By Adam Roberts – 2/2/2021
In the early days of quarantine, with limited out-of-home entertainment options available my former roommate and I became fixated on the phenomenon of Coach Duggs. For those out of the loop, Barstool’s Big Cat would regularly play NCAA Football ’14 as the fictitious rotund head coach guiding a plethora of programs to bowl glory and inevitably jumping from team to team. Once real-life college football Twitter accounts got in on the fun, things really skyrocketed for Big Cat, and at the end of the day the trend proved that a college football video game still has the chance to meet the needs of a huge market of gamers despite the fact that EA Sports hasn’t released a new game since NCAA ’14.
But now it seems the wait may soon be over.
Earlier today, EA Sports vice president Daryl Holt said the company plans to bring back the popular franchise, though noted it won’t be this year and stopped short of announcing a release date or even a release date announcement date.
Another important thing to note EA Sports is, for now, planning to move forward without rosters that include the names, images or likenesses of real college players. Current NCAA rules prohibit athletes from selling their NIL rights while in college, and a pending lawsuit hoping to change that was tabled a few weeks ago.