MADISON − No one can stop talking about this video game.

On July 19, game developer Electronic Arts released EA College Football 25, a continuation of the beloved NCAA Football video game franchise.

The last installment, NCAA 14, came out 11 years ago. Now, with student-athletes able to profit off their name, image and likeness, the game makes a triumphant return.

In just a couple of weeks, College Football 25 became one of the most popular games in the world. On July 30, EA published a news release claiming five million people picked up the game within the first week of release.

At Wisconsin’s football media day, every player lit up when they talked about seeing themselves in College Football 25. They can’t seem to put the game down.

“The game is great,” said strong safety Hunter Wohler, who at 90 overall is the Badgers’ second-highest rated player. “I grew up playing it all the time. It’s been gone way too long. I’ve played it probably more than I need to.

“Just being in the game overall is pretty surreal. To see myself on the field making some plays, it’s definitely a cool feeling.”

Before it officially released, EA posted a list of the top 100 players in the game. Wohler slid in at No. 84 as the third best strong safety behind Penn State’s Kevin Winston Jr. and Virginia’s Jonas Sanker.

Cornerback Ricardo Hallman is the highest-rated Badger. He’s the 62nd-best player in the game and the seventh-best corner at 91 overall.

“It’s really cool to be on a video game,” Hallman said. “For it to come back around and for us to be on the game and play the game that you grew up on as a little kid was really cool. I’ve been grinding it out every day, honestly.”

Both Hallman and Wohler had light-hearted gripes about their ratings, despite being the two highest on the team.

“I love my rating. I think they did a great job. If I could, I would’ve given myself 99 speed,” said the 93-speed Hallman.

Said Wohler, “Rating’s great, obviously you want it to be higher, but I’m not complaining.”

Defensive lineman James Thompson Jr. wasn’t nearly as pleased.

“I do not like my rating,” Thompson said. “It’s a 78; that’s too low for me. I felt like, ‘Damn, it’s a 78? No offense to Curt (Neal) but I had a little bit more stats than that. I didn’t know I was that bad.’”

Thompson, categorized as a run-stopping right end, plays opposite of the power-rushing left end Neal. Both linemen have a 78 overall.

To Thompson’s point, though, he did have more stats than Neal. Last season, the redshirt senior recorded 29 tackles (19 solo), 5.5 tackles for loss, three sacks, and two pass deflections.

Neal had 13 tackles (six solo) and 1.5 tackles for loss.

“(My rating) is going to go up during the season though, I’m not too worried about it,” Thompson admitted in a more serious tone. “It’s just a video game. But it’s cool seeing myself in a video game that I’ve been playing since I was a kid.”

Badgers fans can expect a career year from Thompson, if only to best Neal and get his rating into the 80s.

MADISON − University of Wisconsin cornerback Ricardo Hallman often revisits his disheartening performance against Michigan State in October 2022.

Hallman, then a redshirt freshman, was benched as future Green Bay Packers receiver Jayden Reed lit him and the Badgers up for 117 yards and a touchdown on nine catches in a Spartans double-overtime victory.

The 2023 third-team All-American calls the experience “beneficial.”

“I was timid,” he said. “I was scared of the moment. I was in position to make plays several times, but I didn’t go for the ball. I was comfortable just trying to knock it out instead of trying to go get it.

“As you could see last year, I was a little more aggressive at the point of attack in trying to go get the ball.”

“A little more” aggression from Hallman resulted in seven interceptions, tied with Notre Dame’s Xavier Watts for the most in the country. He also finished second among the Badgers with five pass deflections, trailing Hunter Wohler’s six.

Shoulder injury may have kept Ricardo Hallman in Madison

More impressively, he did it all with a bum left shoulder.

“I remember hurting it initially sophomore year during spring,” he said. “That Indiana game, that was the worst pain I felt in it for a while.”

In Wisconsin’s Nov. 4 loss to Indiana, Hallman aggravated his nagging shoulder injury after making a tackle in the first quarter and colliding with teammate Jordan Turner before halftime.

