playing the waiting game, but the future is bright. Now, it’s not about if, it’s about when.
Could NCAA Basketball Make a Return?
In the result of the NCAA’s vote regarding players getting paid, this opens the door for a possible NCAA Basketball video game return. It’s something that no one’s really talked about, despite it having a good chance at returning. There hasn’t been a college basketball game since 2009 – NCAA Basketball 10 made by EA. The franchise was abruptly ended in February of 2010 for reasons unknown. Being that 2K Sports already has control of the NBA video game market, seeing them reboot the college basketball series wouldn’t be a surprise. They’ve had massive amounts of success with their NBA series. The amount of depth and detail that’s implemented in the game is extraordinary. Having that same depth and detail in a college hoops game? The sky would be the limit at that point.
Final Thoughts
It took awhile, but we’re finally at the point where we’ve been wanting to be. A new college football game is a real possibility at this point. The ship is right side up and pointed in the right direction. We just have to pray that the people driving the ship take us to the promise land.
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