EA Sports Releases First Trailer for Highly Anticipated College Football Game

EA Sports announced Thursday that it will release a college football video game this year, more than a decade after the last edition of the game.

The return of the company’s college football series has long been rumored to be on the horizon after EA first announced plans to revive the franchise in February 2021, but Thursday’s announcement was the first confirmation that the game will be released this year.

EA released a teaser trailer with the tagline, “Yeah, it’s really happening.” While the initial teaser does not feature any gameplay footage, EA says that a full preview of the game will be released in May before the game is available to be purchased this summer. 

There has not been a college football video game released since NCAA Football 14, which came out in 2013. That series, and EA’s NCAA Basketball series, were discontinued following a lawsuit brought by former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon over the use of his likeness in a game. Unable to use players’ barely obscured likenesses as it previously did, and unable to pay players for full use of their likeness, EA abandoned the series. But the NCAA’s current rules allowing players to be compensated for the use of their name, image and likeness cleared the path for EA to resume its college sports series. 

Including real players in the game is not a simple process, though. EA Sports vice president and general manager Daryl Holt told ESPN that company is still working to secure real players for the game, but added that “our intent is to work towards that and find a meaningful way to include them in the game.”