EA Sports College Football
EA Sports College Football is an American football video game series developed by EA Sports in which players control and compete against current Division I FBS college teams. It served as a college football counterpart to the Madden NFL series. The series began in 1993 with the release of Bill Walsh College Football. EA eventually acquired the licensing rights to the NCAA name and officially rechristened the series with the release of NCAA Football 98.
EA Sports College Football
In July 2013, the NCAA announced that it would not renew its licensing contract with Electronic Arts because of an ongoing legal dispute regarding the use of player likenesses in the games. However, this contract only covered the use of the NCAA name and related logos, not those of individual schools and conferences, which are negotiated individually or through the Collegiate Licensing Company. The CLC concurrently announced that it would extend its existing licensing deal with EA through 2017, ensuring that EA Sports could continue the series without the NCAA branding and EA made plans to continue the series under the old College Football name.[1][2] However, the series was placed on hiatus in September 2013, following three major conferences pulling their trademark licenses from EA, and uncertainties surrounding the results of lawsuits involving the use of player likenesses in-game.[3]
In February 2021, Electronic Arts announced that the series would be returning for next-gen platforms no earlier than summer 2023.[4][5][6] During an interview with ESPN.com in November 2022, an EA Sports executive revealed that the game would be released in mid-2024 "because of the enormous undertaking of creating the game from scratch".[7]
Soundtracks[edit]
Prior to the release of NCAA Football 06, the only music featured in the game were fight songs of most FBS and FCS colleges featured in the game. These would play at random, however the user-selected "favorite team" would always have their fight song played first whenever the game was first started.
NCAA Football 06 was the first and only entry in the series to include licensed music to keep the series in uniform with other EA Sports releases of the time, such as Madden NFL and the NHL series.
NCAA Football 07 returned to the fight song only format.
NCAA Football 08 added a cinematic theme song to the main menu, with fight songs playing during Dynasty Mode.
NCAA Football 09 allows a new custom stadium sounds feature allowing users to edit what sounds are heard at specific stadiums during events within the game, such as a touchdown, field goal, or timeout. Fans of the teams can now create an authentic experience in each stadium by using copyrighted songs that EA is not allowed to put into the game.
NCAA Football 10 plays ”Tick Tick Boom” by The Hives in the introduction only.
NCAA Football 11 uses the music that is used in ESPN College Football coverage.