Notre Dame football proves its worth through EA Sports College Football 25

While they might be seen as an enduring villain more than not, no one can really claim the Notre Dame football team hasn't had one of the best programs in the sport over the last decade. As it turns out, EA Sports College Football proved that once again in a rather interesting way.

It turns out that it's not just the players themselves that are getting paid for taking part in the upcoming college football video game. Electronic Arts also dished out payments to schools themselves in the form of lump sums. However, unlike the players getting paid the same amount no matter who they were, when Notre Dame and the other 133 FBS schools were paid, they were paid using a sliding scale.

Notre Dame football a big earner in EA Sports College Football 25

According to Clict Medua, EA Sports put every team in FBS into one of four tiers. They then divvied out the payouts with the first tier getting the most money and the fourth tier getting the least.

In order to determine who would be in what tier, EA came up with a point system and if a team finished in the AP Top 25 in the last 10 years they got a point for each year. Tier 1 teams, which got a payout of $99,875.16 were teams that earned 6-10 points.

Tier 2 teams got $59,925.09 and were teams that finished in the Top 25, 2-5 times over the last decade. Tier 3 teams got one point (finished only once in the AP Top 25) and got $39,950.06. Tier 4 were teams that never finished in the Top 25 from 2014-2023.

Notre Dame football finished in the top tier, meaning they got the biggest payout. They were one of just 13 teams to do it. 

In addition to Notre Dame, Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson, Oklahoma, Georgia, LSU, Michigan, Oregon, Oklahoma State, Penn State, Utah and Iowa were the other teams to get the highest payoff.

One has to wonder if that's why EA Sports was so comfortable featuring Notre Dame football so prominently in the marketing material.