NCAA Allows College Athletes to Get Paid, Paving Way for EA Sports Football Revival

The NCAA is granting players the ability to make money off of their names and licenses according [...]

By Aaron Perine

The NCAA is granting players the ability to make money off of their names and licenses according to news reports today. Shams Charania of The Athletic helped break the news on Twitter. EA Sports College Football video game fans are absolutely elated by this development. Back in February, EA let the cat out of the bag with an announcement of NCAA Football's revival. The beloved video game series was a sorely missed part of the sports gaming landscape. With today's news, the fans will only be more ravenous to pick up where they left off in the series. It's been a long time since NCAA Football 14 back in July of 2013. So much has changed in the landscape of college football. (Try going back to those days and explaining that UCF would go undefeated in one season.) Regardless of these facts, a return was on the horizon for a while and today's news will only stoke the calls for an announcement.

Earlier in the year, EA Sports vice president Daryl Holt told the fans that they were trying to recapture some of that magic in a press release.

"As we look for the momentum that we're building on in sports, it all starts with the passion of our fans and the opportunities of what they are interested in," Holt explained. "I don't think there's a visit where I go outside wearing a piece of EA Sports-branded apparel that someone doesn't go, 'Hey, when is college football coming back?'"

"We'll just keep tabs on everything as it develops, and we'll be ready," he added. "That won't be a problem for us. But it's really, that's not an answer for us right now to decide. We're as much passengers as anyone else.

Holt continued, "So we make sure we deliver what our college football game players would want in a game. And that starts with just a very immersive experience, and there's lots of things we can do to bring the true college game play and game day to the virtual world."

"What we had as plans for growth and expansion of our portfolio, college football has always been at the top of my list, personally, working with the Tiburon Studio where it was made," the executive added. "So it was an easy conversation internally to say, 'Here is how we would approach it designwise, and here's how we can move that forward.'"

Are you psyched for more NCAA Football? Let us know down in the comments below!

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