MAILBAG: Realignment, Basketball Video Games and More:

Good morning, and thanks for your continued support of Extra Points.

Friends, this is my last dispatch before I go on an actual vacation. I fly out to São Paulo on Monday afternoon, and I’ll be out of pocket until the morning of July 18. I’ve pre-written a few stories, and we have some freelancers stepping up to publish stuff while I’m out. Extra Points will continue as scheduled, even while I’m in Brazil.

Before I leave, I figured now would be a good time to answer the ol’ mailbag. Mailbag questions are accepted on a rolling basis, via email or social media.

I hope you all have a wonderful and safe 4th of July Holiday. I’m sure you’ll be in good hands while I’m out!

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We can start this with a few questions about the stuff that everybody on social media wants to ask about…video games.

Good question, Jack. I don’t want to say that’s impossible, but I haven’t heard anybody on the EA or industry side indicate that it would be a priority. Having an NCAA license is much more important for a college basketball game, since the NCAA operates the championship postseason events and controls the IP for things like “March Madness.”

In FBS football, the College Football Playoff operates outside the scope of the NCAA, and most of the other IP that people care about, like bowl games and trophies, are also not controlled by the NCAA. I am quite confident that EA has no interest in changing the name of the series back to NCAA Football, as I was told that they see the new version, EA Sports College Football YEAR, as new IP. They want it to be seen as distinct from the late 2000s era.

So could they do it? Sure, they could. But I’m not expecting that.

Speaking of video games, I got a zillion tweets that were some variation of this over the last 48 hours:

These questions came after I shared that according to the CLC proposal I obtained, EA is requiring an “exclusive “action simulation” license over the proposed six-year term of their college basketball contract. As I understand it, if that proposal is approved, another video game publisher would not be able to use CLC-controlled IP to make a directly competing game.

So you wouldn’t have EA Sports College Basketball 28 and, hypothetically, 2K College Basketball 28….unless one game was closer to NBA Jam (arcade action) rather than a realistic basketball simulation.