Respect is fleeting. To earn it doesn’t mean you are allowed to keep it beyond the next day, the next month, the next game or season.
Four Front Range football programs stand days before the start of the 2007 college season wanting respect. Needing it. Chasing it.
But for Colorado, Colorado State, Air Force and Wyoming, teams that went a combined 16-32 last season, respect will have to be earned, because no one is giving it to them.
The Buffaloes have been picked by the media to finish fifth in the Big 12’s six-team North Division. The Cowboys, Rams and Falcons occupy the fifth-through-seventh predicted finishes in the nine-team Mountain West Conference.
Not even a video game gives them a break.
How will the seasons go for CU, CSU, Air Force and Wyoming?
According to a simulated season on the popular college football game EA Sports’ NCAA Football 08 – which players from all four teams play on a dizzyingly regular basis – this is how that will go down, and it isn’t pretty:
It gets more interesting. The winner of Saturday’s Colorado-Colorado State game at Invesco Field at Mile High? Colorado State in a blowout, 41-24. The Buffaloes, who had a 10-3 lead in the game after the first quarter, allowed CSU to roll up 419 total yards by the time it was all over.
“You know, after a 2-10 season, not too many people believe in us,” CU running back Demetrius Sumler, an avid NCAA 08 player, said when told of the simulated season. “And that’s expected. You go 2-10, nobody’s going to pump you up to go to a big bowl.”
Colorado State’s six wins didn’t make the cut for a bowl, either. CSU’s bowl hopes were dashed when Wyoming got the last of its four video victories in the Border War, beating the Rams 17-10 in the last game of the teams’ season.
Air Force claimed a small piece of satisfaction in an otherwise disastrous season by defeating Wyoming 38-19.
And while all of this is irrelevant to those who roll their eyes at the very thought of the sometimes time-consuming video game, the bottom line is it is a phenomenon.
It is big business to EA Sports, to the hundreds of thousands of individuals who play it, and to the institutions whose stadiums and teams are recreated down to the last detail on the game. NCAA 08 was released July 17. By Aug. 17, it had sold nearly 1 million copies combined on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 platforms.
“The sport has never been as popular as it is right now,” says Ben Haumiller, a producer of the NCAA 08 game. “The game has never been as great as it is right now.”
Colorado’s Bernard Jackson was among those in a rush to pick up NCAA 08 on the first day of its release. Colorado State wide receiver George Hill wasn’t far behind, snatching up a copy for Xbox 360 on the second day.
The draw for athletes goes beyond a game that they might have played in the first place. Without specifically having their names and hometowns on the game because of licensing regulations, the players are represented fairly accurately on each year’s edition.
“It’s amazing,” Hill said. “You’d never think you’d be on a video game. Everybody always wants to create a player, but you’re already created on the game, so it’s like, ‘All right, I’ll just put myself in the game.’ It’s pretty cool.”
The success and clout of the NCAA football franchise and EA Sports has made it a brand individuals and companies to become affiliated with it.
Turn on this year’s version and ESPN’s Chris Fowler guides you through game-play tutorials and teaches lessons on team history and rivalry- game trophies. Play a game, and you will find the familiar announcing voices of Brad Nessler, Kirk Herbstreit and Lee Corso describing and analyzing each play.
Playing in rain? That’s probably because of The Weather Channel, which began a relationship with EA Sports beginning with this game. With data downloaded from The Weather Channel servers, if the game is being played in Tallahassee, Fla., and it is raining there, the contest will be played in the rain. If it’s 90 degrees and 80 percent humidity there, the game will be played in those sweltering conditions.
“We’re thrilled about it,” Weather Channel spokesman David Blumenthal said. “For us it’s great to know that the leading college football game, they are going to turn to us for the weather. If you think about it, football in particular, games that have a big weather factor are games that go down in history.”
The NCAA aligned itself with the game in 1995, when its relationship with EA Sports turned what was then called Bill Walsh’s College Football into the present franchise. And that became lucrative for everyone.
In renewable multiyear contracts brokered by the College Licensing Company (CLC), royalties from the wholesale cost of the game are funneled back to the NCAA, then distributed among the member institutions. And that has provided a revenue stream to universities not even thought of 15 years ago.
The distribution is tiered, said Dave Kirkpatrick, CLC vice president of nonapparel marketing. The better a program’s on-field success is over a 10-year span, the more royalty money it receives.
“It wouldn’t be fair for Notre Dame to receive the same amount of money as a lesser-known football school,” Kirkpatrick said. “But schools can move up and down in the tiering system depending on how their team does.”
Take Boise State, for example. In 2003, the Broncos pulled in $14,000 in royalty money from the EA Sports game. By the 2006-07 fiscal year that number had risen to $81,000. CU received $71,855.40, $84,759.14 and $104,697 in royalty money the past three years from previous editions of the game.
And as the game grows, the money continues to grow.
NCAA spokeswoman Gail Dent called the 10-year-plus relationship between the NCAA and EA Sports “a positive relationship.”
“EA is considered to be a leader in the game manufacturing market,” Dent said.
Not that any of that means some, such as Colorado State coach Sonny Lubick, will become better versed in how the game works.
“The only thing I know is we probably have more guys get flunked out of school or get themselves in trouble academically, and I’m saying, ‘What the heck do you do with your time?”‘ Lubick said, smiling. “And then I hear through the grapevine, ‘Coach, he plays video games until two in the morning.’
“When (video games) first came out, I used to play Super Mario (Bros.) with my kids. And I could never get past that third screen. I got Mario over a couple of barrels, and that’s all I remember.”
Staff writer Chris Dempsey can be reached at 303-954-1279 or cdempsey@denverpost.com.
ABOUT THE GAME
EA SPORTS NCAA FOOTBALL 08 FOR XBOX, XBOX 360, PLAYSTATION 2 AND PLAYSTATION 3
WHAT’S NEW
The game, which comes out every summer, takes a calendar year to design, add improvements and develop the newest version. None of the players on the game is identified by name because of NCAA regulations covering amateurism. But the cover player always is identifiable. This year’s cover player is former Boise State quarterback Jared Zabransky. (The Denver Post’s simulated covers, below, feature Air Force quarterback Shaun Carney, Colorado coach Dan Hawkins, Colorado State defensive tackle Erik Sandie and Wyoming receiver Michael Ford.)
WHAT TO LOOK FOR
Stadiums are lifelike down to the last detail. EA sends representatives to every school on the game to take 360-degree photos from the 50-yard line. The images are used to design the digital stadiums. Artwork, such as uniforms and logos, is sent to each school to double-check for accuracy. Even stadium details are scrutinized.
