With no college football video game in the past decade, fans didn’t get the chance to play as some of the sport’s biggest stars and were left to wonder how good they would’ve been. But when EA Sports College Football 25 releases next week, players won’t have to wonder anymore.
EA Sports has worked with the NFL Players Association to bring current NFL stars back to their college days in the College Football Ultimate Team, USA TODAY Sports confirms ahead of the ultimate team mode reveal on Tuesday.
The deal means video game players can play as college version of NFL players that were in college when there was no video game. Meaning people can play as Patrick Mahomes when he was stuffing the stat sheet at Texas Tech, Joe Burrow when he had his legendary season at LSU and Christian McCaffrey when he ran all over the West Coast at Stanford. NFL players that just got to the league — like C.J. Stroud, Sauce Gardner and Puka Nacua — will also be available to use in the ultimate team mode.
One Team Partners, the licensing group that managed the deal of college football players having their likeness included in the video game, was involved in the process of getting the NFL players included in the game.
Ultimate team is a mode that gives players the chance to create their own All-Star squad and play online against other users. The mode, which has been praised for its creativity and criticized for prioritizing in-game purchases, is popular in EA Sports’ NFL and EA Sports FC games.
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The last college football video game, NCAA Football 14, included ultimate team when it was released in 2013. Since exact player likeness wasn’t part of the game then, the mode primarily focused on college football and school legends. When the mode returns in this year’s game, there will be “players of today and retired legends of the past” included with the current NFL players.
The ultimate team reveal comes as EA Sports released more details of the highly anticipated game just days before its release. EA Sports will reveal the launch-day rosters on Wednesday and the Road to Glory mode on Thursday. The game will be released July 19, with early access beginning on July 16.
When McCaffrey was announced as the cover athlete for Madden 25, he told USA TODAY Sports he wished he could’ve been in a college football video game when he played for the Cardinal.
Now, it’ll finally be a reality.
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