College Football 25 and the Resurrection of Childhood Enthusiasm
Reflections on the uniqueness of a beloved returning franchise
You may have heard the news: College Football 25 — the long-awaited reboot/resurrection/revival of EA Sports’ long-dormant NCAA Football series is a little more than a month away from its release date of July 19. Over the past few weeks, the drip-feed of information has steadily increased, as media outlets were allowed to preview the game and share some of its features. For a generation of fans that have mourned the absence of college football video games since 2013, this summer represents the return of nothing less than the joy of childhood itself.
I’ve spent a not-insignificant amount of time reading media coverage and listening to podcast previews of College Football 25. If there’s one theme that continues to surface in all of this material, it’s how much of a pure celebration of college football the entire project is. “It was a surreal experience to play a new college football video game again,” The Athletic’s Chris Vannini wrote, “It’s really coming back.” In the same vein, IGN’s Tyler Lyles rejoiced that, “I ended up leaving with as much excitement as I had when I arrived.” Other reviewers had similar things to say.
College football, perhaps more than any other sport in North America, thrives on its sense of shared community. So much of the experience surrounding game days is the tailgating experience beforehand, an event that many fans treat with equal excitement to the game itself. For me, college football is about Fall afternoons with my dad, watching our beloved Georgia Bulldogs. Anyone who truly loves the sport can give you a long list of reasons why it’s one of the greatest pastimes in the United States,
To bottle the near-indescribable mix of local pride, joyful tradition, and insatiable fanhood that permeates the entire sport requires an incredible amount of dedication. So far, it appears that EA Orlando has come as close as possible to bottling the feeling of college football Saturdays and translating it to modern-day video game consoles. Every major stadium is included, along with fight songs, team traditions, and so many other little pieces of the experience.
What’s so singular about College Football 25 is the unique space it occupies in the sports video game genre. There are plenty of other games out there for the sizable amount of the population that plays: Madden, MLB The Show, NBA 2K, and many others. But there’s something special about college football. The atmosphere, the fans the regional rivalries, and everything else that’s so hard to explain to anyone on the outside. In the world of video games, college football has just as many unique attributes as it does in the real world.
So perhaps, when we celebrate the return of College Football 25, what we’re really celebrating is the uniqueness and joy of the sport itself. Or maybe, we’re celebrating the long summer nights that we spent playing college football the video game while we waited for college football the sport to return. Or perhaps it’s some mixture, with a healthy dose of childhood nostalgia thrown in. College football has the capacity to awaken childhood emotion and enthusiasm in ways that few other pursuits can. Who wouldn’t welcome that?
I don’t have the long history with this game that so many in my generation did, which is to say that I played it back in the late 2000s and early 2010s, but not to the obsessive degree that many of my peers did. But I’ve been caught up in the excitement just as much as anyone else. The media coverage has been so effusive, the sense of anticipation so palpable, that it’s impossible to ignore. I’ve spent more time than I care to admit picturing myself playing this game in July.
College football the sport is in a weird place right now with realignment, settlements, revenue sharing, and rumored superleagues. The sport that many of us grew up with has changed in ways welcome (such as athletes finally getting compensation) and unwelcome (the decimation of old conferences and the valuation of tv money above all else). But the feeling of a Fall Saturday is still there. And in this video game that comes out next month, we can bottle some small part of that experience and put it on our tvs whenever we want.
