… Hail, Hail, to EA Sports, the owners of all Licenses!
I saw this first over at Evil Avatar (I’ll avoid referring to them as EA for a while) and then saw pretty much everywhere else, but EA has scooped up the NCAA football rights. Big surprise.
What does surprise me, though, is this “Collegiate Licensing Company” that EA has made this deal with. A quick look at the list of schools the CLC represents will make an Ohio State Univeristy Buckeye fan wonder… They’re not included in the list. Neither is the Big Ten. Or the PAC 10. Or USC. So 2 of the last 3 National Championship teams aren’t included in the list of schools that fall under the CLC’s umbrella of schools. Interesting.
So does that mean that EA shelled out millions for this “right” and then had to go to each individual school/conference not included under CLC’s holdings and pay even more? I sure hope so.
I had hoped that, with ESPN 2k Sports losing out on the NFL license, we would see an ESPN College Football offering. I thought they could do something special there but now we’ll never know. I’m not as indignant as most people are about this news but it doesn’t really surprise me. EA makes good business moves, what more needs to be said?