T-Time: NCAA video game could return, pay players


When I was growing up, my mom would take me to GameStop every July for the midnight release of NCAA Football on PlayStation. When the release date rolled around, I’d get more excited for that than for my own birthday. 

Theoretically, I could have waited until the next day to buy NCAA. But that would have meant spending 12 fewer hours playing the greatest sports game ever conceived. So every year at midnight, I would unwrap the plastic packaging, pop in the shimmering compact disc and play until my avatar won the Heisman or my body forced itself into slumber, the sounds of fight songs still blasting through my speakers.

Now the game that defined so much of my childhood could be coming back … in a few years. On Tuesday, the NCAA Board of Governors voted to let student-athletes be compensated for their name, likeness and image. The new rules are expected to go into effect in January 2021, allowing enough time for each division to adjust to the changes. 

The sudden and shocking shift in the NCAA’s stance on amateurism was likely prompted by California passing the Fair Pay to Play Act, which granted NCAA athletes the right to profit from endorsement deals as soon as 2023. Fearing a stalemate with California and Florida, which is mulling its own bill, the NCAA relented. 

The NCAA Football series was discontinued in 2013 — a result of former UCLA basketball player Charles O’Bannon’s lawsuit against the NCAA. The NCAA wouldn’t allow players to be paid for appearing in the game, and schools feared more lawsuits if they continued making licensing agreements with EA Sports. As a result, the game faded away.

All of this is a long winded way of saying this: the NCAA’s change of heart opens the door for the return of the NCAA Football franchise. I’m not crying, you are. 

I’ve gone through the requisite stages of grief since 2013. At first, I denied the new reality by playing NCAA 14 for the next three years with updated rosters. Then, I went through unbridled anger as I learned how to play FIFA instead. Then, I bargained that Madden could be a decent alternative — it’s not. And for the past few years, I’ve settled into sadness, though I could never accept that NCAA was gone forever. 

Sports video games are pretty silly at face value. While most video game series release a new title every three or four years, sports franchises like EA Sports Madden or NBA 2K have to come out with a new game every year. With so little time to turn over a new game, the gameplay barely improves from year to year. Most of the time, people like me are paying $60 for a roster update every year and hardly a new game. As the years go by, players begin to feel empty and disconnected from their sport until drastic changes are made. 

Yet the NCAA Football franchise was always different. No game has better captured the essence of its sport. Fight songs accompanied every loading screen. Kirk Herbstreit and Brent Musburger manned the commentary booth, and Lee Corso made his trademark mascot-head picks before every game. In the vaunted career mode, Road to Glory, your player lived in a messy dorm and kept his trophies in a crate under the bed. Everything about the game meshed with the spirit of college football (including not paying players for their likenesses to appear in the game). 

The news that student athletes can be paid to appear in the game is great for fans, athletic departments and athletes alike. Ask almost any college football player and they’ll tell you that they dreamed of one day playing as themselves in a video game. At practice a couple months ago, senior wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr. was asked about what his rating would be in NCAA Football and his eyes lit up (he said at the time that he’d be the highest rated player on the team). 

For a vast majority of players who will never make it to the NFL and see themselves in Madden, this creates an incredible opportunity to capitalize on their likeness while still in school. The game will also add visibility to athletic departments and conferences that are not as marketable as say USC or the SEC. It’s long overdue. Now give Reggie Bush his Heisman back and all will be right with the world. 

I can’t wait for the next midnight release at GameStop. 

Trevor Denton is a senior writing about sports. He is also a former sports editor of the Daily Trojan. His column, “T-Time,” runs every other Thursday.