Prose and Kohn: More than a game

For a person of my age, Tuesday brought Earth-shattering news from the sports and video game industries: EA Sports is getting back into the college football scene. 

The company announced Tuesday that its beloved "NCAA Football" series would return, albeit with the new name of "EA Sports College Football." There has not been a new release in the series since "NCAA Football 14" was released in 2013. (The series name was always a year ahead.) 

For me and many other college football obsessives, this game was my adolescence. I have strong memories of lugging "NCAA 05" around on road trips and firing it up on my GameCube. I have even stronger memories of "NCAA 06," the first game in the series to feature the Road to Glory mode, where you create a high school player, prove yourself to colleges, sign with a school and play out your Heisman-winning career, if you were good enough. In later games, the Dynasty mode became my main hub, as I put all my brain cells into recruiting five-star talent to smaller schools such as Florida Atlantic, turning them into National Championship contenders. 

So, why are the games being revived now? Well, representatives from EA Sports told ESPN that the company's social and analytical teams found that fan interest is still there — maybe even higher than before — so why not? I don't doubt that is true. But it's also notable that both the NCAA and Congress have discussed athlete's name, image and likeness rights recently, with the expectation that those rights will be expanded in the near future.

That's important. Back before the "NCAA Football" series shut down, there were a number of lawsuits, including O'Bannon v. NCAA, that challenged the use of the likenesses of college athletes in video games. The "NCAA Football" series never used real names of players, instead opting to use names like "QB #9," but the numbers and positions (and the race of each player) lined up  with each school's real-world counterpart. EA Sports then offered to pay players for their likenesses, but the NCAA blocked that idea. 

If the rules do indeed change to allow payments to players soon, before "EA Sports College Football" is released — probably in 2022 or 2023 — it is possible that today's gamers will be able to play with real rosters. That means local players such as Sarasota senior Terrell Pack would be able to play as himself at Middle Tennessee State. Same goes for Booker High alumnus Talik Keaton, now at Marshall, or Riverview High alumnus Jayden Cray, now at Central Michigan. 

I'm not the only one excited. Sarasota High football Coach Brody Wiseman tweeted the famous reaction .gif of Antonio Banderas from the 1995 movie "Assassins" in response to the announcement. (This is a positive, for those not up to date on internet culture.) Sailors freshman Noah Obaseki retweeted a collegiate coach who said he "could shed a tear" over the news. This is a big deal, not just for individuals who played the old games, but for introducing new players to the sport. I would not be the college football fan I am today without the series. 

Sinking hundreds upon hundreds of hours into these games led to some weird side effects. One, I now can tell you the city where every NCAA FBS campus is located. Will I ever need to know, within an amount of time that makes Googling impossible, that Arkansas State is in Jonesboro? Probably not, but it's in my brain for life. Two, it led me remember fondly players who otherwise I would have never heard their names.

Former Kent State running back Dri Archer is a legend to me for his speed and uncanny ability to slip a tackle whenever I needed it, even though the game referred to him as "HB #1."

When the games return, it's possible that one of our hometown athletes will fill that role in the minds of many a teenage kid, never to be forgotten. That's a cool thing.