To Bring Back a College Football Video Game, It Took 11,000 Paydays

Quinn Ewers is among the legions of sports fans who will rejoice over a subtle change when the first new college football video game in more than a decade debuts this week.

Ewers will be able to play as himself rather than as an unnamed 6-foot-2-inch athlete with strikingly similar features who also wears a No. 3 orange-and-white jersey.

“As far back as I can remember, I was always trying to create myself and always playing for the Longhorns,” said Ewers, the starting quarterback for the University of Texas.

A primary reason many fans buy a new version of the same sports video game every year is to play with updated team rosters, ones filled with offseason acquisitions and unbridled optimism. But to comply with amateurism rules, college sports titles like the popular N.C.A.A. Football franchise long had to fill those rosters with thinly veiled stand-ins.

That practice came under fire as the push to pay college athletes gained steam, drawing lawsuits that shelved the series after N.C.A.A. Football 14. But the landscape has undergone seismic shifts, and players can now be paid for the use of their name, image and likeness.

When the rebranded EA Sports College Football 25 is released this week, it will contain more than 11,000 real-life players.