Heisman winner Baker Mayfield, in a goodbye letter to Oklahoma posted at the Players’ Tribune:
As a kid, Baker Mayfield played EA Sports’ ‘NCAA Football’ exactly the same way you did
Imagine how fun this guy would’ve been in NCAA Football 18.
I loved those NCAA Football games growing up. Every year, I’d create myself as a player and play for OU. I was always a running back, which goes to show that maybe it is possible to dream too big. I’d hand myself the ball 50 or 60 times a game. Total workhorse. Countless hours played. Broke every record. Amazing time in my life.
Every season, the Sooners would go undefeated, and I’d win the Heisman. That was the dream.
Unfortunately, my reality in ninth grade was that I was 5’ 2” and a stout 140 pounds. I played quarterback for our JV team at Lake Travis. Our very first scrimmage was against Fort Hood, which had a lot of military kids, so those guys were always tough to play against. And they were big, I remember that. The very first play of that scrimmage, the ball was snapped, and I rolled out to the left. For some reason, instead of fully rolling out, I stopped halfway. As soon as I stopped, this man-child rocked me from my blindside and drove my shoulder into the ground. I separated my AC joint in my throwing shoulder. On the first play. So yeah, good start.
Same, largely.
Mayfield’s high-scoring Sooners would’ve been a cheat code in NCAA 18, if EA Sports hadn’t halted the series, and he almost certainly would’ve been the 19 cover boy.
EA pulled the series amid legal challenges over the series’ use of real player likenesses, for which players couldn’t be compensated due to NCAA rules. Soon as the NCAA changes things up, the game could theoretically come back.
Until then ... hey, Baker’s in Madden now.
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