Pittsburgh players are absent from EA Sports’ College Football 25.
The Pitt Panthers are prominently featured in the new EA Sports College Football 25 video game, offering fans the opportunity to play as their beloved team after an absence of more than ten years.
The significance of this release lies in it being the first college football video game since 2013, marking the end of an eleven-year break. The hiatus was due to various disputes involving conferences withdrawing support, debates over the amateur status of student-athletes by the NCAA, and challenges in compensating college athletes for their likenesses. These issues led EA to suspend the game indefinitely.
However, the landscape changed with the advent of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) rights, allowing student-athletes to profit from their own identities. This development facilitated EA in resolving the hurdles to create a new college football game. Unlike previous editions, where player likenesses were generic, now student-athletes can appear in the game with their actual names, images, and other details.
Under NIL agreements, student-athletes can earn approximately $600 for their participation in addition to receiving a complimentary copy of the game, which retails for about $70.
Electronic Arts collaborated with One Team Partners and CLC, the leading college trademark licensing company, enabling over 15,000 current student-athletes to engage in merchandise and video game endorsement deals.
Despite these strides, some Pitt players are notably absent from the roster, despite the new financial incentives that were unavailable to previous generations.
