EA Sports NCAA Football Video Game: Clemson player at the forefront of group trying to fight against college football video game

In 2021, sports video game enthusiasts everywhere rejoiced as the discontinued EA Sports NCAA Football video game franchise announced it would be making a comeback. South Carolina football fans would once again have an opportunity to play as their favorite players after a long time without a new NCAA Football video game.

The original timeline proposed a 2023 release for the new game, but it was quickly pushed back to 2024. After that, news went quiet. This can be a good thing in the world of video game production as it could indicate that developers are hard at work.

In recent months, discussions about the game have started to creep back into public discourse with most of the conversations centering on NIL and compensation for the athletes in the game as EA Sports announced that it intended to utilize NIL rules as a means of payment. The majority of college players seem satisfied with a small payout and/or a free copy of the game as an appropriate payment for EA Sports using their names, images, and likenesses.

However, a loud minority has surfaced in opposition to the planned NCAA Football video game release.

According to a report from On3’s Pete Nakos, a small group of former players (the recently-established College Football Players Association) are aggressively seeking to sabotage the release of the long-awaited video game. The fledgling association has not gained much traction with active players (they failed in creating an active union at Penn State a couple of years ago), but the CFPA is making lots of noise behind the scenes.

One of the leaders of the CFPA is former Clemson center Justin Falcinelli. The organization’s vice president and other CFPA leadership have been contacting current players and encouraging them to refuse to opt-in to inclusion in the game, thus introducing a potential snag to the game’s release. Falcinelli argues that the expected $500 payout is a “bad deal” and that the NCAA and EA Sports are “exploiting” players.

South Carolina football’s Nick Emmanwori recently said in an interview on 107.5 The Game that he thought most players would be happy to be in the game. Falcinelli and the CFPA seem to believe that a number of athletes would be unhappy with the potential agreement if the CFPA has the opportunity to speak with them.

The CFPA’s main targets have been the current stars of college football. According to Falcinelli, if the country’s top players don’t sign over their names, images, and likenesses to EA Sports for inclusion in the game, then EA Sports will be forced to pay them more to improve the game’s quality. However, as illustrated by the Ed O’Bannon settlement, if the price gets too high, the game simply won’t exist.

The 2014 version of the NCAA Football video game was the last one because of the O’Bannon lawsuit as the NCAA and EA Sports had to pay millions of dollars in settlement money to players in the game. While not exactly the same circumstances as a future game in an NIL world, the principle is the same: profits will not be enough to warrant the making of a new game if the payouts are too high.

With revenue-hungry agents and corporations involved in this process, there is no telling just how ugly a fight over money could get. As of now, there does not seem to be any fear that EA Sports’ planned 2024 release is in danger. Then again, not many truly believed the game would disappear the first time, either.

There has been no word yet if EA will entertain any negotiations from individual players seeking to make their own deal.