South Alabama Gets Lots Of Press Over EA Fumble
Kendall Houston as an alternate cover of NCAA Football 13
Several writers around the nation who cover College Football have written posts about NCAA Football ’13 set to release next month by EA Sports and how South Alabama is missing while UTSA, Texas State and UMass are all three included. South Alabama trustees voted on December 6, 2007 to add football and then hired Joey Jones to be the first coach on February 15, 2008 and played their first game in 2009.
However in 2009, they announced they were taking the most expedient route available under NCAA rules to become a full member of the FBS division of football. The three other schools only recently announced their intentions of moving up to the FBS level and will be classified the same as South Alabama.
An EA Sports communication manager Julie Foster said, “South Alabama was a provisional member of FBS last year and did not play a full FBS schedule. We did not receive confirmation that they were changing to a full FBS schedule this year until it was too late for inclusion in NCAA Football 13. South Alabama will be included in NCAA Football 14.” Further clarification was not made, however.
But this has left a sour taste in the mouth of many South Alabama fans. Many, like myself, have looked forward for over three and a half years to see our school among the storied programs of Alabama, Michigan, Ohio State, USC and Oklahoma in a video game. Unfortunately, we have to wait yet another year and it was not the fault of our school. It was a complete blunder by EA Sports.
Among those who have written about this are Kevin McGuire, Sports Video Game Examiner; Jason Kirk, College Football Editor and co-host of Shutdown Fullback at SBNation (first and second articles); Graham Watson at Dr. Saturday a Yahoo! Sports Blog and one of my favorite writers, Holly Anderson with Sports Illustrated put it in her Weekend Whimsy. (By the way, it wasn’t a paperwork issue either).
But fans have not stopped there, they are attempting to get EA’s attention by tweeting with the hashtag #FreeSouthAlabama. While I don’t work in the game development world, I do work in the field of software and studied game development (a little). I doubt they can add us to the game that will be shipped out next month, but us in Jag Nation hope that we will be included with an online update at least. But the last thing I want is a half-hearted attempt to stuff us in the game.
EA highly disappointed me and they disappointed all of us in the South Alabama family. I hope this will be rectified in the next edition, a very long year from now. But there are seniors on this years squad who will not get to see their number out on the field wearing the Jaguar Red, White and Blue. It’s those guys who I feel for. Some of them came to South when there wasn’t a football field house. They came on a vision and will be leaving a program that is well on it’s way to great heights. It’s already something special.
C.J. Bennett as the alternate cover for NCAA Football 13. Image created by J.T. Crabtree.