7 Players Who Missed Out On Being Cover Athletes For NCAA Football

NCAA Football is back. After a long hiatus, held up by the fact players were not being paid for their likeness, the iconic video gam series is all set to make its return. EA Sports dropped the first teaser trailer for College Football 25 last week. A full reveal of the game is set to come out in May.

A revival of the series has been in the works since 2021. Once the Supreme Court ruled that college athletes could profit off of their name, image, and likeness (NIL) it opened the door for the popular series to come back. Now EA Sports will actually be paying players to use their name and likeness in the game. A change from back in the day where the athletes in the game would not really have any resemblance to their real-life counterparts.

But while their faces never appeared in the games, they did appear on the box art. NCAA Football released 21 games between 1993 and 2013. Players like Robert Griffin, Tim Tebow, Charles Woodson, and Reggie Bush all graced the cover. Denard Robinson was the last player to be on the cover before they stopped making the game. But there has been a lot of great college football played in the time since.

So who missed out on their chance to be a cover athlete while the game was on hiatus? Andrew Salciunas put together a list of 7 guys who definitely would have appeared on the cover in the past decade. These are the guys who took the College Football world by storm. Who easily would have made it on the cover if there was a game to be on the cover for.

We knew that he was destined to be a quarterback in the NFL. He then backed that up by winning the national championship game. Imagine the cover with Burrow smoking his cigar in the locker room after they won. Iconic.

From the same LSU  team as Burrow. We all knew Chase would play on Sunday's. This dude was so good that he opted out of the 2020 season when the pandemic hit and he was still drafted 5th overall.

As a kid growing up, I had an appreciation for Lousiville. Once I really started to like them, they fell off in both football and basketball. Jackson brought excitement back to the program and went on to win a Heisman.

How about some love for an Eagle? But he deserves more than just local love. This former Heisman was unstoppable and had iconic moments in the college football playoffs

Did Baker have the same high expectations coming into the NFL like the other players mentioned? No. But was Baker Mayfield must watch in college? Yes. Not just while playing, but everything that surrounded him like planting the Oklahoma flag on the Ohio State logo. That photo would have been an awesome cover.

Did you ever look up his high school stats? This dude was a legend before even attending Bama. Add in what he did when he was in college... This one is a no doubter.

It has been a disappointing start to his NFL career. But this national champion was being called the next great NFL starting quarterback after his freshman year. He absolutely would have made the cover.