The NCAA Football video game hasn’t been made ever since Ed O’Bannon challenged the NCAA over “player likeness” in the game and the fact that collegiate athletes weren’t getting paid for their likenesses being used to sell millions of copies of the video game annually. But the fact that the game hasn’t been around since 2013 doesn’t stop it from still having an impact among college football fans.
A group known as SG1 Sports is running a series where they are using the last NCAA Football video game, NCAA Football 14, to simulate the upcoming season for Power Five programs. They use an updated roster for the 2018 season complete with names and rankings for every team to run through the simulations.
Recently, SG1 Sports used NCAA Football to predict the Vols’ upcoming 2018 season. You can see the rankings of Tennessee’s players with the updated roster here before you watch their simulation below.
The video game simulation has the Vols going 5-7 in 2018 with wins over ETSU, UTEP, Charlotte, Kentucky, and Vanderbilt. The game predicts the Vols will lose by double digits to West Virginia to open the season, lose a close, high-scoring contest against Florida, and lose a much closer than anticipated battle against Alabama. It also predicts big losses to Auburn, Georgia, South Carolina, and Missouri.
It’s also worth noting that each game was simulated as just a single game, not as part of a season. So each roster was at full strength and didn’t have any injuries for each game, but there was also no improvement or drop in ratings for the players either since there was no progression through a season. Each game was just an exhibition in the video game, so players’ ratings and status remained static.
And, of course, those ratings are subjective for each team.
Here’s how SG1 Sports sees Tennessee’s season playing out via their simulation in NCAA Football 14 with updated rosters.
