In the early years of EA’s college football games, they were endorsed by Bill Walsh. It was a similar idea to how the company had branded their NFL games with John Madden. In the 1980s and 1990s, this was the typical marketing approach for many sports games.
Bill Walsh would lend his name to the first two games in the series. They were released in 1993 and 1994. Then the series would turn into College Football USA for two years. Finally, it changed names to the NCAA Football games until 2014, when it was discontinued for a decade. It would be a while before EA would Bring it back.
When it came back in 2024, the name reverted to College Football. I’m glad it came back and that the players are earning some money from it. It gives me a little hope that college basketball can also see a comeback.
A Brief History of Licensed Sports Games
Previously, I looked at Sega’s football games. These were branded with Joe Montana, and, eventually, Deion Sanders would give his name to one of the games in the series. Several sports games from various companies have employed this strategy.
You can find basketball, hockey, baseball, and, of course, football games with a player or coach licensing their name to hopefully promote a video game. Sega is the company that stands out here because it had a lot of sports games that used this strategy. Here is a short list of them:
- Joe Montana – Football
- Tommy Lasurda Baseball
- Pat Riley – Basketball
- David Robinson – Basketball
- Fred Couples – Golf
- Ayrton Senna – Racing
- Arnold Palmer – Golf
- James “Buster” Douglas – Boxing
- Mario Lemieux – Hockey
- Evander Holyfield – Boxing
- Mike Ditka – Football
- Walter Payton – Football
- Wayne Gretzky – Hockey
- Ken Griffey Jr – Baseball
- Mike Piazza – Baseball
- Mike Tyson – Boxing
- George Forman – Boxing
- Muhammad Ali – Boxing
- Bill Walsh – Football
- Emmitt Smith — Football
- John Elway – Football
- Kurt Warner – Football
- John Madden — Football
- Doug Flutie – Football
- Troy Aikman – Football
- Earl Weaver – Baseball
- Reggie Jackson – Baseball
- Pete Rose – Baseball
- Roger Clemens – Baseball
- Nolan Ryan – Baseball
- Tony La Russa – Baseball
- Frank Thomas – Baseball
- Sammy Sosa – Baseball
- Charles Barkley – Basketball
- Larry Bird – Basketball
- Dr. J – Basketball
- Michael Jordan – Basketball
- Magic Johnson – Basketball
- Bill Laimbeer – Basketball
- Scottie Pippen – Basketball
- Dick Vitale – Basketball
- Kobe Bryant – Basketball
- Brett Hull – Hockey
- Jack Nicklaus – Golf
- Lee Trevino – Golf
- David Leadbetter – Golf
- Nick Faldo – Golf
- Greg Norman – Golf
- Peter Jacobsen – Golf
- Tiger Woods – Golf
- John Daly – Golf
- Rory McIlroy — Golf
You would think that there is a complete list of these games somewhere on the internet. There might’ve been at some point, but I wasn’t able to find one. I had to cobble together a list from several sources.
At some point, I had to give up on compiling a complete list. I didn’t look at Soccer, Boxing, Cricket, Rugby, and others. There are so many sports games that it is a daunting task to go through them all.
As long as there have been sports video games, licensed games have been made. It was an easy way to promote a game. Most athletes and coaches didn’t care if the game was good or not, because they got paid regardless.
There have been a few lawsuits regarding this. The one that interested me concerned Joe Montana suing Sega. I was never able to figure out what happened, but it is a cool story.
These games were released on the SNES, Sega Genesis, and Sega CD. Strangely, two of these games would be exclusive to the Sega Genesis. It is an odd strategy for EA to take. Here is a list of what games are on what console:
- Bill Walsh College Football – SNES, Sega Genesis, Sega CD
- Bill Walsh College Football ’95 – Sega Genesis
- College Football USA ’96 – Sega Genesis
- College Football USA ’97 – SNES and Sega Genesis
Following these four games, the series became known as NCAA Football games until 2014. Then it would go on hiatus until EA was able to get the necessary licenses. College Football would return in 2024.
This was part of a larger issue regarding college athletes’ ability to profit from their likenesses. Without getting into the details, the NCAA used to prevent college athletes from profiting from their personal brands under some dubious rules that didn’t make much sense. These rules were scrapped, and EA worked to revive its video games.
I’m not sure if this will open the door for college basketball or other college sports to have video games. It looks like talks for a college basketball game are still ongoing. Here is a link to an article on the situation (Link).
Bill Walsh and College Football ‘95
For those that don’t know, Bill Walsh was a coach on the collegiate and professional levels of football from 1960 to 1994. I remember him as the head coach of the San Fransico 49ers when Joe Montana was the quarterback. He also coached at Stanford on two occasions and various NFL teams.
There is a lot more to his coaching career, but I wanted to focus on the games. Two games have his name on it, but it looks like EA was aware that this wasn’t going to last, much like how Sega started moving Joe Montana’s name around on their series of football games.
The first game in the series was “Bill Walsh College Football.” There was no year attached to this game, which isn’t too surprising. The licensing of this game feels rushed, and probably has a bigger story behind it.
The first game is based on the 1992 college football season, featuring 24 teams. They’re based on some of the more popular college football teams, but most of them aren’t named. Here is a list of what I’m talking about:
- Arizona
- Boston (Supposed to be Boston College)
- College Station (Supposed to be Texas A&M)
- Colorado
- Columbus (Supposed to be Ohio State)
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Kansas
- Miami
- Michigan
- Nebraska
- Provo (Supposed to be BYU)
- Pullman (Supposed to be Washington State)
- Raleigh (Supposed to be UNC)
- South Bend (Supposed to be Notre Dame)
- Syracuse
- Stanford
- State College (Penn State)
- Tallahassee (Florida State)
- Tennessee
- Washington
It’s a little strange to see something like this.
