EA Sports College Football is getting closer to a return for fans around the country, and new details are out about timing, and school-specific features and payouts.

Matt Brown of Extra Points reported updated information about the July 2023 release plans.

EA Sports is continuing to gather stadium assets and is now at a point where they would like to start obtaining music assets from your institution. … EA is looking for information about band songs, crowd chants, and cheers, as well as when particular audio is played during the football game, or crowd chants, if there aren’t any files available as reference, please provide the text of the chant (and anything EA may need to know in order to recreate it authentically, like cadence, or if there’s a specific piece of music that plays with the chant.)

As a point of clarification, Brown reports that: “In case there is any confusion, EA Sports wants to include player likeness in this game, and they want to pay athletes to do it. I’ve been told the company has wanted to do this for years, but prior to NIL, there wasn’t a mechanism to do so without risking player eligibility.”

Another key factor is payment. Each school’s guarantee is determined by their “Tier”, according to the 2021 memo. A school’s Tier is based on the number of AP Top 25 finishes over a ten year period, a period that will include the 2022 college football season. According to the memo, those tier amounts are:

  • Tier 1: $104,900
  • Tier 2: $62,900
  • Tier 3: $41,900
  • Tier 4: $10,400