One of college football’s breakout stars in 2024, Ryan Williams emerged as one of the faces of the sport. That high profile helped put him alongside fellow star receiver Jeremiah Smith on the standard cover of EA Sports College Football 26.
But when the Alabama star found out, he wasn’t quite sure what was happening. He received a text with the news, but his iPhone summarizes his texts. That led to some confusion about what exactly it said.
At the time, Williams was with his mom. That means she got to see the confused look on his face when he read the summary.
“I was just at home with my mom,” Williams told Rece Davis on the College GameDay podcast. “We were just spending some time together because that’s, like, my best friend. … I got a text, and my messages, they’re summarized. All my messages get summarized.
“So I got a text that said, ‘Cover 26.’ And I was like, ‘Huh?’ I thought someone was asking me the difference between Cover 2 and Cover 6. … So I tap on the message and I’m reading it, and my mom’s looking at me and she was like, ‘What? What’s wrong?’ I was like, they asked me to be on the cover. She was like, the cover of what? I was like, the cover of College Football 26. And my mom, she’s just a big fan of me. She doesn’t really know what’s going on, but she knows what’s going on because of me. So she was like screaming and super excited.”
For Williams, the chance to be on the cover of the highly anticipated video game proved another opportunity to represent his family, as well as Alabama. Being with his mom when he learned the news made it even sweeter.
“That moment pretty much summarized all my feelings going into it,” Williams said. “Because even though my mom doesn’t know what’s going on, she’s super supportive of me, and the rest of my family, they’re always super supportive.
“Just being able to represent them and my home state and my school, it just means a lot. I’ve just been super excited and blessed to even be able to be a part of this.”
More on Ryan Williams, Jeremiah Smith as cover stars
Ryan Williams and Jeremiah Smith both arrived as Five Star Plus+ recruits in 2024. Smith was the No. 1 overall player out of the 2024 cycle, according to the On3 Industry Ranking, a weighted average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies. Williams came in as the No. 5 overall prospect and No. 3-ranked wide receiver from the class.
The two players are also some of the biggest names in college football. Smith has a $4.2 million On3 NIL Valuation, which ranks No. 3 in the college football NIL rankings, and Williams’ $2.7 million On3 NIL Valuation sits at No. 13. The duo also come in at No. 3 and No. 15, respectively, in the On3 NIL 100 – the first of its kind and defacto NIL ranking of the top 100 high school and college athletes ranked by their On3 NIL Valuation.
EA Sports College Football 26 is the second installment since the franchise returns last year. It releases July 10.
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