By: Cole Negen

At the intersection of football and gaming, one video game has managed to build up the most hype in recent memory: EA Sports’s College Football ‘25.

After a decade-long wait since the last installment of the franchise, college football returned to the video game world in July with a bang. According to the Sports Business Journal, College Football 25 became the best-selling video game of 2024 just a month after its release. In addition, the game has also tripled the lifetime sales of the previous best selling college football video game.

It comes as no surprise then that the game has become a hit across the SAU campus. Students and members of the SAU football team alike have spent countless hours on the game playing as not only their favorite Division One program, but also as SAU.

Thanks to a feature called TeamBuilder, St. Ambrose has been able to be added to the game as a playable team, complete with the team’s four sets of uniforms and a striking recreation of Jack and Pat Bush Stadium to play on.

SAU Athletic Director Mike Holmes had some high praise for the recreation of the Bees’s home stadium.

“I thought what was interesting about the video game’s adaptation is that it looked like our football offices were in the end zone of one of the shots, but then the other shot looked like our ticket entrance for the actual Jack and Pat Bush Stadium, so if you know our facilities you’re going to see a lot of those aspects like being up on the hillside. So clearly somebody is pretty familiar,” said Holmes.

Holmes also commented on the idea of SAU being on a platform for people to take note of around the country.

“I think any time you can get on a national platform where people can search, and if they search the right word like ‘Bees’ or ‘Ambrose’ or whatever then we’re going to be one of the options that pops up, that’s a pretty cool thing,” Holmes added.

Hear more from Holmes and students on their experiences with SAU in the biggest video game of 2024 in the video above.