Quarantine Virtual Sports Update
Sports are on hiatus, but there’s lots of news coming from the sports world. At least, from the virtual sports world. There’s been lots of talk about the NCAA Football franchise making a comeback, but recently we got news that there will finally be another golf video game. Since it seems like golf courses are going to be opening up before we see another action on a football field, let’s start things off with some virtual golf.
The Tiger Woods PGA Tour franchise has fallen off the map – roughly around the same time that Tiger Woods himself fell off the map. The last game featuring Woods on the cover was released in 2013, marking the end of a 16 year run. The last game that EA Sports released in their PGA Tour series was back in 2015, and featured Rory McIlroy as the cover athlete. Since then, there hasn’t been much going on in terms of golf video games. The most recent golf video game was The Golf Club 2019, which marked the first time that 2K Sports got into the field. Well, they just announced that they’re coming back.
People are so desperate for sports that this blew up all over Twitter on the morning it was released, and honestly I completely understand why. While to the untrained eye a golf video game may seem boring, I’m here to tell you why it’s not. No, it won’t be as fast-paced or exciting as something like NHL or Madden, but that’s not what it’s meant to be. Sometimes, you want to just sit back, relax, and enjoy playing 18 holes. And now, during a time when literally everybody is looking for ways to kill time AND get their sports fix, this news is exactly what the world needed.
Now, the NCAA recently made it possible for athletes to begin making money from sponsorships. It’s about time, considering that these people are all athletes looking to make it to the next level of their sport, and not “student-athletes” like the NCAA continues to claim. This means that EA Sports could bring back the NCAA Football franchise for the first time since 2014, right?
I thought so too, but apparently the answer isn’t so simple. Basically, while the players can now make money, they don’t have a union to represent them as a whole since they technically aren’t employees. For the athletes to be included in the game, EA Sports would need to deal with each athlete individually. As of right now, they can makes deals with the schools to use logos, uniforms, and stadiums, but they wouldn’t be able to have authentic rosters. EA Sports has done this recently with their Madden games, including the logos and uniforms of a few teams in their story mode.
That’s *kind of* how things have been all along. EA Sports never used real names in their games. They would simply be named by their position and number, for example, QB #1. The issue was that they still used the real height, weight, skin tones and what year of school they were in. So while no names were used, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that QB #2 on Texas A&M was Johnny Manziel. That’s what got EA Sports in trouble the first time around, and is likely the only thing stopping them from bringing the game back now.
In the meantime, we’re stuck reliving the glory days with NCAA Football 14.
Bench Life Sports 