Wichita State Shockers football is back, kind of
Jul 27, 2024
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW)—Wichita State Shockers fans have been dreaming of the day football returns to the ICT, and it's arrived.
Kind of.
EA Sports last week released College Football 25, a video game in which players can play as their favorite teams. However, it only includes current programs outside of "Teambuilder."
Teambuilder allows fans to design their own teams to use to play online. A group of locals went into a deep dive and recreated the Shockers football team, which was discontinued after a plane crash that killed 31 people — 14 players, 14 staff, administrators and boosters, the pilot and two flight attendants, according to Wichita State.
Greg Houser helped come up with the uniforms and stadium design to upload in the game.
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"And we always talk about what if Wichita State was in the game or something of that nature?" Houser said. "And it's kind of blown up overnight. So we're sharing it with everybody as much as we possibly can."
The group worked to design the uniforms and logos and used a stadium template from the University of Louisiana-Monroe, because the stadium structure is similar to that of Cessna Stadium. It's not 100% exact, but it's close.
Wichita State E-Sports director Joe Mazzara said he likes having the ability to play with the Shockers in the game, as it's another way for people to show their appreciation for WSU sports.
"Anything that puts eyes on our athletics program in our e-sports program is great," Mazzara said. "I mean, having the representation of just collegiate e-sports now in the last five years has been awesome. The things we've been able to do on the national stage and obviously with a lot of new athletic staff and the impact that they've had on the programs as they've come in, it's been great."
College Football 25 is available now for PlayStation 5 and Xbox. It's the first iteration of the game since NCAA 2014, which was released in the summer of 2013.
If you own the game and would like more information on how to use the Shockers, click here for EA Sports' tutorial. Search for "FreundlyD" when you access the downloads section of the game.