Most of my childhood, I remember getting the college football games EA Sports would produce each year, known as the NCAA Football series. As a matter of fact, I have from the 2002 (released in 2001) edition to the last one, NCAA Football 14 (released in 2013). There was just something special about the games that made me enjoy them and look forward to their release each year.
While the NCAA Football series was probably EA Sports' highest rated game (or definitely up there), the final installment of the series was released in the summer of 2013. Why did they stop producing such a popular game? It all starts with the use of someone's likeness for profit (see the Ed O'Bannon case, found online).
These games, and the NCAA Basketball games (known through the 2008 installment as NCAA March Madness) were essentially ended because the NCAA does not allow for their players to make profit off their own likeness, or any other entity to do so. O'Bannon stated that EA used his likeness, as well as the likeness of several others, to make profit for themselves, and these people weren't compensated at the time.
This case has made many people, myself included, highly upset. Something that was tradition for many yearly, especially with the NCAA Football games, on the second Tuesday in July (which was known as Christmas in July for college football fans), has been anything but over the past few years.
The last NCAA Football was released in the last year of the BCS era. Many have been wanting a college football video game from the College Football Playoff era, however. All the entities who were a part of NCAA Football pulled support for the video game after NCAA 14, and all the developers who worked on the game have since been moved over to Madden, EA Sports NFL game.
So for those who came to expect a newly released college football game every year, like I did, it has been rough the past few years when the second Tuesday in July rolls around. It's just another day. What used to be an exciting day for college football fans all over the country has since become another day of work.
There have been some attempts at bringing college football to fans, however. EA Sports still has the online features up and running on NCAA 14, so each year, people who put a lot of time in during the college football off-season release updated rosters. An upstart company, known as IMV Gaming, has been working to release a fully customizable college football game known as Gridiron Champions.
The entire game is able to be customized, including rosters, teams (generic), conferences (also generic), stadiums, and even uniforms. It will be awhile until this game hits stores, since the game is still in the early development stages, however.
Some people have even been modding Madden 19, changing the teams in the NFL to college teams, with their rosters, uniforms, and stadiums. There are, however, a couple minor drawbacks with this mod. One of the first and probably most disappointing to college football fans is that the mod will only be on the PC edition of Madden 19. Another drawback is since there are only 32 NFL teams, that's the number of college teams that will be in the mod. That means nearly 100 college teams will be left out.
Similar things have been done with the NBA 2K series since NCAA Basketball was put on the shelf after the 2009 release of NCAA Basketball 10.
While I haven't always been as big on the NCAA Basketball series as I have been on the NCAA Football series, it has grown on me since a friend gave me NCAA Basketball 09 to play. Since it has Jacksonville State on it, when you start a career mode, you get to play as the team that graced Pete Matthews Coliseum ten years ago.
It has been quite interesting to play as the team in a career mode, and in my third season of the career, I have the Jacksonville State Gamecocks at 17-1 (loss to Arkansas, who was ranked #5 at the time), and they are currently ranked #13 in the Top 25 poll in my career.
It's been awhile since we have a college sports game, and I think I speak for everyone who played the games when I say that I wish EA Sports would bring the games back.