Wide receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter was holding up the National Championship Trophy, fresh off setting the Heisman on an already crowded mantel. Shedeur Sanders had captured any piece of hardware that had anything to do with quarterback on it, flashing the “Show the Ice” celebration along the way to being the top signal-caller drafted. And just like that, Colorado once again was the epicenter of college football.
Somewhere coach Prime had to be smiling because all was finally right with the world. Welcome back, EA Sports College Football . .
. you were truly missed. To say that the sports-video gaming world has been in a decade of darkness is an understatement.
Eleven years to be exact. That was the last installment of the franchise’s highly successful college football video game, done in by former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon, who filed a lawsuit against the company and the NCAA because of likeness laws. Right or wrong, it left fans of the game dusting off old PlayStation 3s on rainy days, shedding a tear as they stared at NCAA Football ’14 cover boy Denard “Shoelace” Robinson.
But since that ruling went down, college sports have changed drastically. Name, image and likeness (NIL) deals have freed the sport and turned it into the Wild West. Thanks to that, college football’s smoking gun is back.
First a few knocks: There’s not a real tutorial, but even Generation Xers like myself can figure out the mechanics of the read option and RPOs quickly. Als.