PITTSBURGH — The Pitt Panthers will feature once again in the upcoming EA Sports College Football 26 video game and showed their own cover.
Pitt put junior wide receiver Kenny Johnson on the “Pitt Football Edition” cover of the video game, with no pads or helmet on, but wearing royal arm bands and royal blue gloves, along with the royal blue jersey with the mustard yellow pants and number No. 2.
EA Sports revealed their cover for the 2026 edition of the game, with star wide receivers in Freshman All-American Ryan Williams from Alabama and a First Team All-American in Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith.
This is the second edition of the EA Sports College Football Franchise, which ended an 11-year spell without a college football video game.
Bill Walsh College Football was the first college football video game and it came out in 1993. The legendary head coach of Stanford and the San Francisco 49ers served as the cover for the first two editions and then College Football USA 96/97 would feature as the next two.
The NCAA started to brand the video game in 1997 with NCAA College Football 98 and would continue to do so through 2013 with NCAA College Football 14. All FBS teams then came into the video game, but with the NCAA branding, so too did official bowl games and awards like the Heisman, Biletnikoff and others.
The game had different modes that people could play, like dynasty mode, ultimate team in later editions and Road to Glory, which allowed players to play as themselves and become a star. All of these editions are in the new game as well.
NCAA College Football came out on a number of consoles, including Wii, PlayStation, XBOX, GameCube, Windows and more. The new edition came out for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
Pitt even had a player grace the cover, as Biletnikoff winner Larry Fitzgerald was on the front of NCAA College Football 2005.
The reason for the hiatus of a college football video game came when the NCAA, Electronic Arts and the use of college athletes’ likenesses all came together.
Disputes included some conferences backing out of the game, the NCAA continuing to argue the amateur status of student-athletes, and a lack of understanding of how to pay college athletes, which forced EA to choose to shelve the game for the foreseeable future.
NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) allows student-athletes to profit off of themselves, which made it easier for EA to figure out how to make a new college football game.
Student-athletes also have the ability to truly play as themselves in the EA Sports franchise. Previous editions didn’t have names of the players or any descriptions. They now have their own pictures, names and more for the game.
NIL paid student-athletes around $600 for participating and the game for free, which costs around $70.
Electronic Arts worked with One Team Partners, who work with NIL rights and CLC, the country’s top college trademark licensing company, allowing more 15,000 current student-athletes to make merchandise deals, and now, a video game deal too.
While EA never released the numbers/sales for the game, Circana reported that the 2025 edition set the record for the best-selling sports game in total dollars.
EA Sports also announced that a full reveal will come out on May 29 and that the game itself comes out on July 10
Follow Inside the Panthers on Twitter: @InsidePitt
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
