The long-awaited revival of the NCAA Football video game franchise will see a major change to the branding.
Extra Points’ Matt Brown reported EA Sports College Football 25 will have multiple cover athletes and include current players rather than past legends. The cover stars will come from different Power Five conferences and play different positions, so there won’t be any overlap between the two.
The old NCAA Football games didn’t license the name and image of current players, only identifying them by their position and jersey number. As a result, EA Sports largely leaned on notable stars who just left the college ranks when it came to their cover stars.
NCAA Football 06 was a notable exception, with 1991 Heisman Trophy winner Desmond Howard getting the honor. Barry Sanders, the 1988 Heisman winner, also shared the cover of NCAA Football 13 with Robert Griffin III.
Once it became clear College Football 25 would have the full names and likeness of student-athletes who opted in, the door opened wide for active college players to grace the cover for the new game. Brown mentioned Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers and Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter among the obvious possibilities.
It will be interesting to see how EA Sports approaches having multiple cover athletes.
In a past generation, this might’ve been pretty straightforward, with each player being assigned a general geographic region. Ewers, for example, would be on the cover of College Football 25 copies sold in the Southwest or Southeast. The rise of digital sales for video games has blurred those geographic boundaries, though.
EA Sports could instead make specific athletes exclusive for certain consoles, which is something it did with NCAA Football 09 and 10. More likely is dividing players between standard and premium edition(s) of College Football 25.
The first teaser trailer for the highly anticipated game arrived in February and offered little in the way of specifics.
EA Sports said a “full reveal” is planned for May.
