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IN THE GAME — The decade-long wait is over as EA Sports has released its first college football video game since 2014 this week with the unveiling of EA Sports College Football 25.

Millions of fans, most of whom have been sitting on old consoles replaying the old NCAA Football 2014 for 10 years, logged on Monday to be the first to play the game as part of a special pre-release event — so much that EA's servers struggled to keep up with the demand, per IGN.

Even BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe was eager to try it out. But why wouldn't he be? He helped create the franchise, after all.

In an interview at Big 12 football media days in Las Vegas that The Athletic's Chris Vannini posted Monday on social media, Holmoe described his unique connection to the original college football video game — Bill Walsh College Football 92, developed by what was then known as Electronic Arts — when he was the defensive backs coach on Walsh's staff at Stanford following the legendary coach's time with the San Francisco 49ers.

Here's a fun CFB video game origin story: BYU AD @TomHolmoe was on Bill Walsh's Stanford staff and consulted on the making of the original Bill Walsh College Football '92.

He also claims they made his Stanford DBs faster than anyone in the game as a favor 😂 pic.twitter.com/OD7Sr4YabO
— Chris Vannini (@ChrisVannini) July 15, 2024

Holmoe explained that the game's development staff called on the Stanford coaching staff and players to come to their studio and draw up some plays that the engineering group could put in the game.

"They were pretty simple," Holmoe said. "It wasn't really a sophisticated 49er playbook that Bill had. But before you know it, they would bring back prototypes and it was amazing how good the prototypes would be based on the plays we would give them."

Holmoe said he wasn't paid for the endeavor, nor his players (this was the era before name, image and likeness rights for college athletes), but EA gave them all a free copy of the game — which his young family devoured with an unending appetite.

He also claims the developers made Stanford's defensive backs faster than the rest of the game.

"When the game came out, they were super happy," Holmoe said. "They were pretty fast."

Holmoe isn't an avid gamer, he admits (shockingly), but he still found time to sit down with the newest version of the game Monday, he shared in a tongue-in-cheek back-and-forth with Utah counterpart Mark Harlan.