NCAA Football 2024: The Boycott

(Photo via Gamblin Guachos Twitter)

All About EA Sport's NCAA Football

Electronic Arts is releasing an NCAA Football video game in the Summer of 2024 for the first time since 2014 when they released NCAA Football 14. The game will release on both Xbox and PlayStation consoles. Unfortunately for many fans looking forward to the game, the summer of 2024 date was a year's delay from their initial timetable of 2023.

The new video game is expected to have numerous new features and run on Madden's processing system, which should be expected with a decade in between releases. The game will include Road to Glory (player career mode), a Franchise Mode that includes the transfer portal, along with other game modes. Along with improved graphics and gameplay, one of the most notable expected updates will be adding the name and likenesses of current players. Not being able to compensate players for their image and likeness before the new NIL rules was why the game series shut down, and now with the new rules, Electronic Arts used this as an opportunity to relaunch the NCAA Football game series. This relaunch was all going according to plan until the College Football Player's Association was unhappy with the expected payouts for the player's name, image, and likeness in the game.

The Boycott

According to the College Football Players Association, players should not opt into having their likeness in the game due to $500 being a "ridiculously low amount of money." While this may be the case for top players in college football, $500 is not too low of an amount of money if you are not stacked with other outside NIL deals. In addition, many say that you should not be worried about the money as a player but instead view it as a legacy opportunity because you get the opportunity to be in a video game. However, on the contrary, players like Caleb Williams may see it as a rip-off, for his likeness to be included in a game for $500. While both sides have solid points, it looks like it is up to EA to make some deals to make the player's association happy. An idea that could work is to have players with certain accolades have the opportunity to bid their price higher than $500. However, this creates a sticky scenario for there to be a fair criterion for players to have that bargaining power. The college sports and video game world will be on notice to see how Electronic Arts and the College Football Player's association sort this one out.

Boycott Reaction:

Players around the country and top names in college athletics are weighing in. Although there is no input so far from any Iowa State players, here are some of the responses to the boycott on social media:

Uconn Linebacker Jackson Mitchell:

On3 Founder and CEO Shannon Terry: