5 reasons why EA Sports NCAA Football needs to make a comeback

Let’s be honest, if you’re a sports gamer, you probably miss the NCAA Football franchise.

The school fight songs, the Race for the Heisman Trophy, the features, creating rosters. Let’s be honest, if you’re an avid sports gamer like myself, you miss EA Sports’ heralded NCAA Football franchise.

It could be argued that NCAA Football was the best video game in sports history, next to the likes of Madden and the 2K basketball franchises. There was always a unique distinction between the amateur title compared to the professional versions. Of course, as soon as things got good, the college football game was taken from us.

NCAA Football was forced to shutdown production after facing litigation from the O’Bannon twins, former basketball prodigies with the UCLA Bruins. The O’Bannon twins led a group of student-athletes that were suing the EA Sports franchise among others for using their likenesses without paying them for it.

Once licensing deals expired between EA Sports and NCAA, both sides agreed to mutually part ways in September 2013.

The series began in 1993 under the moniker Bill Walsh College Football on the Sega Genesis, CD and Super Nintendo before taking on the College Football USA name beginning in 1996. It wasn’t titled NCAA Football until 1998.

After that, things took off for the franchise. EA Sports didn’t use player names, but it wasn’t hard to tell who was who when players were placed on rosters with almost identical height, weight and abilities as their real-life counterpart.

Now, the landscape is a bit different in the college football ranks. Things could change and there have been murmurs about NCAA Football making a comeback recently. Here are five reasons why the franchise needs to make a comeback.