The conflict of big business against the purity of college football just hit home.
The Southeastern Conference, followed quickly by the Big Ten and Big 12 conferences, announced last week that they are ending their relationship with EA Sports.
EA (Electronic Arts) has been feeding generations of sports gamers with simulated magic over the life-span of the video game industry.cheap nfl nike jerseys
If you're old enough to remember having an Atari or an Entelevision, then moving on to a Nintendo, a Super Nintendo, a Sega Genesis, a PlayStation, PlayStation 2, an Xbox 360 -- well, you see where I'm going -- you might remember the name of an Electronic Arts game called "One on One," which pitched Larry Bird against Julius Erving in a stunning 16 colors on your personal computer screen.
The company's first venture into the amateur ranks was a game called "Bill Walsh College Football" in the early 1990s. EA had to be creative about getting around the fact that it didn't have licenses for any of the schools, and that it couldn't include actual college players because of NCAA rules concerning products sold for profit featuring athletes.
So, if you wanted to play as Ohio State, you picked a team called "Columbus, Ohio" that just happened to wear scarlet and gray and just happened to have a quarterback who was identified as "No. 4" the same number that Buckeye quarterback Kirk Herbstreit was wearing at the time.
Eventually, companies had to start getting licenses. Once graphics engines were powerful enough to replicate the garnet and white spear on the side of Florida State's helmet, you couldn't call the team "Tallahassee."
Games became so polished that those who played them would start complaining if a team's uniform or home field wasn't up to date, down to if the Nike logo on the jersey was in the wrong place or the text in the end zone was the wrong font.
But the thing that never changed, was that the athletes on the field still went by numbers. Of course, as early as the late 1990s, you could edit players and add their names and, wouldn't you know, once you did that, the virtual commentators doing the play-by-play on your game would say that name when the player had the ball. Just like they did on the Madden NFL game.cheap nfl jerseys
For years in the NCAA franchise, each player has had a height, weight and skill set identical to their real world counterpart, and even a hometown that often matches up. EA keeps the player likeness a little vague in its college games, but that can easily be tweaked by the user.
The game is realistic to the point it's almost not any fun, because there's little escape offered. At the same time, fans and gamers crave that realism, and EA knows it. After all, the slogan is "EA Sports, it's in the game."
Somewhere along the way, EA and the NCAA got a little greedy. Hard to imagine, right?
EA got the sole rights to produce NCAA football and basketball games and the competition disappeared.
The NCAA Football franchise is perpetually stunted in terms of innovation because designers are on a tight deadline to get a game on the shelves each year by June, when customers will dutifully shell out $60 for a copy because this season's jerseys are different.
Enter Johnny Manziel.
Johnny Football's alleged autographs for cash scheme finally pulled the pin on a grenade that had been waiting to go off since Knute Rockne developed the forward pass.
As fans of college football, we all conveniently give a nod and a wink to the reality that the sport is an enormous cash machine for the institutions involved, especially in the higher echelons of competition.
But we tell ourselves that the kids are getting scholarships in return for their performance on the field, or whatever it takes to be OK with the fact that these players are making money and seeing none of it.
The argument has surfaced again and again, but it has never been as fierce as it is now with the Manziel case.
As it relates to playing a game in your living room, conferences are cutting ties with EA Sports as fast as they can before a lawsuit drills the company right where its toes had been edging the line between what is legal and what isn't.
So, what is the answer? Sorry, I'm only good at pointing out problems when it comes to sports, as most fans are.
I'm slowly aging out of the demographic as a consumer of games, despite the fact that the age cap in the industry continues to expand. I'm still bummed that I likely won't be able to buy an authentic college football game in the near future, and I'm sure this is only magnified for younger gamers.
All I can offer is that when I'm a little down, I go outside and throw an actual football. There's no one who can stop you from doing that.cheap nike nfl jerseys