Lane Kiffin Wants Coaches To Be In New Video Game, Offers To Do It For Free

In the crazy world of modern college football, there's one thing that unites all of us: excitement for the upcoming EA Sports College Football 25 video game.

READ: EA Sports Announces Significant College Football Video Game Update

Fans are excited about the ability to play as their school, feel the excitement of a massive home crowd, use one of the 10,000 athletes already signed up…there's a million reasons to be excited. Though there is one significant element of college football that's apparently missing from the upcoming game: head coaches. And Lane Kiffin thinks it should be fixed.

Kiffin spoke to Andy Staples of On3 Sports and said he wants coaches to be included in the game, even offering to have his digital self added to the game for free. 

"I would just let them do it…the kids like to play it," Kiffin said. "When they're picking the team, you would (want) recruits to play with the coach."

"My brain thinks about 'What would help in recruiting?’ If you did pay me for that, I wouldn’t want it. I’d want you to put it into our NIL."

At that point, why not right?

Mississippi Rebels head coach Lane Kiffin. (Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports)

Would Adding Coaches Really Help Recruiting?

Most sports video games do include accurate head coaches. Madden, for example, has traditionally included real world NFL head coaches, outside of Bill Belichick, and MLB The Show does the same with big league managers. So why not college football?

Maybe EA believes it's not worth getting licensing agreements with 134 FBS head coaches. But it would add an element of realism to the game that could be reflected when playing as your favorite school. Ryan Day, Kirby Smart or Dabo Swinney would be given a ratings boost for their track records. Nick Saban or Jim Harbaugh, assuming they were still in college, would be very difficult to beat out for a top recruit choosing between say, Alabama and UCLA.

Lane Kiffin would be the same way. Clay Helton's tenure at USC would be the exact opposite.

Not to mention coach reaction shots on the sideline. 

Kiffin believes there'd be some real world recruiting advantages too, considering young players would be able to see themselves in the game with the coach they'd be playing with. That might help some, sure, but in the NIL era, money will always talk more than video games.