Inside the return of the EA Sports college football video game

ORLANDO — When the calendar turned from 2013 to 2014 and there was no new college football video game to make, the people who created the greatest sports video game about the greatest sport scattered. Some stayed in the Orlando to help make Madden, the college game’s older and more lucrative NFL cousin. Some went to 2K to make different sports games.

No matter what direction they went, they all wanted the same thing: To make another college football game.

Ben Haumiller, one of the leads on the last edition (NCAA Football 14) moved to Madden for a few years. It was a fine product, and it certainly sold well, but Haumiller’s heart wasn’t in it. By the time the sun sets on the Saturday on Labor Day weekend, the Florida State graduate who grew up in suburban Orlando has already watched more snaps of the college game than he’ll watch of the NFL game in an entire season. So a few years ago he moved to the business side of EA Sports for two reasons: It took him out of a professional rut, and — more important — it allowed him to join some of his former teammates in laying the track for a return of the game they loved making even more than we loved playing.

“I never thought about leaving [the company],” Haumiller said, “because I knew we’d be back.”

It took multiple federal court cases, the passage of 50 new state laws, a 9-0 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Alston v. NCAA and a paradigm shift in the way college sports operates, but they are indeed back. On July 19 — July 16 if you pre-ordered the deluxe edition or the bundle with Madden — EA Sports College Football 25 will be blasting from kids’ rooms, dorm rooms, man caves and she sheds across the country. 

“It was always a question of when,” said EA Sports senior vice president Daryl Holt. “Not a question of if.”

The game originally went away because EA Sports was a named defendant in former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon’s federal lawsuit against the NCAA. EA’s college football game used barely disguised generic players to mimic their real-life counterparts. For instance, the final edition of the game had a Texas A&M quarterback who wore No. 2 and was an excellent scrambler. Everyone knew that was Johnny Manziel, but Manziel didn’t get paid for the obvious use of his likeness. EA Sports settled in 2014 to get dropped from the O’Bannon case, but company leaders understood they risked further lawsuits if they made the game without paying the actual players. Since NCAA rules forbade such payments, the game died. 

When various states passed laws forcing the NCAA to allow NIL payments starting in 2021, the team knew there was a chance to bring the game back. EA Sports announced the return of the game years ahead of launch as a way to drive enthusiasm for what likely would be a tricky large-scale NIL deal. Ultimately, EA Sports executives decided to offer $600 and a copy of the game to any player who opted in.

For those first few days, opt-ins trickled through. Then the dam burst and they began coming in by the hundreds. Now, nearly every player on every roster of 134 FBS teams — welcome, Kennesaw State! — has opted into the game. (Texas backup QB Arch Manning notably has not.)

Holt considered all of this recent history as he offered the understatement of the century.

“The sport,” he said, “has changed a bit over the past decade.”

Just a tad. Free transfers and name, image and likeness payments have fundamentally altered the way the sport operates. Plus, the shifting legal landscape that once made the game impossible to make (and then made it possible to make again) remains in flux. So the makers of the game tried to thread the needle as best they could to simulate the new world of college football recruiting and NIL. But they went all-in on the aspects of the game that will never change. As always, they sought to create the most immersive possible experience. They want you to feel the wall of noise an opposing QB must fight through as he pilots his team toward the student section at Penn State. They want you to understand why one receiver ran the wrong route because he couldn’t understand the QB’s audible while the denizens of The Swamp roared between second and third down. They want you to get choked up as the players on both sidelines wave at the children’s hospital between the first and second quarters at Iowa. 

Every scene, every image must be recreated faithfully because each is burned into the memories of fans who spent the best four years of their lives in those stadiums — or who turned those four years into 40 by buying season tickets after graduation. Plus, the schools want to make sure everything is perfect because they know an experience this realistic is a recruiting tool not just for their football programs but for their universities as a whole. A 13-year-old from Connecticut who loves throwing the ball with Conner Weigman at Texas A&M may end up sending an application to College Station in four years.

Lead designer Christian Brandt doesn’t need to be reminded how eagle-eyed players will be about every detail. Brandt is a Penn State grad who had the Nittany Lion mascot pass out bottles of bubbles at his wedding. He is the gamer who would notice if something seemed out of place.

That’s why he and his team made sure the band of each of the 134 teams is in the exact formation in the game that the real-life band is in when the team takes the field. (Yes, Tennessee will run through a perfect T.) It’s why for the past few months Brandt has repeatedly taken screen shots of the pregame scene in Alabama’s tunnel when the Crimson Tide players congregate beneath the words BE A CHAMPION. Every new screen grab from the game looked more like actual video of the real Alabama about to take the field. When it became tough to tell the difference between the game and real life, Brandt knew it was close to ready.

How far did designers go to capture the atmosphere? They hired stunt people and built a custom two-story ramp at their Vancouver motion capture studio to accurately portray Clemson players running (and leaping) down the hill at Memorial Stadium. They built wooden replicas of the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy, Floyd of Rosedale, the Illibuck Trophy and dozens of other trophy-game prizes in that same motion capture studio. Have no fear, the winning players in any Iowa-Minnesota game will celebrate with a giant pig statue. 

