EA Sports' College Football 25 cover features BYU. Is this a big deal?

In case you've been living under a rock for the past year or so, allow me to break some news to you: EA Sports' College Football video game franchise is returning. It's enough to bring a grown man to tears.

With the announcement of the game's return, EA Sports recently revealed the game's deluxe edition cover art, which displays players from many universities, with Michigan's Donovan Edwards, Texas' Quinn Ewers, and Colorado's Travis Hunter at the forefront.

Among several other programs, BYU is represented on the cover as you can spot a royal blue helmet on the left side of the image. Sure, it takes a pretty keen eye for detail to spot the Y, but there's no denying that BYU made the cover. This small detail has led to an all-out internet war between fandoms in the Beehive State.

Absent from the first reveal of the cover was a certain school up North, known as the University of Utah. Utah's football program has seen tremendous success in recent years, winning several Pac-12 Conference championships. BYU's football teams have been up and down over the past few seasons, so claiming a minor victory over their bitter rival and new conference foe would not be passed up by Cougar fans.

Seems like a clean and complete victory for BYU, right? BYU is in and Utah is out--all is right again in the world! Well... Ute fans were quick to point out one small problem with that conclusion: Utah was actually on the cover of the game; though not in the traditional sense.

If you look to the very left edge of the extended cover, you can see a player clad in Utah crimson emerging from the tunnel. A much easier player to notice in the image, but only if you look at the extended cover that spans beyond what you'll see on store shelves.

So, with all the information gathered across the internet, who is the winner of this digital debacle? BYU has a minor "blink and you'll miss it" cameo on the game's cover, but Utah boasts a front-and-center appearance on the edge of the full-image banner that most may never even see.

While I've considered and quickly rejected the notion that both fanbases are the losers for actually caring about something as minor as a cover presence, I've decided there's one true way to settle this debate: I'll have to destroy Utah in the game (on the easiest difficulty, because I'm bad) once it releases and post my tremendous victory to social media. That will settle the conflict once and for all.

In all honesty, a minor appearance on the cover won't make a difference for the actual team's success or prestige. The Earth keeps spinning and BYU football will likely enjoy a few more middling seasons before reaching actual success on the field again. But it's always fun to poke fun at Utah whenever given the chance, right?

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