Is Iowa a Top Tier College Football Program? EA Sports Says 'Yes'

It's official. Iowa is one of the top college football programs in the nation, at least according to a video game.

EA Sports College Football 25 will be released this July for the PS5 and Xbox series X and S. It will be the first time the game is released in the NIL era of college athletics. That means that players got paid for EA Sports using their likeness in the game. However, Yahoo Sports reports that the schools themselves will also get a piece of the pie for opting into the game.

Yahoo Sports confirms a report by Cllct media that all 134 college football programs featured in the new video game will be compensated by Electronic Arts. While the players all received a flat rate for their participation, it will work differently for the schools. The payout is based on a four-tier system. The tiers are determined by the number of finishes in the AP Top 25 each program has had in the past decade, according to Yahoo Sports. Thanks to that metric, your Iowa Hawkeyes are a tier 1 team!

The Hawkeyes join the elite programs in college football. Other tier 1 teams include Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Georgia, LSU, Michigan, Oregon, Oklahoma State, Penn State, and Utah. Only 13 schools can call themselves a top-tier school, at least in a video game.

Yahoo Sports reports those top-tier teams will get a payout of just under $100,000. Sure, other teams have experienced higher highs than Iowa, but the consistency of the Kirk Ferentz era puts Iowa among the best in the nation.