NIL to Be Featured in College Football 25 Dynasty Mode
EA Sports College Football 25 is making its official return in just over two weeks, and the excitement is palpable. Since the start of 2024, EA Sports has been executing a game marketing masterclass, gradually revealing and releasing game elements such as cover art, in-game trailers, and team ratings. This release marks the series’ first iteration in over a decade, a fact that has reignited the passion of long-time fans and piqued the interest of new ones to unprecedented levels.
Today, EA Sports released a deep-dive press release on the Dynasty Mode in the upcoming title, the most storied feature of the franchise where players can simulae the experience of a head coach and move up the coaching ranks while building a program. Within the game mode, NIL seems to play an important factor. While athletes won’t directly be signing brand deals or with University collectives, NIL will be assessed during the recruiting of players through a metric called Brand Exposure. According to EA Sports' press release, the metric will “grades a team’s overall brand recognition, the potential NIL opportunities a player could get at the school, and how often the school plays in primetime games.”
For those playing Dynasty Mode, increasing Brand Exposure will be a significant step in landing four and five-star recruits to a budding program. Scheduling and campus location are now even more important to leveraging the highest possible desirability for targeted players. This will likely change optimal ways to schedule opponents and the desirability of certain landing spots for coaches. With the implementation of NIL considerations, the upcoming game will boast extreme levels of realism in the world of modern coaching and rectrutiting .
Brand Exposure is one of the fourteen metrics potential recruits will look at when determining what school they will play for. Other factors in the decision-making process include playing time, playing style, stadium atmosphere, academic prestige, proximity, and much more. EA Sports has gone all out in creating the most in-depth recruiting engine, and after an eleven-year hiatus, it seems that the new mechanics will only help the re-boot of the franchise live up to the hype.
With the change in the NCAA’s NIL policy being the reason the game could be reborn in the first place, it is nice to see the developers paying homage to the new landscape of college football.
NOAH HENDERSON
Professor Noah Henderson teaches in the sport management department at Loyola University Chicago. Outside the classroom, he advises companies, schools, and collectives on Name, Image, and Likeness best practices. His academic research focuses on the intersection of law, economics, and social consequences regarding college athletics, NIL, and sports gambling. Before teaching, Prof. Henderson was part of a team that amended Illinois NIL legislation and managed NIL collectives at the nation’s most prominent athletic institutions while working for industry leader Student Athlete NIL. He holds a Juris Doctor from the University of Illinois College of Law in Urbana-Champaign and a Bachelor of Economics from Saint Joseph’s University, where he was a four-year letter winner on the golf team. Prof. Henderson is a native of San Diego, California, and a former golf CIF state champion with Torrey Pines High School. Outside of athletics, he enjoys playing guitar, hanging out with dogs, and eating California burritos. You can follow him on Twitter: @NoahImgLikeness.