EA Sports

Currently Greene County fans and athletes, as well as the everyone in the country, are able to play using the likenesses of Xenia HS alum Gavin Gerhardt and Beavercreek HS alum Demetrius Hardamon who are two of the thousands of college football players in the first EA Sports College Football 25 video game.

BEAVERCREEK — EA Sports previously used the marketing tagline: If it’s in the game, it’s in the game.

For two Greene County natives, they can now say that they are in the game too.

Current Bowling Green State University senior and Beavercreek HS alum Demetrius Hardamon, as well as current University of Cincinnati senior and Xenia HS alum Gavin Gerhardt, both are among the players included in the new EA Sports College Football 25 video game released on Friday.

The popular football game series was last published in 2013 due to legal issues regarding the potential usage of the image and likeness of current athletes who were given generic counterparts at the time. Due to the inclusion of NIL measures now being legal in the collegiate landscape, EA Sports was able to compensate athletes to be able to digitally recreate them in the game for the first time ever.

All players who chose to opt in and allow EA to use their NIL were to receive a $600 payment and a copy of the game from the company. According to Matt Brown of The Athletic, more than 11,000 athletes have reportedly opted in from the 134 schools included in the game to allow their likeness to be used.

Roughly between 9,000-9,500 real players are currently included in the game’s rosters, with more expected to be added in the coming weeks.

Hardamon will head into the 2024 football season once again entering his final year of eligibility. After starting his college career at Georgetown College at the NAIA level in 2018, he transferred to BGSU and received an additional year of eligibility from the 2020 COVID disrupted year. Last year was supposed to be his final eligibility year, but he applied for and received a medical hardship waiver from the NCAA after suffering a season-ending injury during a game at the University of Michigan on Sept. 16, 2023, in which he had to be placed onto a backboard and carted off the field following a play’s conclusion. He was cleared to resume walking by medical personnel the following day.

Gerhardt is a team captain for the Bearcats and will be entering his second year as a starter at center on the Bearcats’ offensive line. He was an All-Big 12 Honorable Selection for the 2023 season and made the league’s All-Academic Team. Cincinnati had the fifth best rushing average in 2023 with Gerhardt leading the way.

Using a scale that goes up to 99, Hardamon received an overall rating of 74 in the game, and Gerhardt was given a rating of 83.

Another potential player who hails from Greene County that could be added to the game later this year is Xenia alum and current Appalachian State University freshman Gabe Funk. He is just getting his college career underway having graduated from Xenia in May and joining the ASU program over the summer.

The players who are included in the game are unable to be manually edited by users except for the equipment options they are outfitted. For athletes who did not allow for their NIL to be used in the game, EA Sports replaced them on their team’s roster with generic, made-up figures that do not resemble anyone specific but have allowed everything except for the player’s number, school year and hometown to be altered by users.

Contact Steven Wright at 937-502-4498 and follow on X (formerly Twitter) @Steven_Wright_.