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Good morning. My child has been showing me lots of old “My Little Pony” episodes. It’s a really funny show. I like writing these intros as if I am reporting on something important. We turn now to grave journalistic matters.
Hard Sell: Ah, there’s the dealbreaker
All the time, college football serves as a one-to-one metaphor for the rest of the world.
This is the sport on which TV companies base their decisions about which schools get to share billions of dollars and which have to fear athletic irrelevance.
Ticket prices are constantly rising, even as those billions accrue, because the powers went so long without paying their on-field labor that they decided you will foot the bill.
Your team can do everything right, but still never get a realistic title shot, mostly because your school’s president from a hundred years ago didn’t happen to guess the right conference to join.
And how many CEOs would trade their golden parachutes for the gigantic buyouts awarded to failed college football coaches?
Obviously, I could go on. But I say all that because I want to bring up a victory, one that might seem extremely minute and niche, but a victory all the same.
First, some backstory: As mentioned last week, College Football 27 launched to unprecedented controversy as gamers realized EA Sports had added microtransactions.
In addition to locking a handful of new perks away for only those who’ve also pre-purchased the latest edition of the notoriously underwhelming Madden series, EA began paywalling an established feature from previous games, one that allowed gamers to speed up their characters’ progression. An easy mode, per se.
Across game genres, most players don’t mind microtransactions, as long as they affect decorative elements, rather than gameplay itself. College football gamers have long been wary of the latter, having seen from afar the endless money sinks that are NBA 2K and Madden’s Ultimate Team mode.
That’s why the resurrected CFB series’ honeymoon officially ended last week. On every social network, players expressed outrage about what was objectively a pretty tiny change, but one that felt like a first step toward the long-beloved series becoming a zombie casino in a world full of them. An angry public was tanking the game’s review scores.
One moment that might’ve turned the tide: when James Bordeaux, a Kentucky YouTuber who’s become the face of the game’s community, risked his valuable partnership with the company by standing with the public:
“It’s now or never to make a change. Taking the game in that direction is going to ruin all of the support and love you have built from this community. Do what’s right.”
Other prominent CFB gamers (yes, that is a real thing) also applied pressure. Nobody was talking about the game’s football experience actually being really great. It became clear EA was risking dollars in sales by hunting for pennies in microtransactions.
By Saturday, one day after the game’s launch, EA announced it will be caving … for now:
“We’ve missed the mark with the introduction of paid progression options. … We will remove (them).”
Again, I realize this sounds like an incredibly insignificant victory. No lives were saved here. We can assume some important vampire at EA will push the game’s devoted creators to eventually triple down on all this stuff. Also, we’re talking about a feature that I, a person who’s played this series since middle school, had never noticed before.
Regardless, getting a veritable monopoly to back down on anything is not easy. A decade ago, EA might’ve only folded during a similar controversy in a Star Wars game because Disney’s CEO stepped in. Gamers didn’t have that kind of backup here, not even if Otto the Orange himself had stormed EA’s offices.
And didn’t need it, not this time. The point is: Small Ws for consumers, fans and other normal humans are Ws, period. Hard to score a touchdown without stringing together first downs. Which route to the next one?
Also: “Pablo Torre Finds Out” on the whole ordeal, including “how private equity, anticompetitiveness, and microtransactions are ruining video games.”
Quick Snaps
🎧 “I want our fans to know, the Notre Dame fans, that I’m 100 percent supportive of what they’re doing.” Brian Kelly talked to our Pete Sampson about the Irish, five years after leaving.
🦬 “A two-back misdirection attack with lots of window dressing that has the triple-option coming off every run but also threatens the field vertically.” Colorado’s new offense will have a whole lot going on.
📰 News:
“Michigan’s board of regents has a previously scheduled meeting set for Thursday … amid questions about the future of athletic director Warde Manuel.” A tenure that merits the cliche scandal-plagued.
In the past year, the three longest-tenured athletic directors in the Power 4 have stepped down or announced plans to do so: Oklahoma’s Joe Castiglione, Kentucky’s Mitch Barnhart and now Iowa State’s Jamie Pollard.
“Former Texas head coach Tom Herman is expected to join the Florida State coaching staff,” our Bruce Feldman reported. Familiar with hot seats!
🌞 Another conference officially has favorites: reigning Sun Belt division winners JMU and Troy. Another Dukes Playoff run?
🏆 Also, congrats to our Justin Williams, along with Wilson Alexander of On3, for splitting the FWAA’s Beat Writer of the Year Award. Our previous winners: Chris Vannini and Scott Dochterman. Feeling pretty lazy by comparison, but I’m busy being an adult who talks about video games. Justin recently explained how the Brendan Sorsby battle ended.
Nothing New: ‘I wanted it to last forever’
Lots of older athletes have been playing college football lately. Have you seen this? Have you heard about this?
It often feels like we’ve entered a whole new reality that has nothing to do with what preceded it. The time of the age-appropriate college athlete is over; the time of the old guy has come.
But as is always the case, something far more outlandish has happened before. From the story of the 30-year-old who conned his way into a 1995 Texas football scholarship:
“He began living two lives. On weeknights, he worked as a server at the ritzy Chart House restaurant in Malibu as Ron Weaver, he said.
“By day, he was attending class and playing football 20 miles away in the San Fernando Valley as a defensive back named Joel McKelvey. He told his parents he had gotten a job as an athletic trainer at Pierce to explain his schedule.”
Landing a Texas offer, Ron “Joel McKelvey” Weaver began going by J.R. McKelvey, a way to cover for accidentally introducing himself in Austin by his real first name. He kept his background mysterious, though he performed conspicuously old-guy activities like drinking coffee and reading books for fun in front of his much younger teammates.
However, the super-duper-senior defensive back might’ve gotten away with the whole caper, if not for a phone call right before the Sugar Bowl.
The full story by David Ubben might be the best thing we posted during our 1990s series from a couple weeks ago.
That’s a wrap. Now let’s watch some soccer. Email me at un***********@*********ic.com about whatever.
Last week’s most-clicked: It was actually this NYT gift link on how cool it was for the United States’ many diaspora communities to be part of a World Cup host nation.
In that light, here’s another NYT link: Wirecutter meticulously calculated a list of the best ice cream sandwiches. Only so much summer left!
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