EA Sports’ College Football 25 will release July 19; Ewers, Hunter, Edwards star on cover

Last Friday, Michigan running back Donovan Edwards was at a local hospital, handing out gift baskets to patients for Mother’s Day, when a doctor made a comment that caught him off-guard.

“Congratulations on the cover,” the doctor told him, referencing the upcoming EA Sports College Football 25 video game.

Edwards, unsure how the doctor knew the secret, replied that he didn’t know what the doctor was talking about and dismissed it. The running back quickly learned that a cover had leaked via the official PlayStation Store.

The deluxe version cover leak was confirmed to be authentic as EA Sports revealed the covers on Thursday, along with a July 19 release date, another milestone in the game’s return after 11 years away. The game will have two versions (standard for $69.99 and deluxe, which will be playable three days early on July 16, for $99.99) and three main cover athletes on both of them: Edwards, Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers and Colorado wide receiver/defensive back Travis Hunter. They are the first active college players to make the cover, thanks to loosened rules allowing players to profit off their name, image and likeness rights. Previous editions of the game featured a graduating star or a former legend. EA halted production of the game over litigation concerns in the wake of lawsuits challenging the NCAA’s previous NIL restrictions.

Read more on EA Sports College Football 25

• Everything I learned about EA Sports’ College Football 25 after two hours of gameplay
• What’s in Dynasty mode of College Football 25? Recruiting, the transfer portal and more
• NIL put college football video games on hiatus. Here’s how EA Sports put it in the revival

“It’s a surreal moment,” Ewers told a select group of reporters earlier this week.

The game’s full reveal will come on Friday, the company said, and pre-orders for both versions of the game opened on Thursday. The game will only be made for PlayStation 5 and XBox Series X/S, and players can pre-order a bundle of the deluxe versions of College Football 25 and Madden 25 together (for $149.99), which will provide three days of early access for each, along with other benefits.

Despite the college game’s 11-year hiatus, its legacy remains so strong and the role of cover athlete so coveted that even hospital doctors have followed every bit of news.

“A lot of people hit me up, but I just told them I didn’t know if it was real,” Hunter said of the leak reaction. “I kept everybody on their toes.”

Every player who has opted in and been selected for the game will receive $600 and a copy of the game (valued at $70). An additional group of male and female college athletes signed separate ambassador deals to promote the game. Cover athletes also receive more, although the players declined to discuss what they were paid. For all three players, the process of getting on the cover was simple.

“They just asked me, and of course I wasn’t going to turn it down,” Hunter said. “That was pretty much the process, and I wanted to do everything I needed to do for them.”

When Joey Harrington became the NCAA Football cover athlete, he got invited to Jamaica for the launch and played Madden with members of N'Sync.

Yes, really. https://t.co/oAKarBJkwm pic.twitter.com/zL8rMwZibs

— Chris Vannini (@ChrisVannini) May 10, 2024

The three players met up for the standard version’s cover photoshoot, which appears to be set at the Cotton Bowl Stadium in Dallas. The Deluxe Edition cover also depicts Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe, Georgia quarterback Carson Beck and Ohio State running back Quinshon Judkins from behind.

But it’s Edwards, Ewers and Hunter as the focal points. Edwards won a national championship with Michigan last season, scoring two touchdowns in the title game. Ewers led Texas to a Big 12 championship and College Football Playoff appearance and is expected to be a top quarterback in the 2025 NFL Draft. Hunter is a two-way star who had 721 receiving yards and three interceptions in his first season at Colorado.

All three have memories of playing the game, despite a decade without a new one. Hunter, an active gamer who livestreams on Twitch, said he continued to play NCAA Football 14 on PC long after the game was discontinued. He’d create himself as a two-way player or run the read option with Marcus Mariota and Oregon. Ewers said he used to create himself and put the player on Texas.

Some other game details are already known. All 134 FBS teams will be included in the game. College Football 25 will be built on the Madden engine but won’t be a reskin of Madden. Dynasty Mode and Road to Glory will be the featured gameplay modes once again. A transfer portal is expected as well. Schools have submitted thousands of assets to EA Sports over the past three years, including stadium photos, jerseys, crowd cheers and more. College Football Playoff and bowl imagery will be used, most individual award trophies other than the Heisman Trophy will not be in it, many ESPN broadcasters have already recorded their calls, and developers continue to plan for every possible detail and change to the sport before the game’s release.

When fall camp hits, not only will players and fans be excited for the season on the field, they’ll be able to play it out in the video game for the first time in more than a decade.

“There’s definitely going to be some games going on that’ll be pretty intense for sure,” Ewers said. “That’s going to be the talk of the locker room. But we’ve gotta be present and understand what we’re here to do. I know for sure in fall camp, in those tiny break times we have, people are going to be playing it all the time.”

(Cover art courtesy of EA Sports)