Every single FBS program in the country will be included in EA Sports’ release of College Football 25 over the summer. That was confirmed on Thursday. Even the service academies are “in the game” despite their players’ inability to receive payment in exchange for their Name, Image and Likeness.
The same cannot be said for the athletes at other programs. 11,390 college football players will receive $600 and a free copy of the game from EA Sports to be included— only if they so choose. While it seems like the majority of them are choosing to opt-in, some of them may decide to opt-out.
Those that are not included in the game will simply not exist. Plain and simple. If Arch Manning chooses to decline, just for example, Texas will not have a redshirt freshman quarterback named Arch Manning who wears No. 16. His likeness would not be allowed to be included in the game.
College Football 25 is forcing gamers to use crazy names!
Fans are going to have to get creative to circumvent the absence of players who opt-out of the game. They will not be able to use the create-a-player option to simply make Arch Manning exist.
Gamers will be blocked from manually adding players who decide not to accept EA Sports’ NIL offer to be featured in College Football 25. Such attempts will be blocked. A safeguard will be in place.
However, it is unclear as to what that might look like. The create-a-player option is going to exist.
Thus, should you want to add a player who opted-out of the game to a roster, you are going to have to get creative. Arch Manning (who is just a name used as an example for sake of this article) might need to be a quarterback named Man Arching who wears No. 15. He might have to be 6-foot-3 instead of 6-foot-4.
It is possible that it might go even deeper. We don’t know exactly what EA Sports will be able to block.
A replacement create-a-player may have to be completely different from the real-life athlete. Arch Manning might have to be named Phillip Bell. He may have to look completely different than reality in terms of his appearance.
Regardless of the rules, college football fans will have to either accept that the opt-outs are not included or add them through nontraditional methods to avoid EA Sports’ block. Surely there will be a solution!