EA Sports College Football 25 is the long-awaited payoff

polygon.com:

There’s about 45 seconds left in the first half, and I’m trying to find a way to extend my four-point lead against the Wyoming Cowboys. I’m playing a night game with the East Carolina Pirates, and it appears that the crowd at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium is jam-packed and has been pregaming all afternoon. Although I’ve logged around 20 hours of playtime these past few days, I still find myself occasionally pausing — even during dramatic moments like this, when I’d normally be locked in and focused on my playcalling.

Holy cow, this is real.

After a decadelong wait between college football video games, I think I can be forgiven for occasionally needing to take a moment and pinch myself. But yes, EA Sports College Football 25 is real. Perhaps the most real it’s ever been, now that the game not only includes real schools, real stadiums, real broadcasters, and the real College Football Playoff… but, for the first time ever, real players.

And EA didn’t just include household names like Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers, Ohio State safety Caleb Downs, or Missouri wideout Luther Burden III — nearly everybody is here. My digital ECU quarterback is the real Jake Garcia, handing off to the real Rahjai Harris. They’re both trying to evade digital Wyoming defensive tackles Ben Florentine and Jordan Bertagnole, who are real dudes who play for the Cowboys. All in all, Electronic Arts paid for the real licenses to over 11,000 college athletes, in what EA Tiburon developers claim is the largest depiction of real people in a video game… maybe ever. Certainly in a sports video game.

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For years, EA couldn’t pay the athletes, which is why older editions of NCAA Football had rosters full of players with names like QB #15 and RB #3 — players who just so happened to closely resemble the real, and uncompensated, athletes. Eventually, the athletes sued, EA paid back damages, schools pulled their licenses, and the franchise was shelved.

But now, the NCAA has finally thrown out its outdated