Video games prove to be important

EUGENE, Ore. – Jaison Williams isn’t satisfied with the biceps of running back Jonathan Stewart, his football teammate at the University of Oregon. So Williams presses a button and makes Stewart’s arms swell until the veins bulge.

“They look like that in the weight room, too,” said Williams, an Oregon wide receiver.

Williams is no Dr. Frankenstein. He is merely exploiting the player-design feature of “NCAA Football 08,” the video game whose fidelity to the details of the sweat-and-blood game has pushed it to fourth place among all video games in sales by unit.

That popularity – 2.5 million copies of “NCAA Football 07” sold last year – is increasing the royalties that flow from video-game manufacturers to the universities that allow their names and stadiums to be used in it. A revenue source that didn’t exist 15 years ago now provides 10 to 25 percent of some schools’ licensing revenues and gets school logos and colors into living rooms nationwide.

Take the case of Boise State University. The former sleepy football program increased its video-game royalty take from $14,000 in 2003 to $81,000 for the 2005-06 school year – one-quarter of the Broncos’ total revenues from the sale of licensed merchandise.

When EA Sports called to tell Boise State officials it wanted to put Broncos quarterback Jared Zabransky on the cover of the current “NCAA Football” game, it was “a signature moment in our program,” said Brad Larrondo, senior assistant athletic director for promotions and marketing.

Royalties revenues increase as sales of the game do and, in a more complicated formula, as the football team wins. The impact of such royalties is biggest at smaller Division I programs, which tend to sell fewer T-shirts and hats than nationally known programs but can make just as much on video games.

Oregon went from making less than $15,000 on royalties in 2000 to more than $95,000 last year.

Video-game royalties aren’t huge sums, but they’re significant enough to cover three or four athletic scholarships at some schools, said David Carter, a sports business professor at the University of Southern California.

“The amount of money flowing in from video games is going to be a steady, if not increasing, revenue stream,” Carter said. “And I think what’s great about it is they essentially are getting paid to have someone else advertise and market and help brand their programs.”

Williams stood in line outside a Eugene Wal-Mart before midnight Monday – with about 30 other video-game fans, including a few Oregon teammates – to buy “NCAA Football 08” when it was released. When he got home, Williams played it until about 4:30 a.m.

“It’s kind of embarrassing, I play it so much,” Williams said.

Players can customize everything from helmets to armbands on their virtual players, who already wear real-life jersey numbers and resemble their living counterparts in height, weight and skin tone. They can even choose a brand and model of shoes.

“(Nike CEO) Phil Knight’ll shoot me if I put an Adidas cleat on anyone,” Williams said, as he opted for Nikes on his virtual player.

On Williams’ XBox 360 system, an Oregon game looks much like the real thing. Ducks quarterback Dennis Dixon crouches, a swath of orange-clad fans yell from the stands of Autzen Stadium and the Oregon fight song plays when the Ducks score.

A big difference between fantasy and reality is that EA Sports can’t use players’ real names on their jerseys or in the commentary that accompanies the virtual game. That would violate rules the NCAA said are designed to protect amateur athletes.

That doesn’t seem to have hurt Williams’ enthusiasm for the latest version of the game. The graphics are sharper, defenses tougher and one extra particularly impressed him: a porthole to live feeds of ESPN programming in the middle of a virtual game.

“That’s just not fair to the rest of the TV, because I’m never going to turn this off,” Williams said.

Two years ago, the popularity of college sports titles pushed EA Sports past Nike as the nation’s No. 1 collegiate licensee. Universities receive royalties for college basketball and baseball games, but “NCAA Football” is the big moneymaker. And in video games as in real life, teams earn more when they win.

EA Sports and the NCAA won’t reveal the formula that determines how much each licensed school gets from the “NCAA Football” video games. But a spokesperson for the Collegiate Licensing Company, which brokered the agreement, said the amounts are based on a “rolling, multi-year average of top-20 finishes in the final poll each year.”

Ohio State and Florida, for instance, each made $130,500 in royalties from EA Sports’ “NCAA Football” in 2005-06.

It’s not clear whether college-sports video games will continue on their skyrocketing sales trajectory. The exhaustive details that delight fans like Williams could turn off those who don’t want to have to memorize a playbook to enjoy a video game.

The overlap between video games and college sports is increasing. ESPN.com now has a section for video games, and XOS – a company better known for instant-replay equipment – recently released a program that lets college and pro players learn new plays using EA Sports graphics. Two unidentified teams in the Pacific-10 Conference already have signed up.

The good news for college teams: Most players already are trained on the technology.