Penn State football made three appearances in the trailer for the highly anticipated College Football 25, the first college football based video game since NCAA 2014.
College Football 25 is in many ways the culmination of the Name, Image and Likeness landscape, the original NCAA Football series leveraging the branding of college football student athletes – which at that point – came without student-athlete compensation. The eventual legal battle over student-athlete rights ultimately led to the end of the annual series of games up until the release of College Football 25. It also led to what has become NIL, an open market for student-athletes to explore their value and potential for compensation.
Similarly, according to a report by ESPN, over 10,000 players have opted into the game, with EA reportedly compensating every player with a copy of the game and $600.
“I think, me personally, I won’t take too much offense to it, but I think there will be some hurt souls out there,” Penn State tight end Tyler Warren told StateCollege.com about the day player ratings are finally released. “But at the end of the day, everybody who’s actually a college football player that’s playing is just gonna go in and bump their ratings up to 99 overall anyway, so I think they’ll be hurt for about a day or two and then they’ll switch it if they please, but I think I’m gonna stick with whatever they give me and, and I won’t let it bother me too much.”
“There’s definitely gonna be some players that take to social media right away that are mad about their ratings,” Penn State quarterback Drew Allar added. “But I’m really excited for it. One of my hobbies outside of football is gaming. And like I grew up on NCAA 14, all the NCAA games really, but specifically ’14. That was at the age where I really started remembering things about video games and really having a passion for it, so I’m just really looking forward to being in it. That’s surreal to even be in a video game, but to have it be in the NCAA is just something really cool. So I’m really looking forward to it. And it’s gonna be interesting to see the overall that’s for sure.”
The game launches worldwide on July 19 for PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series XIS. You can watch the trailer, which features three Penn State appearances, below.
