'A dream come true': Local players relish appearing in EA Sports NCAA Football 25

Josh Atwood's eligibility endured just long enough.

The UMass senior center from Natick is entering his fifth season as a college football player. He got to be a freshman twice after appearing in four games as a nose tackle during the 2020 COVID season and receiving an extra year because of it.

That proved serendipitous. Atwood held out long enough to appear in the first college football video game released in a decade. EA Sports College Football 25 arrived Tuesday on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles for those that purchased the deluxe edition and – most importantly – the players in the game. The standard edition drops Thursday.

The series, originally published between 1993 and 2014, took a hiatus due to legal disputes between the publisher, the NCAA and college athletes over the usage of college athletes' likenesses in the video games without compensating them, which would have been illegal under previous rules.

Now, players can receive money for their name, image and likeness, which paved the way for EA (Electronic Arts) to begin developing the latest release in 2021.

"I remember playing NCAA 13. That was the last one I played, then I remember losing that game and being so sad I couldn’t find it again. We always talked about it for years. The fact that we’re in it is pretty cool," Atwood said. "Honestly I didn’t think it was going to happen before I was out of here."

Atwood is one of a handful of former MetroWest standout football players to appear in the game. He and former Milford star Dom Schofield play for a Minutemen program that displayed the countdown to the game's release on the videoboard at McGuirk Alumni Stadium. Atwood played the first game of NCAA Football 25 on that screen, teaming with defensive end Tyson Watson against defensive lineman Jaylen Hudson and safety Tyler Rudolph.

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"To go through the roster for the first time and see what your rating was and guys arguing about their ratings and their speed and their strength – all that is a fun thing that we do anyway but now that there’s a resource where they’re guessing and messing around with the numbers,” Atwood said. “It’s fun to play and mess around with the numbers. It’s fun like ‘oh Josh you gotta block him’ or ‘oh you gotta catch that ball.’ That’s another layer of fun that we’re able to have.”

Schofield had little familiarity with the franchise before it returned. Then a friend sent him a screenshot of him in the game.

"It wasn’t an exact picture of me but it looked similar in a way. I was blown away. I’ve never ever seen stuff like this before. I always thought it was a dream. It’s a dream come true for me to see myself in a video game," Schofield said.

Dover-Sherborn grad Nicholas Rinaldi always saw himself in the games. He just had to create himself first. Now the Vanderbilt linebacker just has to open the Commodores roster and scroll down.

"It was pretty cool to me, pretty surreal to just be able to hover over myself and control myself," Rinaldi said.

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It's also an opportunity for friends to control each other. People have reached out to West Virginia guard Sullivan Weidman of Franklin to tell him they're moving him to fullback or putting him at quarterback.

"I’ve seen some of the player builds for offensive lineman and they don’t look too hot, so I hope they got me right," Weidman said.

Whether it's exactly right or not, they're in the game, which provides a unique set of bragging rights for Westborough's Matt Ragan at Boston College. His older brother Sean played for the Eagles from 2016 to 2019 and wasn't ever included in a game they shared growing up.

"He introduced me to those, and when it stopped we switched over to Madden," Matt Ragan said. "We joke with each other all the time, we’re very competitive. There’s definitely going to be some jokes. Probably now and for a long time."

Players had to opt in to allowing their likeness to be used in the game. Each one that did received $600 and a copy of the deluxe edition of the game. That gives them plenty of time with it before they need to prepare for the real college football season.

"Up until camp starts, everyone’s going to be playing NCAA Football in all the free time we’ve got," Weidman said.

Contact Kyle Grabowski at kgrabowski@gannett.com. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @kylegrbwsk .

This article originally appeared on MetroWest Daily News: 'A dream come true': Local players relish appearing in EA Sports NCAA Football 25