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The life of Carolina football during the death of College Football 2014.
Full disclosure, I’ve never owned a home video game and never played a game of any sort since Pac-Man. But the anticipation for this week’s release of EA Sports’ College Football 25 has taken the summer scene by storm, especially for the younger set and the slightly older set who played the last EA college football game from 2014.
The chief marketing officer for EA Sports is David Tinson, a 1996 UNC graduate and one-time media relations assistant making peanuts at Carolina and Texas who took a leap with his young family for a job with EA in 2002. The CMO at EA since 2020, Tinson’s peanuts have steadily grown into millions along with his success there.
Just before he took that last leap, Tinson hinted that EA was about to get back into the college sports gaming business and was exploring all avenues of the then-newly invented NIL, which allowed paying college athletes for the name-image-likeness they can now opt into with the various gaming companies. EA is a world leader in the field.
At the UNC press conference introducing the football transfers this week, the questions morphed from the mundaneness of summer workouts into how excited the players are about College Football 25 that will break sales records at EA and the global industry.
The way they talked about the details and nuances of playing the game was both fascinating and telling as to why most of the digital social life in this country has become gaming. So since EA got out of the college business stemming from lawsuits by former athletes like UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon, what has happened to the real game at Tinson’s alma mater?
The football Tar Heels were between the Mack Brown eras in Chapel Hill and Austin (where he helped Tinson land a job there). Larry Fedora was signed to a seven-year contract because he wanted (and needed) time to rebuild from the dumpster fire that ended the Butch Davis days. Fedora’s inaugural 2012 team went 8-4 and would have made UNC’s first trip to the ACC Championship Game if not for an NCAA probation.
After going .500 the next two seasons, Fedora’s program did win the ACC Coastal and lost a close, controversial game to Clemson in Charlotte. Three years later, after two terrible losing seasons, Fedora was fired and Brown came out of retirement for his second UNC stint. His teams have been to five bowl games since but lost the last four.
At the press conference, the media asked each of the five summer incoming transfers about College Football 25, and they all seemed more excited about getting back to their dorm rooms and apartments after the drudgery of training camp and fire it up, that is if the Tar Heels can get a truck load of those games delivered.
If David Tinson has anything to do with it, they are in route.
Featured image via UNC-Chapel Hill
Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
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