When EA Sports College Football 25 comes out in July, users will be able to play with some of college football’s biggest stars like Quinn Ewers and Travis Hunter. Still, players of the video game franchise could only wonder what it would’ve been like to play some of the sport’s biggest stars in the past decade.
There are players like Lamar Jackson at Louisville, Justin Jefferson at LSU and Caleb Williams at Southern California. There’s also Christian McCaffrey, who was a human highlight reel when he was at Stanford. Now with college football set to come back in video game form, the former Stanford star and cover athlete of Madden 25 wishes he could’ve been in the game.
“That would have been so cool,” McCaffrey told USA TODAY Sports. “I’m excited for the new game. I think that’s so cool they’re bringing it back.”
McCaffrey was never able to be featured in the game since he started his college career in 2014, one year after EA Sports released the last rendition of the game — NCAA Football 14. But he isn’t giving up hope of being able to see what it would be like to see him don a Stanford uniform again.
“I don’t know what the logistics of how they’re going to do it is, but I’m praying that there’s a 2015-2016 Stanford team that you can choose to play with,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of guys that will be excited about that.”
McCaffrey added he hopes he would be a high-rated player if his Stanford team was included in the game, but it’s safe to say he could be a cheat code.
He had a breakout sophomore season in 2015 when he broke the NCAA single-season all-purpose yards record with 3,864 yards and 15 touchdowns. He finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting behind Derrick Henry, and he had one of the best performances in Rose Bowl history when he picked up 368 all-purpose yards — a Rose Bowl record — in a win over Iowa. Stanford won the Pac-12 title and finished the season 12-2. In 2016, McCaffrey still had a solid season with 2,327 all-purpose yards and 16 touchdowns.
There haven’t been any reports from EA Sports about legendary teams in the game, but if they ever do come in future version, Stanford with McCaffrey will likely be a popular team to use.