Of course, the designers understand each player cares about something different.

Colorado two-way star Travis Hunter, one of three current players on the cover of the game, was in elementary school when the last version of the game dropped. He loved to play as Oregon or Florida State back then. During a visit last week to EA Sports, he had to play as the Buffaloes. But he wasn’t interested in the pageantry. Asked what he thought of the recreation of Ralphie’s run, Hunter laughed. He’d smashed the X button and skipped that scene so he get to the actual gameplay.

The gameplay will feel familiar to anyone who played past versions of the game and everyone who has continued to play Madden. The infrastructure of the College Football and Madden games is similar, but the calculations the games will make during plays are very different. “The difference between the best player and the worst player is far bigger in college football than it is in the NFL,” design director Scott O’Gallagher said. So if you’ve got a two-star freshman defensive end facing an All-America left tackle, that end probably is getting buried.

Running the ball in the new version of College Football feels much more dynamic than in past versions or in recent versions of Madden. It’s easier to see individual blocks develop, and ballcarriers react quickly enough to stick presses to slide through open holes. Designers explained that the way blockers and defenders act has been completely redesigned. While older versions had movement patterns that encompassed multiple blockers and defenders, the new engine allows the game to generate individual matchups — the outcomes of which are determined by player rating (aided by Pro Football Focus data), scheme, leverage and situation. This produces a much wider variety of outcomes, and — designers hope — will look more like what an actual ballcarrier sees in a game.

Other tweaks will be welcomed by some gamers and jeered by others. For instance, on read option plays the controls have been modified so that a gamer must press X to make the quarterback pull the ball to keep it. Press nothing and the QB will hand off during his mesh with the back. In previous games, players had to press X quickly to hand off and kept if they pressed nothing. The reason for the change? The QB keep is the less frequent outcome in real life, and the new command allows players more time to read the unblocked defender to determine the correct course of action. 

Throw power is more adjustable with a meter that shows exactly how hard a QB will throw based on the length of the button-push. Better QBs will be able to control their power more effectively than more erratic QBs. Plus, players will have individualized capabilities. Texas QB Quinn Ewers, another cover player, has platinum-level pre-snap recognition ability. So if the defense is showing a Cover 4 shell, a message will pop up pre-snap informing the gamer that it appears the defense is playing Cover 4 coverage (though this could be a disguise). 

Also, the new Wear and Tear feature shows exactly how hits are affecting players in-game. “Every hit matters,” O’Gallagher said. “And not all hits are created equal.” While some gamers might want to play a shootout every time, the design team understands that desire is not unanimous. “This is us dying on the hill of balance when it comes to gameplay,” O’Gallagher said.

While some players will skip straight to the pure gameplay as Hunter did, others want to immerse themselves in the offseason world of the game. Dynasty Mode returns to allow gamers to turn themselves into a coach and build programs (while managing the transfer portal and recruiting), while Road to Glory allows gamers to assume the role of a player navigating a college career. Each comes with its own series of ripped-from-the-headlines dilemmas. Coaches now must decide how much energy they want to spend on high school recruiting versus portal recruiting. Players must decide how to balance studying the playbook with brand-building and classwork.

Do coaches have NIL salary negotiations with players? Not yet. Haumiller said designers tread lightly with that world not because anything is considered taboo but because it has changed so quickly and this version of the game has to remain relevant for a year. “Has it changed since we’ve been in this room?” Haumiller joked*.

*OK, maybe it wasn’t a joke. While Haumiller was talking last week, a federal judge decreed that the Fontenot v. NCAA case would remain in Colorado rather than being moved to the Northern District of California, where it would have been consolidated with the House v. NCAA case and several others.

Haumiller wants to make sure everything in Dynasty mode is as accurate as possible, which is a Herculean feat given the various forces exerting pressure on coaches in 2024. “It’s the most complex mode in sports games,” Haumiller said. “Everything in college is so much harder than in the pros.” Haumiller, a dedicated listener of college football podcasts and reader of college football news, is constantly offering his team tweaks to the decision engine that drives Dynasty Mode. For example, he asked last week if realignment will make it more likely that Group of 5 head coaches will leave for Big Ten or SEC coordinator positions rather than other head-coaching jobs. The answer? Probably yes. So don’t be shocked if that’s how some Group of 5 jobs open in Dynasty Mode.

Haumiller is ready for Dynasty Mode to get nitpicked come July. Bring it on, he said. Because when you’re arguing college football arcana with the people who make College Football 25, you’ve found like-minded people. 

Christian McLeod, the game’s production director, is a Michigan State fan who as a teen played John Madden Football with the Jets because they wore green and white. He promptly ditched the Jets when Bill Walsh College Football debuted in 1993 and after college he landed a job helping make NCAA Football. “When the game went away, it crushed a lot of us,” McLeod said.

But thanks to a team that never gave up hope, that game is about to come roaring back. And a lot of our significant others are going to wonder where we’ve disappeared to come mid-July.