College football returns to video games — sort of — in Madden’s Superstar KO
Madden NFL 22’s Superstar KO mode will allow the 10 college football teams that participated in the last two Face of the Franchise career narratives to cross over. It will run from Tuesday through Sept 27.
This crossover is the first time that a college football team can play against an opponent online since the passing of the beloved NCAA Football fourteen years ago. Superstar KO, a part of the game since Madden NFL 20, is a cooperative/competitive mode supporting teams of up to three players each; the matches are designed to be quick, and players’ goal is to win four in a row, knocking out all the others. These players can be drafted stars and have buffs or other special attributes that spice up the action.
Current NFL players will wear uniforms for their college alma mater in Superstar KO. Clemson and Miami are from the ACC, LSU and Florida respectively from the SEC, USC and Oregon come from the Pac-12, as well as Michigan State and Texas from the Big Ten.
EA Sports, which is responsible for Madden, announced that a new college football video game was in development at EA Tiburon. The announcement did not say when EA expected to launch this game (other than not in 2021), but the NCAA’s change in policy, in July, which permits players to be compensated for the use of their likenesses, points to date sooner rather than later.
EA Sports announced that Superstar KO with-colleges will be held to celebrate college football’s return. A Livestream is planned for Tuesday at 7 p.m. ET (on the Madden NFL Twitch channel). It will feature Matt Leinart, winner of the Heisman Trophy from USC, against Vince Young, Texas’s all-time great, in a quasi-rematch to their 2006 Rose Bowl match down where Young’s Longhorns won the national championship.
