Alabama’s dynamic sophomore wide receiver Ryan Williams has taken the center stage on the cover of EA Sports College Football 26. For Williams, it’s not merely a career highlight, it’s the sort of “pinch me” experience every college football enthusiast would. And truthfully? The backstory is as entertaining as the reveal itself. Williams, who just completed a beast freshman season at Alabama 48 receptions, 865 yards, eight touchdowns, and a highlight-reel spinning TD catch vs. Georgia, which seemed like he took it right out of a video game, receives the call from EA Sports. He’s not only in the video game; he’s the face of it, gracing the cover along with Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith, his buddy rival and fellow superstar sophomore who is on his team. For Williams, it’s life coming full circle.

As a kid, Ryan was so hooked on the original NCAA series that he found an old Xbox 360 just to keep NCAA 14 running until the reboot was released. Now, at 18, he is the player kids will choose first when they boot up the latest version. “One thousand percent, it’s a dream come true,” Williams said. And the buzz isn’t just virtual. In Tuscaloosa and back home in Mobile, billboards featuring William’s portrait on the cover have popped up, turning him into both a local legend and a national icon. And yet, in a moment that gave Alabama fans a playful scare, Williams let slip a guilty secret that he doesn’t always play as Alabama. Blasphemous! Disloyalty against your team? And will the Tide loyalists let this “cheating” slide?

Well, turns out, Bama fans have understood the assignment and perceived this in good humor. On the 2nd June episode of On3, Host Andy addresses the question to Williams. “You always don’t play as Alabama all the time?” Andy isn’t the one to trust, but Williams chose to say “cool”.  “You don’t have like a Sun Belt team or a Mountain West team that you play as? Andy requests again. And then you’ll see Williams talking in a very quiet voice, confessing, “Okay, sometimes, sometimes okay I’ll play a South Alabama because they’re from the bill so I’ll play South,” he admits. “So I’ll play South um well most of the time like here recently, I just don’t play on ultimate team.”

Ryan is all in. He’s cracking up, describing how he grew up just down the road from South Alabama’s campus, and how he always wondered what it’d be like to illuminate Mobile’s Hancock Whitney Stadium in a video game. But it looks like Ryan isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. “He is going to graduate from Alabama, he said is a very it’s very crucial that he told his family he’s going to do it,” says Andy for Ryan.

Why Alabama feels like home

For Ryan, football is big, but family comes first. He shares how his mom always encouraged him to see things through and how his grandma still boasts to the neighbors about him being a Crimson Tide student. And with that, we can say that Ryan Williams will enter the pros from the gates of Tuscaloosa itself. But you never know, history may repeat itself. Ryan abruptly decommitted after being stuck with Alabama for months, shortly after Nick Saban announced his retirement. It wasn’t just Saban retiring that affected him—his position coach, Holmon Wiggins, departed as well, making matters even worse. Ryan explained, “With Coach Saban leaving, it’s like the legacy leaving. That was the cherry on top.”

Ryan left his options open for approximately two weeks. He also considered Texas, Texas A&M, and Auburn, even going so far as to say Texas was always one of his personal favorites due to Sarkisian’s offense. Fans were sweating bullets in that brief time away, waiting to know if the star receiver would ever don crimson and white. Here’s the deus ex machina: after discussing things with his family and viewing what new head coach Kalen DeBoer was constructing, Ryan pledged again to Alabama. He knew Tuscaloosa remained home, and he wished to be a part of the upcoming chapters.