EA Replicates 180 School Songs, 10 Real Animal Mascots for College Football 25
In pursuit of pitchside perfection, EA Sports has gone as far as building a two-story ramp and hiring stuntmen to run and jump down it all to capture the sights and sounds of College Football 25.
Posted 5 months ago
180 school songs, 80,000 stadium photographs, hundreds of game day traditions, and 10 lucky animals have been immortalized in EA Sports College Football 25.
EA Sports has released a blog detailing the frankly extraordinary efforts the developers have gone through to capture the sights and sounds of the big game.
Among some of the more baffling lengths the team has gone to in replicating the atmosphere of a college game, EA Orlando built a two-story tall ramp for stunt actors to run down for motion capture of the runout at Clemson's "Death Valley" stadium.
A development deep dive on the process behind bringing the College Football franchise back after a decade's hiatus details the more than 80,000 photographs sent from stadiums around the country, as most of the 134 playable FBS schools sent reference materials to work from.
A developer gathers data from the endzone of Florida's Ben Hill Griffin stadium
©EA Sports
Slightly closer to home, developers headed down the road to The Swamp, AKA Ben Hill Griffin Stadium at University of Florida to scan the color of the artificial turf in the endzone.
On top of capturing unique team celebrations for turnovers and touchdowns, 40 mascots – including 10 actual animals – have been added to the sidelines. Colorado's resident buffalo Ralphie VI has even aged throughout development, after being rotated into service in 2021 as a 15-month-old.
The sights of the field are also matched with crowd sounds recorded directly by EA from 41 games around the country, as well as supplementary audio provided by ESPN broadcasts. Part of the stadium audio mix is also provided by professional recordings of school songs, including all 134 fight songs with marching bands and even players. Even interstitial "rousers" sung in between plays and at crucial moments have been added, amping up the effectiveness of the Homefield Advantage.
Read more of the absurd lengths EA Orlando has gone to in the devblog on bringing College Football 25 to life on consoles this month. And check out what we thought when we headed down to the Sunshine State to go hands-on with College Football 25 earlier this year.
