EA Sports NCAA Football Settlement Check Received!

Athletes are finally starting to receive their checks from EA as part of the settlement reached in the O’bannon vs. NCAA case. We’ve obtained a check from the settlement, and the amount is pretty low compared to the estimated average of $1600 projected by ESPN.

This is only one check, so it’s entirely possible and it’s below the average, but what’s interesting to note is that when Greg McElroy posted an image of his check on twitter last week, he omitted the dollar amount that he received as part of the settlement.

What does that mean? Your guess is as good as ours, but it’s entirely possible that McElroy received more than the average player, or felt that the dollar amount wasn’t essential to the message.

Regardless, if the average player is only receiving a couple hundred dollars, that’s a couple hundred dollars that they wouldn’t have had otherwise. It makes sense that players would receive different amounts, seeing as each individual athlete had varying amounts of exposure in the games.

For some, the check will undoubtedly be larger, particularly those who graced the cover of the games or appeared in other promotional materials. Of course, many players such as Denard Robinson who was featured on the cover of the final installment of NCAA Football in 2013 have since gone on to play in professional leagues.

Obviously everyone should be compensated for their appearance in the game, but as I’ve said many times over the course of several articles on the subject, the people who need the money most are those who don’t go on to play in professional leagues. Your average athlete isn’t going to make it to the NFL.

According to the NCAA as of 2015, only 1.6% of college football players will make it to the NFL. The odds are even worse for most of the other sports. For men playing college basketball, you’re only looking at 1.2%. Only baseball and hockey have higher numbers, and they’re still not that great at 8.6% and 6.8% respectively.

While college sports do allow athletes the opportunity for a scholarship, it isn’t always good enough. Especially in today’s economy, where a job isn’t a guarantee when you get out of college.

Know anyone who received a check as part of the settlement? Let us know in the comments or on social media and be sure to Subscribe to our Youtube for the latest on EA Sports NCAA.

EA Sports NCAA Football Settlement Check Received!

EA Sports NCAA Football 17 Latest Details

There are a lot of people who want to see EA’s NCAA Football franchise make a return. In December we published an article on the status of the franchise and whether or not we’d be seeing it make a return in 2016. At the time that didn’t seem very likely, and despite one of the worst marketing attempts of 2015, not much has changed.

The 2016 College Football Playoff National Championship was as popular as ever, but even with the success of the championship and the finals leading up to it (if you haven’t seen them, check out our simulations where we predicted the winner for 5 of 6 games), we’re still just as far away from seeing another college football game.

The longer we wait for another game, however, the more supporters we see hoping for a new installment. Those supporters aren’t limited to college students and athletes, though. Just last week, Fallout 4 director and executive producer at Bethesda Game Studios, Todd Howard, spoke at the 2016 DICE Summit on his desire to see another NCAA Football game.

“NCAA Football was one of my favorite games; they don’t make it anymore,” Howard said on stage. “While I’m here, EA, can you make NCAA Football again, please? That game honestly was important to me. I would play and win the national championship, recruit my team–the pride I felt in doing it. I felt good during the day if I won and I felt bad if I lost. to the computer. Now they don’t make it anymore and there’s a hole in my life.”

As GameSpot notes, this talk was given in front of an audience of industry luminaries, potentially including employees of Electronic Arts. It’s not like they don’t know the demand, though. As they proved during the championship game, people want to play NCAA Football on their consoles. The only problem is the licensing and likeness of athletes.

Todd Howard isn’t the only one interested in seeing NCAA Football return, however. Kirk Herbstreit, who served as commentator for the NCAA Football video games, also spoke about the series in an interview with SEC Country conducted in November 2015 that was published last month.

As far as Herbstreit is concerned, Ed O’Bannon is solely to blame for the lack of a college football video game. “I can’t believe Ed O’Bannon took that game away from us,” Herbstreit said during the interview.

While Ed O’Bannon is partially to blame for the lack of NCAA Football thanks to a lawsuit he filed over a likeness dispute, the court ultimately determined that the lawsuit did have merit. Obviously, Kirk Herbstreit didn’t feel that way.

According to Herbstreit, plenty of athletes would be happy to sacrifice pay in order for the game to return. “Every single college football player,” he said. “You know what they’d love for their compensation to be? Just give ‘em a free game. That’s the compensation that they would take.”

