EA Sports has no shortage of options for who to put on the cover of College Football 25.
In previous years they used some of college football biggest legends like Tim Tebow, Barry Sanders, and Reggie Bush. It may seem like a silly formality but the player who ends up on the cover can have a significant impact on the total number of games sold.
With all that is at stake, EA is going to want to get this one right.
The game has been rebranded as EA Sports College Football which opens up a unique opportunity. In the past, EA Sports was limited to only putting outgoing NCAA Football players on the cover.
A player still in college wouldn’t risk losing their NCAA eligibility over a sponsorship. That’s all changed with the new NIL rules.
Not only can they now put a player who still in college on the cover, I’d argue that it is something they absolutely need to do. After all, one of the biggest new features in the game is the use of real names (instead of names like WR#9).
The EA Sports College Football 25 cover needs to send 2 seemingly contradictory signals:
- Remember those legendary NCAA Football games that you loved over a decade ago? We’re going to make another one just like that.
- The game will be fresh, different, and completely new.
Those messages seem completely at odds with each other.
Not only do they have to walk that seemingly impossible line, they also have the normal requirement of putting someone on the cover with strong name recognition and from a school with a big fan base.
So now we have 4 major things the cover has to signal/have:
- It’s the same great game as before
- But it’s also much better and completely new
- Player has to have major name recognition
- From a top school
So let’s start with, “From a top school.” We recently did an article covering what schools we think should receive a 6-star program prestige rating in EA College Football 25.
Those 10 schools are:
- Alabama
- Michigan
- Ohio State
- Texas
- USC
- Notre Dame
- LSU
- Oklahoma
- Georgia
- Penn State
While it isn’t an absolute requirement that the cover athlete comes from one of those schools, it will certainly help boost sales.
There is 1 person that has a name all football fans know. A person who we know will not be eligible for the NFL draft until at least 2026. He also happens to be from one of those top schools.
This is a person who is expected to continue a long history of greatness and maybe even rise to new heights never before seen.
The obvious choice for the EA Sports College Football 25 cover is Arch Manning.
In fact, Arch Manning is already the highest paid college football player for NIL rights before he has even played 1 snap.
One potential setback to this theory is that the University of Texas has already named Quinn Ewers their starting quarterback.
But it is still early and the season is long. There will be a lot of pressure on coach Steve Sarkisian to replace Ewers with Manning if anything doesn’t go according to plan early on.
If it looks like Arch Manning will be the starter heading into the 2024 season, that should be enough to get him on the cover.
This is the biggest layup EA Sports will ever have. Arch Manning is the obvious choice for the College Football 25 cover.
Bill Walsh
I would like to see a mascot instead of a player or even a school for each state like Ohio State in Ohio and USC in California and Florida in Florida.
While I acknowledge the Manning kid makes a lot of sense, I think he’s gotta at least play 1 down in college football before we anoint him.
That’s a fair enough point. If he doesn’t play much in his first year or 2 then he may have to wait and maybe be on a different cover going forward.
I’m a Longhorn and I absolutely agree with you. This time last year Ewers was our savior. So far we are still waiting on that.