EA Sports Looking Into College Football Player Likeness After Historic NCAA Decision

This week, the NCAA made the long-overdue decision to allow college athletes to be paid for endorsements, as well as their likeness. Of course, this led many to start wondering what that would mean for the new EA Sports College Football video game, which was announced by EA earlier this year. The college sports games have never had the names of players no the backs of jerseys because they weren't allowed to make money off of their likeness. That has now changed, and EA is keeping an eye on the situation.

Following Wednesday's announcement from the NCAA, GameSpot reached out to EA to see if the decision would change anything about the upcoming EA Sports College Football game. At this time, according to a statement from an EA Sports spokesperson, the studio is just monitoring everything, and no official decisions have been made.

"We are watching the recent developments regarding student-athlete name, image and likeness very closely. It's still very early stages at this point, and we plan to explore the possibility of including players in EA SPORTS College Football," the spokesperson said. "For now, our development team is focused on working with our partners at CLC to ensure the game authentically showcases the great sport of college football and the more than 100 institutions signed on to be featured in our game."

EA's college football franchise remains one of its most beloved, despite the fact that there hasn't been a new game in the series since 2013. The next chapter of the series is now in development, but it won't be arriving this year.

"We've heard from the millions of passionate fans requesting the return of college football video games," Cam Weber, EA SPORTS EVP and GM, said when the new game was announced. "We love the energy, tradition and pageantry of college football and I am beyond thrilled to say we are back in development. We have a lot of really exciting work ahead of us, and a great team that is eager to bring a new game to players in the next couple of years."

Are you excited for the return of EA Sports College Football? Do you hope to see the players' likeness in the game? Let us know in the comments!