Heisman Trophy confirmed as part of EA Sports College Football 25

While several of the official awards decided to opt out of EA Sports College Football 25, college football die-hards got some reassuring news on Friday evening. The Heisman Trophy officially announced that they will be in the video game. They announced the news via their Twitter page.

More details on EA Sports College Football 25

For the first time in more than a decade, EA Sports is returning to the college football space.

With a full reveal scheduled for May and a July release expected, excitement levels keep rising. The first college sports video game to compensate athletes for their name, image and likeness to be included in the game, earlier this week the company announced more than 10,000 players opted-in.

There is one entity that has chosen not to participate in EA Sports College Football 25, though. The National College Football Awards Association (NCFAA) has declined an offer, the association’s president Mark Wolpert told On3.

“The offer that has been made is not adequate for the rights fee for the awards,” he recently told On3.

What does that mean? Fans who buy the game and play Road to Glory or Dynasty modes will not have the chance to win real trophies that college football players are annually awarded. Before EA Sports made the call to cancel the series a decade ago, NCFAA awards were included.

Top awards will not be included CFB 25

The list of awards include the Bednarik, Biletnikoff, Davey O’Brien, Doak Walker, Grozo, Jim Thorpe, Maxwell, Outland and Ray Guy.

EA Sports did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Wolpert told On3 the awards were previously undervalued. However, the going thought was the exposure was worth being included in the game. He declined to give specifics on the new offer for the awards but called it a “nominal increase based on the 2014 number.”

“It was not something that was representative of any either major awards, assigning image rights and usage rights to a game which we all believe is going to be very popular and going to sell a lot of copies based on past history,” Wolpert, who is also the executive director of the Maxwell Football Club, said. “There’s an appetite for that game. And if brands are going to be represented there, we want to be compensated properly. So when I explained that to the EA rep, the response came back to me that if we choose not to do that, they’ll just make their own awards up and put them in the game.

“My thought at that time was, ‘Well, you have approached us about the importance of authenticity in the game, yet you’re very quick to dismiss awards, some of which have existed for eight decades. So how is the game authentic when you don’t have the authentic awards in it?’”

On3’s Pete Nakos also contributed to this article.