Notre Dame Says It Won't Participate in the New College Football Video Game Until Its Players Can Be Compensated

While we know EA Sports plans to re-launch its popular NCAA Football video game franchise which was last released in 2013, we still don't know when exactly they plan to release the new version. And that's even further complicated by the constantly changing conversation and legislation around collegiate athletes and compensation for their names, images and likenesses.

But if EA wants to release the game before that legislation is finalized — which seems to be just short of a foregone conclusion sometime in the next few years — and just do some version of the game it had before with randomized generic rosters, it will have to do so without the Fighting Irish. Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said his university will not participate in the game unless its student-athletes can be compensated.

What a wild thing to hear from the head of one of the richest athletic departments in the country after decades of being told how college athletics would be ruined if we let the players make money. It's refreshing, but definitely still weird.

But in all honesty, do we need Notre Dame in the game? Other than installing a glitch in franchise mode where it becomes literally impossible to win a College Football playoff semifinal playing as the Fighting Irish, there's little point. Let's just put a team called the Leprechauns in there — much like FIFA does with "Piemonte Calcio" for Juventus — and keep it moving. Call their bluff.

Because of course it's those pretentious Notre Dame assholes saying they won't be part of something everyone loves. They just have to be different. So let them throw their pit party and screw over their own fans while the rest of us have a fantastic time playing virtual college football.

But in all likelihood, the game isn't going to be finished before NIL legislation is finalized anyway, so it likely won't matter. But it could be a really fun game of chicken between EA and one of the biggest brands in college athletics if it were to actually come to that.