There are three game modes. You can play an exhibition game, or one of two sixteen-team single-elimination playoffs. This is what you should expect from a game released at this time. It would be a while before you could play a full season of college football.
This is a fairly easy game to play. There are some things I don’t like about it, specifically, I don’t like this perspective for a football game from this era. I like this game much more than some of the other retro football games I’ve played.
I’m not sure how the passing game works. This isn’t too different from other football games I’ve played from this period. It feels very random. It can also be a little hard to tell how far you’ve moved the ball.
The next game in the series was Bill Walsh College Football ’95. It was based on the 1993 college football season. It allows you to play a full season, which is awesome!
A fun fact about this game: it came with a Pog, so if you bought a copy of this game on the Sega Genesis, you might’ve gotten an EA Sports-branded Pog. Please feel free to use this information as you see fit. I’m going to sit here with the only Pog I own.
EA appears to have resolved the licensing of school names in this game. Here is a list of the schools in the game:
- Air Force
- Alabama
- Arizona
- Army
- Auburn
- Boston College
- BYU
- California
- Clemson
- Colorado
- Florida State
- Florida
- Georgia
- Kansas State
- Louisville
- LSU
- Miami
- Michigan
- North Carolina
- Navy
- Nebraska
- Notre Dame
- Ohio State
- Oklahoma
- Penn State
- Pitt
- Stanford
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Texas A&M
- USC
- Virginia
- West Virginia
- Washington State
- Washington
- Wisconsin
This game feels a lot better than the previous game. The graphics have been improved, and the controls are a little better.
Bill Walsh retired from coaching in 1994. This is cited as the reason for EA dropping Walsh’s endorsement of the series. I haven’t been able to find a source for this. It seems strange that EA would do this for their college football games, but not for the Madden games.
College Football USA 96 and 97
College Football USA ’96 has a few things that only appear in that game. The first is the Southwest Conference, and the other is Pacific University. These two things make this a bit of a time capsule.
The Southwest Conference existed from 1914 to 1996. It consisted of teams from Texas, and occasionally Oklahoma and Arkansas. It merged with the Big 8 to form the Big 12. I won’t go into this any further; this is just a brief overview of what happened.
The University of the Pacific was founded in 1851 and started playing football in 1895. It is located near San Francisco. They played football from 1895 to 1995. The school disbanded its program as a cost-saving measure.
Going over all of this led me down a rabbit hole of college athletics history. It’s been fun, but I’m here to discuss two video games. Let’s get into College Football USA ’96.
This game was released in 1995, which is something I hate about sports games. It’s a minor annoyance, but keeping track of when they come out is a bit of a hassle.
This game features 108 college football teams, which represented all the major teams in college football at the time. Google’s garbage AI says 107, but I trust that about as much as someone telling me that drinking bleach is a good idea.
College football is divided into divisions, and I find it rather confusing. There is a 1A and a 1AA. My hat’s off to the people who study this and have committed it to memory. I watch about 10 games a year, which is why I’m discussing video games and not the actual sport.
There were several improvements over the previous games. There were more plays and more features added. College Football USA ’96 is a more comprehensive game, but I prefer Bill Walsh ’95. It’s just a matter of personal preference.
College Football USA ’97 was released in 1996. It includes all 111 Division 1A teams. You can also create a playoff tournament, which is something that works much better than the BCS system used to.
Both ’96 and ’97 have similar features. Instead of listing both, I’m going to give you the features for ’97 and point out the specific ones for that game:
- Complete Season with Bowl games or a tournament
- Injuries and penalties
- Substitutions
- The Major and Mid-Major Conferences at the time
- Create-a-Player (97 only)
- Custom Schedules (97 only)
- Tie-Breaker Mode (97 only)
- 2 Difficulty Settings (97 only)
These two games are great. They only lost the Bill Walsh license because the coach retired. This still feels a little odd to me, but at the end of the day, if he didn’t want his name on the series, then who am I to judge?
A Historical Time Capsule
I really enjoyed learning more about college football through this experience. These games captured something interesting about the sport’s history. While it can be a little annoying to see an updated game released each year, they’ve unintentionally captured a version of the sport’s history.
These early games didn’t have everything you might come to expect from a college football game, but they do track the evolution of the game of football. As the offenses and defenses change, the video games change with them.
These can also be useful to see how the NCAA has changed. These four early games capture the old bowl system when no one knew who the “real” national champion was. This was the messy period before the BCS, which was also messy, but not as much.
It is also fun to see how the video games allowed players to create a playoff system. Something that made more sense than these cryptic bowl games. Say what you want about the EA Sports games, they did manage to capture something fascinating about the sport and how it has gradually changed over the years.
Wrap Up
These games marked the beginning of EA’s college football series. It took a few twists and turns in the beginning as the company tried to find its footing from a marketing standpoint. Looking at all their franchises, Madden stands out as being the only one that kept its name in the long run.
I love going back to look at how information on these games has been recorded. EA is particularly strange as they have a lot of one-off sports games that they seem to be trying to forget.
There are other college football games. Sega had their games (Link), and there are a few one-off games. I’ll eventually get to them at some point.
If you liked this post, you can also check out my post on Tecmo Super Bowl.