NIL
How Clemson helped pave the way for the EA College Football series return
The road to bringing college football back to video games was a decade-long journey, filled with numerous complications. If it weren’t for Clemson, perhaps it wouldn’t have happened at all. Just ask Ben Haulmiller. Long before College Football 25 was the highest-selling sports video game in the history of the United States, one of the […]

If it weren’t for Clemson, perhaps it wouldn’t have happened at all.
Just ask Ben Haulmiller.
Long before College Football 25 was the highest-selling sports video game in the history of the United States, one of the many tasks to accomplish to get the game in development was bringing the schools on board.
There needed to be proof of concept, or something that could be a minor selling point to enticing the rest of the universities to take action. One of the key issues was hesitancy due to the uncertainty of how to create a video game without having the players in it. At the time, Name, Image and Likeness compensation was not a thing, and a lawsuit over use of student-athletes’ NIL brought the game to a halt after the 2013 edition.
In NCAA Football 14, players were listed by their position and jersey number. Tajh Boyd was “QB10,” and Sammy Watkins was “WR2.”
Was there a way to show this concept could work?
Enter the Madden Franchise.
At the time, Madden was the king of football video games, and “Madden 20” was set to unveil a unique aspect of its career mode, particularly when it came to quarterbacks. The player could select from a variety of programs, including Clemson, Texas, Florida, LSU, Oklahoma, USC, Florida State, Miami, Oregon, and Texas Tech.
You would assume control of the quarterback in the College Football Playoff, playing in the semifinal and national championship before heading to the NFL.
Nobody knew it at the time, but those 10 programs were the stepping stones to eventually bringing back college football to video games. On the “Two Right Turns” Podcast, Haulmiller, EA Sports’ principal game designer, broke down how Clemson, along with nine other universities, stepped up to pave the way for CFB 25.
“Honestly, too, it’s a big reason why we’re even back is going back to when we first put in a kind of a pilot program for college in Madden,” Haulmiller said. “There were 10 schools you can go through, and you can kind of work your way from college to the NFL and superstar mode. And we selected 10 schools, and we were working with them, but a lot of schools were hesitant to work with us because we were still in the dark ages of how can we work with making a video game without having players in them, and not infringing on player rights, and all of those.”
As it turns out, Clemson was the first one of the bunch to step up to the plate. In Haulmiller’s eyes, the Tiger program had recognized that this small mode in an NFL-based game could prove to be incredibly valuable.
Once Clemson jumped on board, it was only a matter of time before other top programs wanted in on something special.
“And honestly, Clemson was the first school to step up and say, we want to do this with you guys,” Haulmiller said.” “And now you have a school in your back pocket, you can say, Hey, everybody else, Clemson’s on board, are you on board too? Let’s go. And it really got the ball rolling to get those schools to sign up to be in the game and then prove out to schools that we can do this in a way that if we don’t have player rights, we’ll be able to make it without players and be fine. But if we do have players, man, we can really make some magic here.”
Eventually, that source of magic would come. On July 1, 2021, the NIL floodgates were opened, and the possibility of using players in a college football video game was no longer a distant dream.
In many ways, Haulmiller believes Clemson’s trust in the process is what laid the groundwork for such a project to happen. At the time, it seemed that Madden’s small mode was the only way fans could play as college teams in video games again.
Little did they know, those 10 schools were an early demo for what was to come. Years later, that groundwork turned dreams into reality.
“So it’s that relationship we have with schools and specifically Clemson here,” Haulmiller said. “I mean that’s why we’re talking today in some way, shape, and form is because way back a few years ago, Clemson had the foresight to say, this is something that matters. This is maybe a way we can get the game back. And so here we are.”
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