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SALT LAKE CITY — EA Sports is getting back into the business of college football.
The company will begin making new annual editions of its immensely popular video game dubbed EA Sports College Football, but little is known beyond a social media post that sent the internet into a frenzy Tuesday.
Among those most excited? Former Heisman Trophy winner and national champion LSU quarterback Joe Burrow.
"All I ever wanted was to be on the cover of this game and as soon as I graduate they bring it back," tweeted Burrow, who was selected No. 1 overall by the Cincinnati Bengals in the 2020 NFL draft.
But the game, which was last made in 2013 with former Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson on the cover, won't be released until at least 2022. Right now, it doesn't have a release date, EA Sports vice president and general manager Daryl Holt told ESPN, or even a first edition. But it does have a passionate fanbase, as well as a partnership with collegiate licensing firm CLC to include more than 100 schools, traditions, uniforms and playbooks.
As of now, the game doesn't have plans to include names or likeness of real players — though that all could change as legislation moves through the NCAA, as well as state and federal congressional levels, regarding athletes' ability to profit off their name, image and likeness in the coming years.
"We'll just keep tabs on everything as it develops, and we'll be ready," Holt said. "That won't be a problem for us. But it's really, that's not an answer for us right now to decide. We're as much passengers as anyone else.
"So we make sure we deliver what our college football game players would want in a game. And that starts with just a very immersive experience, and there's lots of things we can do to bring the true college game play and game day to the virtual world."
Follow the official #EASPORTSCollegeFootball account👉 @EASPORTSCollege
— EA SPORTS (@EASPORTS) February 2, 2021
There are 130 Football Bowl Subdivision teams that are expected to be included, though individual institutions will be under the responsibility of making sure their school is represented, EA Sports vice president Cam Weber told the Washington Post. Some Football Championship Subdivision schools have been included in past versions, as well, such as FCS power North Dakota State.
"We're designing the game so it can stand on its own without the use of player, name, image, likeness," Weber said, while adding that EA "will be ready and excited to participate in a future when those rights become available."
"We're not relying on it," he added. "But the game will be designed in a way so that in the future, if there was a way to integrate them, we would do so."
The game returns following the shutdown of the series after the release of NCAA 14, which was based on the 2013 college football season. That followed the now-famous Ed O'Bannon lawsuit, which sued the NCAA, member schools and Electronic Arts for using players' names, image and likeness without their consent.
The O'Bannon lawsuit was recently settled at around $40 million.
NCAA leaders have long argued against paying players. "Direct payment as an inducement (to recruits) is obviously fundamentally different than to say you're going to be in this locker room or that stadium," he said. "Member schools would certainly find that an uncompetitive situation and wouldn't want to be a part of a championship that is driven by that" — including for NIL, a trend that prevented the reinstatement of the popular series.
With current legislation on the cusp of being passed in several states, as well as the NCAA beginning to invoke its own reforms on athlete compensation, those arguments have begun to weaken in recent months and years.
"To convert college sports into professional sports would be tantamount to converting it into minor league sports," NCAA president Mark Emmert told the Associated Press in 2014. "And we know that in the U.S. minor league sports aren't very successful either for fan support or for the fan experience."
