NCAA Football (Video Game Series)
NCAA Football is a video game series that has been released annually since 1993 by EA Sports. In its most current iterations, it has featured all of the FBS football teams at the Division 1 level in the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Controversy currently surrounds the series due to its use of student athletes likenesses in the game, which are used without explicit permission and do not offer any compensation for the student athlete.
History
After beginning in the 1970s and existing throughout the 1980s, the first football game by EA Sports was released in 1989. Called John Madden Football, it featured 16 out of the then 28 NFL football teams and did not include any of the actual logos or players. The first version of EA Sports’ college football series was released in 1993 under the name “Bill Walsh College Football.” It was a carbon copy of the Madden series at the time but featured 24 generic college football teams and 24 historical teams instead of their NFL counterparts. A sequel to the game was released in 1994 called “Bill Walsh College Football 95” which featured 36 fully licensed collegiate teams with actual rosters and a full season mode. In 1997, EA Sports released “NCAA Football 98” which featured over 100 teams and a dynasty mode where users could recruit new players and play multiple seasons, along with distinct college playbooks, fight songs, and mascots. Since then, the series has featured an annual release under the same name for each successive year.
Cover Athletes
Since 1996, when the game was released under the title “College Football USA 96,” the series has featured a former college football player on its cover. With only two exceptions, all of the athletes on the cover had left school the year prior in accordance with NCAA rules. In the other two cases, former players were featured that had left school many years prior. Desmond Howard, a wide receiver for the University of Michigan from 1989-1991, was on the cover of NCAA Football 2006 and Barry Sanders, a running back for Oklahoma State from 1986-1988, shared the cover of NCAA Football 13 with Robert Griffin III.
Dynasty Mode
Since its inclusion in NCAA Football 99, Dynasty Mode has been featured in every subsequent release of the game. The mode centers on the idea of creating a coach, taking over a program, and building up the program over the course of multiple seasons. Since its first inclusion, it has gone under a number of changes. For NCAA Football 08, the recruiting system was overhauled to allow the player to spend up to 10 in-game hours during every week of the season to try to convince the following year’s freshman to join the user’s team. For the first time with the release of NCAA Football 12, users were able to start off a dynasty mode as a team’s Offensive or Defensive Coordinator. The game also introduced a coaching carousel through which users could be offered positions at other schools, if they so chose.
Latest Release
The latest version of the game, NCAA Football 13, was released on July 10, 2012 for the Xbox 360 and PS3. It featured former Baylor University quarterback and current member of the Washington Redskins, Robert Griffin III and former Oklahoma State running back and NFL Hall-of-Famer Barry Sanders on its cover. The game received mostly positive reviews, averaging a 76 on Metacritic, though many criticized it for making few noteworthy changes since its previous iteration.
NCAA Football 13 introduced a new game mode called “Heisman Challenge.” In the mode, users are able to choose from a number of former Heisman Trophy winners, including cover athlete Barry Sanders, and assign them to any team of their choosing. The user is then able to play through the entire 2012 college football season controlling the player they chose.
Ethical Issues
By NCAA rules, EA Sports are not allowed to use names of any players still in college in their games. To still produce a game that resembles the current year’s college football landscape, they get around this issue by including players’ “likenesses.” While no player is named, most players in the game can be easily identified to a real-life counterpart. All players in the game have a jersey number, position, height, weight, and home state that are designed to directly correspond with that counterpart. Also, every player is has attribute ratings such as a speed, strength, or throwing ability that can also be seen to correlate.
Emails released from 2007 revealed that, while developing college basketball games, EA Sports used actual players’ names to calculate statistics, but then removed them from the final version that went to market.
Users are allowed to rename players to match the likenesses with their counterparts once they own game. Since 2008, the game has included a roster share feature which allows users to share their rosters with one another. By this method, all NCAA Football customers have access to community-created named rosters within days after the series’ annual release.
Former Nebraska student athlete Sam Keller filed a lawsuit against the NCAA, EA Sports, and Collegiate Licensing Company in 2009 challenging these uses. Players receive no compensation from sales of the games and do not give their consent to be in the game. A trial is scheduled for early 2014 in this case.
