There’s a lot of nerves surrounding the release of College Football 25. What’s it going to play like? Is it just going to be Madden but with NCAA schools? In that case, kill me now. But also, what’s Dynasty mode going to feature? Will there be a transfer portal? NIL contracts? Will realignment be an option? (If so, Nebraska is going back to the Big 8.) Will the Pac-12 be scrubbed from existence? Is every school participating?

And it’s that last question that might be the cruelest. Imagine waiting a decade for the return of probably the best video game ever created only to have your alma mater opt out? The only conceivable reason would be that EA Sports is likely offering pennies to the players because there are 11,000 of them.

At a certain point, these guys are just extras that already have digital versions waiting in the wings to put on that faceless No. 23 jersey a la Michael Jordan in every video game back in the day. Never mind that, or this current diatribe. I’m here to offer tangible coping tactics for the doomsday scenario in which your school doesn’t appear in College Football 25.

Bribe a school official

This age-old tactic was getting rich people’s children into schools they have no business attending long before Lori Loughlin snuck her little grommet into USC. Nothing greases the wheels of oily schools like an envelope with a thick cash donation.

Relive your college days

If you can’t play as Tulsa in College Football 25, pull out the PS3 (2?) and fire up College Football 14, a pack of prerolls, order some Dominos, and drink delicious light beer until the nostalgia or gummies kick in. Really, if you’re old enough to obsess or still own the last version of this classic game franchise, you’re probably too old to be playing video games every night.

Riot and/or streak through the quad

College kids like to protest still, right? That pandemic energy is running on fumes, but the 2024 election is nearing, and the big orange xenophobe will be on the ballot. And you can march for anything nowadays, even allergy awareness (suck it Uber Eats!), so the right to be in College Football 25 is as valid as the next human rights cause.

Hope there’s a Create-a-School feature

Everybody’s favorite loophole from the last version of College Football was the create-a-player, or customize a roster. Some gentle soul would go through and put all the names on the corresponding players, and release it to the world. Maybe EA will have some common sense this time around and leave out the NIL builder, but you never know. They screwed up the Madden franchise.

Hope it’s as worthless as the Madden franchise

There’s nothing like having a heavy sense of FOMO only for the thing that you feared missing to suck. It’s like a forecasted powder day on a morning you have to work, yet you wake up to barely a dusting, and the lift lines still look like Spring Break. In the case of the video game, you’ll save $69.99 or whatever CFB 25 will cost, and get to read all the angry reactions over glitches, and phantom interceptions on social media. Lose-lose turns into win-win. Hooray schadenfreude!