Perhaps everyone that Herbstreit talked to felt that way, but the comments that I’ve read on the subject seem to suggest otherwise. Many people — both athletes and fans alike — seem to agree that the players deserve some form of compensation. According to Herbstreit, however, the students are more than happy to appear in the game. “I’ve never met one player in college football that’s like: ‘They can’t use my name and likeness! I need to be paid!’ They’re just thrilled to be on the game. They love being on the game. It’s like the biggest highlight of their life, is to be on the game.”

It’s a hot topic with a lot of differing opinions, but I’m not sure Herbstreit is right on this one. Personally, I think that athletes deserve to be compensated. After all, this is a video game franchise built entirely upon the names and likenesses of college athletes. How much compensation they deserve is up for debate, but I find it hard to believe that a small salary is out of the question.

Either way, I don’t think we’ll be seeing another NCAA Football game until the matter of compensation is settled, and that’s unfortunate. But, I’m sure that athletes are fine with that. After all, the exposure can only benefit them so much.

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EA Sports NCAA Football 17 Latest Details

Top 10 Sports Games Worth Reviving

There have been a lot of sports games over the years, and many of them have fallen to wayside thanks to the business of exclusivity and licensing. Others simply vanished, despite fan cries for new entries. Here are ten sports games worth reviving….

Burnout

What happened to Burnout? It’s been a full seven years since we saw the last retail iteration of the franchise in the form of Burnout Paradise. I have fond memories of racing and crashing into my friends in middle school, and Burnout Paradise was a great return to form with some interesting changes that sold well enough.

We might not have to wait too long on this one, however. While it seems like EA might not be interested in continuing the series at the moment, there is hope. Back in October, IGN reported that a spiritual successor might be on the way from Criterion co-founders Alex Ward and Fiona Sperry. I’d kickstart the hell out of that.

NBA Street

 I still remember seeing commercials for NBA Street 3 with the cast of Mario. Yeah, it was goofy, but it was also kind of cool. Nowadays cameos are everywhere, but back then you didn’t see them very often. Of course, the series itself wasn’t bad either. Most of the games received very positive scores, including the last game in the series, NBA Street Homecourt which managed to score above 80 on Metacritic.

So why haven’t we seen a new NBA Street game? Your guess is as good as mine, but I think it’s ripe for a return.

MLB 2K

Nowadays when you talk about baseball games, The Show typically gets the spotlight. But for a while, there was also MLB 2K, and it was pretty damn good. It might not have been as good looking as The Show, especially later on as the series started to decline, but it was nice while it lasted and I wouldn’t mind seeing it again. Next time, though, let’s leave out the million dollar challenges.

Amped

 Remember Amped? You might not, unless you’ve been a big fan of Microsoft over the years. The series originally hit the Xbox in 2001 as an exclusive, and went on to spawn two sequels, only one of which made it to the Xbox 360.

Unfortunately Indie Built, the company which developed the first three games, is no longer around. With Microsoft scrambling for exclusives as the PS4 outperforms the Xbox One, I’d love to see Amped make a return on the Xbox One. I don’t have an Xbox One at the moment, but you can bet that I would if they released a new version of Amped.

Blitz

NFL Blitz has a special place for a lot of people — probably because of how violent it was — but while the series has made a return in the form of Blitz: The League and the sequel, it seems to have fizzled away leaving us without a violent football game that actually resembles the sport.

Oh, and forget about the reboot from 2012. It’s nowhere near as fun as the original, and as a downloadable game it doesn’t come close to being as good as The League. Really what I’m saying here is that I want more of The League. 

Tecmo Bowl

One of the earliest games on this list, Tecmo Bowl is another game that a lot of people miss. It’s also another game that went the downloadable route like NBA Jam and NFL Blitz. That seems to be the fate of most classic games these days. Why dedicate money to developing a game from the ground up for modern consoles when you can create something much simpler?

I’d like to see a real reboot of Tecmo Bowl, complete with modern gameplay. Nostalgia isn’t everything, and if they get a real team together, maybe something can happen. There just aren’t enough football games these days.

Motocross Madness

When I was younger, one of the games that I loved to play on the computer was Motocross Madness. While I didn’t have much of an idea as to what was going on in 1998, I later revisited the game to find out that it was just as good as ever. The coolest thing about it? Driving up the mountains to the edge of the map and getting sent flying backwards.

I know that the series made a quiet return in 2013, but it was pretty disappointing. A downloadable game with Xbox Live avatar support? That’s when you know you’ve gone wrong.

NCAA Basketball

It’s clear that people want more NCAA Football, but that’s not the only college sport that people are missing in the gaming circle. They’re also missing NCAA Basketball, and for good reason since there isn’t really anything comparable at the moment. The thing about college football is that it’s not like other sports. There aren’t multiple franchises for people to choose from, and it’s kind of a shame.

