The Southeastern Conference's stranglehold on college football's national championship may have loosened a bit this past season, but quarterbacks for the dominant league will make up half of the six players on the cover of EA Sports' "College Football 25" as the popular video game franchise prepares to return after being discontinued 11 years ago.
Two quarterbacks for established SEC powers, Alabama's Jalen Milroe and Georgia's Carson Beck, will be joined by Quinn Ewers of Texas, which obviously hopes to become a force in the league as the Longhorns make the move from the Big 12 later this year. Michigan running back Donovan Edwards, Colorado defensive back/receiver Travis Hunter and Ohio State running back Quinshon Judkins are the other players who were on the cover of the deluxe edition of the game posted at the online PlayStation Store on Friday.
No official release date has been set, but the game is expected to be out this summer before a new season kicks off, and it will feature all 134 programs currently in the Football Bowl Subdivision.
This will be the first version of EA Sports' college football franchise released since 2013, when the company stopped making the game amid lawsuits accusing it of using players' likenesses without paying them. The NCAA's approval in 2021 of players being able to profit from their names, images and likenesses opened the door for the franchise to return.
AP photo by Mark J. Terrill / Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe runs the ball against Michigan during the Rose Bowl, a College Football Playoff semifinal, on Jan. 1 in Pasadena, Calif.The cover features the backs of numerous players in easily identifiable college football uniforms in a stadium tunnel, with the names on the backs of the jerseys of six players.
The video-game developer offered FBS players a minimum of $600 and a copy of the game to have their likeness included in it. It also offered some players NIL deals to promote the game through an ambassador program. It wasn't immediately clear how much a deal was worth to a cover athlete.
More than 11,000 players have accepted offers to be in the game. For those who declined an offer, EA sports has said a generic player would be created in their place. The developer also said gamers would be blocked from manually adding those players who opted out, though it didn't say how it planned to do that.
Much has changed about college football in the years since the video game was produced, with the Bowl Championship Series giving way to the College Football Playoff in the 2014 season as the means of determining a national champion in FBS competition.
The CFP field will triple in size to 12 teams this season, and while the four-team era started and began with Big Ten teams winning the national title — Ohio State in the 2014 season and Michigan this past season — it was largely marked by the dominance of the SEC.
Every edition of the CFP to date has included the SEC, with the league represented in each title game except the first and most recent. Alabama won national titles for the 2015, 2017 and 2020 seasons, Georgia won for the 2021 and 2022 seasons, and LSU went 15-0 in the 2019 season. Atlantic Coast Conference power Clemson won the other two CFP titles during its four-team era.
Alabama made the playoff last season as a one-loss conference champ, as did Texas while representing the Big 12 for the final time in football, but both dropped their semifinals as the Crimson Tide lost to Michigan in the Rose Bowl and the Longhorns fell to Washington in the Sugar Bowl.
AP photo by Jacob Kupferman / Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers runs the ball against Washington during the Sugar Bowl, a College Football Playoff semifinal, on Jan. 1 in New Orleans.Legal timeout for ACC vs. FSU
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The ACC's lawsuit against member school Florida State University has come to a temporary halt.
North Carolina Chief Business Court Judge Louis Bledsoe III handed down a ruling Friday that puts a stay on all discovery and further court-related work on the case while FSU appeals to the North Carolina Supreme Court. The school is appealing Bledsoe's earlier ruling that denied the school's motion to dismiss the case.
FSU has yet to actually file the appeal, but lawyers have indicated that is their intent.
"Under North Carolina law, the longstanding general rule is that an appeal divests the trial court of jurisdiction over a case until the appellate court returns its mandate," Bledsoe wrote in his ruling Friday. "The lower court only retains jurisdiction to take action which aids the appeal and to hear motions and grant orders that do not concern the subject matter of the suit and are not affected by the judgment that has been appealed."
FSU is challenging the ACC's exit fees and the validity of a grant-of-rights agreement that binds conference members together through their media rights. That grant of rights runs through 2036 as part of the league's contract with ESPN, which ultimately launched the ACC Network in 2019.
FSU claims the deal doesn't compare to what schools in other conferences are making and that it would cost $572 million to exit the conference. FSU representatives believe that puts the Seminoles' athletic program in danger of not being able to compete with Big Ten and SEC schools because of the growing revenue gap.
Moving on up
Missouri State will move up to FBS competition by joining Conference USA in 2025, the league announced Friday.
Missouri State will become the 12th full member of C-USA and the third school to move up from NCAA Division I's Football Championship Subdivision and join the league over the next two seasons. C-USA is adding Atlanta-area Kennesaw State University this season, and Delaware is set to join in 2025, with both of those schools also moving up from the FCS ranks.
Missouri State is a longtime member of the Missouri Valley Conference and has been competing in FCS since 1981, when it was known as Division I-AA and the FBS was known as Division I-A. The Bears have reached the playoffs four times, including most recently in 2020 and 2021, when Bobby Petrino was their head coach.
"The institution boasts a great tradition in athletics and academics that will strengthen and further position our membership for long term success in the national landscape," CUSA commissioner Judy MacLeod said in a league release.
The league lost six members to the American Athletic Conference but has rebuilt by adding former independents Liberty and New Mexico State and former FCS schools Jacksonville State and Sam Houston State last year. The other members schools are Florida International, Louisiana Tech, Middle Tennessee State, UTEP and Western Kentucky.