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PROVO — The return of EA Sports' college football video game is still at least a year away, but one local player already has his face on a video game well ahead of the summer 2024 launch.
BYU football fans know tight end/fullback Masen Wake, after the 6-foot-1, 260-pound utility athlete from Lone Peak High hurdled his way into becoming a viral meme for leaping over would-be tacklers on one of his 42 career touches.
Thanks to the NCAA's new laws (or lack thereof) governing name, image and likeness rights, Wake is turning his meme into a business opportunity.
The BYU fan favorite teamed up with NIL collective CougConnect co-founder Jake Brandon to produce Masen Wake's Hurdle-Mania, after Brandon — a former teacher at Spanish Fork Junior High — saw one of his eighth-grade students coding a game after finishing a quiz.
Brandon asked Thomas Hansen what he was doing, and the middle schooler responded simply: "making a video game."
Funny you should mention that, Brandon responded. He and his co-workers at CougConnect were exploring a couple of video game ideas for their player-clients as a way to potentially monetize their NIL rights. He explained one idea involving Wake, utilizing the fifth-year senior's trademark hurdling.
One company previously quoted Brandon as much as $2,000 to make the property. Hansen was an easier sell.
"Oh, I could make that so easy," Brandon recalled of his student's response. "We out-sourced some of the graphic design, but Thomas coded the game, did all the bug fixes, and made it pretty smooth. It's a really cool game; as you progress, you face different colored opponents that are represented from a traditional BYU schedule."
The group teamed up on the project loosely patterned after Google's browser-based T-Rex Runner, and launched it this summer, playable on CougConnect's website for a one-time fee of $3. And while "Masen Wake Hurdle-Mania" comes loosely based on Wake's viral moments with the Cougars, he said the idea of leaping over his opponents came well before he stepped foot on BYU's campus, when he was a freshman at Lone Peak High School.
There would be photo proof of it from back then, too, were it not for Wake's former and current teammate Ethan Erickson, he joked.
"There was a photographer on the sideline, and Ethan was standing right in the way of my hurdle," Wake told the KSL.com Cougar Beat podcast. "But I was just getting so sick of guys hitting my ankles, and so I went up, tried to jump, clipped my ankle, and fell on my head. But it was electric; it was so much fun. That's where it got started — and I think I get a little bit better from that."
In some ways, maybe Wake's hurdle — or his entirely brash, old-school playing style that has amounted to 304 receiving yards and two touchdowns and two more rushing scores in four seasons is a credit to another leaping former BYU star, too.
"I just kind of want to be like Taysom Hill: just do whatever, be whatever," Wake said of his play style. "I'm a fullback at heart, but I'll do whatever the coaches want."
Now fans can hurdle with an eight-bit version of Wake on their lunch break.
Wake receives the bulk of the proceeds via NIL payments, with the rest of the game's proceeds going toward paying off production like Hansen and a few freelance graphic designers who spruced up the contract, Brandon said.
"The game is basically just me running, and you have to hurdle over people while it gets faster and faster as the game goes on," Wake explained. "It's kind of fun to meet Thomas, and see the little brainiac go to work. It was pretty cool to see."
It's a long way from the start of Wake's college career, when summer usually meant donating plasma in between player-run practice sessions to earn money and pay rent. College athletes don't typically receive scholarship checks or stipends during the summer, Wake said, and a lot of his teammates would find part-time jobs in security or driving for Uber to fill in the offseason.
NIL has changed all of that. But more important for Wake, he said, was working with members of the community to create cool products.
"Every child's dream is to be in a video game, right?" he said. "Being able to be there, play it, and then to see the look on Thomas' face was cool to see.
"It was a cool feeling, to know that what you've done has made an impact. We're able to make a little bit of money off it, too, which is cool. But all the hard work you do growing up … kind of pays off in seeing these kinds of things along the way."
CougConnect has two other games in development, one involving BYU defensive back Malik Moore "stopping" ball carriers and passers and another for quarterback Jake Retzlaff throwing a "ball" downfield while avoiding tacklers — similar in play to Namco's Galaga.
"It's groundbreaking, and I think that's why it's gained a lot of traction," Wake said. "It's a video game for a player; that's pretty cool."