Skate

 If it weren’t for the disaster that was Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5, I would have put Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater on this list. Instead, I’m going to put Skate. As much as I love the Tony Hawk franchise, THPS5 wasn’t exactly what anyone was expecting.

Skate, on the other hand, has a pretty flawless record despite the fact that EA shelved the series after Skate 3 in 2010. While I still prefer Tony Hawk, I own and appreciate every game in the Skate series.

It’s been five years, almost six. It’s time for a new Skate game.

NCAA Football

NCAA games have been absent since 2013, but if the response to my article on the subject that we published last weekend is anything to go by, people want more NCAA. Seriously, college sports are incredibly popular. Aside from the lawsuit and the obvious greed on the part of the NCAA and their schools, there’s no reason why the NCAA shouldn’t make a return to the gaming world.

That’s our list of ten sports games worth reviving, what are your picks? Let us know your list of sports games worth reviving in the comments or on social media.

Top 10 Sports Games Worth Reviving

EA Sports NCAA Football Set to Make a Return?

It’s been a while since we saw the last NCAA game from EA — a full two years, with the last game having been released in 2014 as NCAA Football — but with college football as popular as ever, the question isn’t so much whether or not the franchise will be returning, but when. The NCAA is big money after all, having topped a billion dollars in revenue in 2014, and that’s not including the revenue earned by the schools and their teams.

The only thing stopping NCAA Football making a return to consoles everywhere? Well, it’s obviously not the popularity or the money involved. Instead, it’s a lawsuit filed by Ed O’bannon against EA and the NCAA. The nature of the case boils down to one thing; likeness rights. Every player owns their likeness, and that’s how endorsements happen. No one really thinks that Shaquille O’Neal is a fan of Gold Bond, he’s just a paid spokesman for the company. When it comes to likeness in video games, though, well — that’s a little bit different.

Everyone knows how endorsement deals relate to products that you might find on a store shelf, but not as many people know the business behind likeness and video games, and it’s actually very complex. When it comes to the NFL, EA had this sorted out much earlier by legally acquiring the rights to use player’s likenesses. That’s standard practice in the industry when you’re dealing with a league like the NFL, so why shouldn’t the same go for the NCAA and their players?

That’s what Ed O’bannon argued, when he brought the case against EA and the NCAA. In the end, he won that case, but it wasn’t much of a victory. While he might have won the case at large, the court decided that players cannot market themselves as that has been established to be a pro-competitive rule. If you’ve been keeping tabs on the NCAA you’ll no doubt know this.

Yesterday, however, there was another development as $18.8 million of the $60 million was doled out to O’bannon’s lawyers. That’s 31.3%, as Jon Solomon of CBS pointed out on twitter. Now that the settlement is starting to wrap up, maybe the NCAA will think about returning to the video game world. If they don’t, they’re only hurting themselves as they miss out on potential profits.

Judge Wilken allocates $18.8 million of $60 million (31.3%) of EA/NCAA video game settlements to plaintiffs’ lawyers.

— Jon Solomon (@JonSolomonCBS) December 11, 2015

Just how much money are they missing out on if they choose not to continue with NCAA Football? According to an article published by Forbes in 2013, the top teams and their schools will be missing out on $75,000 per year. It might not sound like much in the grand scheme of things, but when you consider that this is $75,000 generated almost purely through licensing, that’s a pretty big deal.

That’s the thing about licensing. It’s not like the NCAA or the schools and their teams are developing the game, they just license their name and likenesses. When there’s so little worked involved for such a potentially big payday that will probably only get bigger by the year, isn’t it worth making sure your players are fairly compensated?

You’d think so, but despite the lawsuit, the NCAA has yet to vote to allow players to license their likeness for video games. In 2015 — a whole year after the initial decision of the Ed O’bannon case — we’re still at a standstill. College sports fans want video games too, and the previous success of NCAA Football proves that.

So are more NCAA games on the way? Even the court agrees that it’s highly likely, once the matter of likeness is fully resolved. But at the moment, it doesn’t look like we’ll be seeing any NCAA games in the near future. Either way, one thing is for sure — the presence of the games on the latest generation of consoles is sorely missed, so here’s to hoping that we get something sooner rather than later.

Until then, we’ll just have to remain content with watching live games and playing earlier installments. What do you think? Do you see a new NCAA game on the way anytime soon? Let us know in the comments or on social media.

EA Sports NCAA Football Set to Make a Return?