The Florida native had surgery on his shoulder during the offseason. The injury was one of many reasons Hallman joined Wohler in returning to Madison instead of entering the NFL draft.

“Me and Hunter had a couple conversations about it,” Hallman said about turning pro. “He told me before I told him that he was coming back.

“Me and Hunter both haven’t been as successful as we wanted … I think my best season here was my freshman year. They were 9-4 and I didn’t play at all. So yeah, getting this team back on the right track and getting Wisconsin to the status it rightfully deserves is the most important goal. It’s one of the things I had in mind coming back.

“I wanted to give it one more shot. I knew we had the talent, we had the roster to do it.”

Ricardo Hallman knows what he need to improve to interest the NFL

Hallman also wanted the extra year to improve. Although he never declared for the draft, he received evaluations from NFL scouts.

As the Badgers head 70 miles southwest to Platteville this week for an intense, two-week training camp, Hallman can use that time to work on the holes in his game.

“A lot of (the evaluations) came back with being more aggressive in the run game and tackling,” he said. “I know that was something I struggled with last year and it’s no excuse for that. I know I should’ve been better. Especially as an undersized corner, knowing I have to be more aggressive and be better in tackling situations.”

Wisconsin defensive coordinator Mike Tressel is confident his star corner will add more to his game. He wants the defense to look to its leaders − Hallman, Wohler and linebacker Jake Chaney − for inspiration.

“Ricardo is, without question, a phenomenal leader,” Tressel said. “He’s constantly working. Even when it’s times with no coaches around. You might, on a Saturday, one of your few weekends off, roll through and walk by the indoor and he’s out there doing drills by himself or running drills with the defensive backs.

“It’s big time when your best players are the leaders. We can show stats saying, ‘Hey, he led the NCAA in picks last year, and look what he’s doing. Maybe there’s a correlation.’ You have some testimony there for the other guys.”

Ricardo Hallman, Badgers will be challenged by difficult schedule

Wisconsin will have to adopt Hallman’s work ethic to find success against its stacked schedule. After a couple of tune-up games against Western Michigan and South Dakota, the new-look Alabama Crimson Tide, led by head coach Kalen DeBoer, rolls into Madison on Sept. 14.

The following week, the Badgers travel to Los Angeles to take on USC, one of the new West Coast additions to the Big Ten. They’ll also have to play Penn State and Oregon this season.

“I think it’s really cool,” Hallman said of the rough schedule. “That’s the type of competition you want, bringing guys in like Oregon and USC, the powerhouses that were in the Pac-12. And then just the schedule that we’re playing in general, adding guys like ‘Bama and Penn State, all those teams.

“It’s going to challenge us to up the level at which we play at. It’s going to be a really good opportunity for us to get better and judge ourselves against the people that are highly respected in college football.”

With some added familiarity under Luke Fickell’s second year, Hallman and the Badgers are better prepared for the trials ahead.

“The first year with a new coaching staff is hard to get everybody acclimated,” he said. “You’ve got some guys who aren’t all the way in, all the way invested. But I think now with the team we all have the same goal … We’re just more focused as a team this year.

“I think we’re going to shock a lot of people.”

MADISON, Wis. — More than 40 people filed into a converted coffee shop on a recent Saturday morning in Madison, Wisconsin, to organize in a west-side neighborhood for Vice President Kamala Harris.

A month ago, fewer than 10 people showed up for a similar event for President Joe Biden. Some told organizers they were no longer willing to knock on doors in Wisconsin’s famously liberal state capital.

The excitement among loyal Democrats lit by Harris replacing Biden has enlivened the party’s base in Wisconsin, particularly in areas where the vice president must run up big margins to carry a swing state that Biden flipped from Republican Donald Trump.

“Kamala Harris is the defibrillator that the Democratic Party needed,” said John Anzalone, who was Biden’s chief campaign pollster in 2020.

Dane County, which includes Madison, is the fastest-growing county in the state, fueled by the combination of the University of Wisconsin and the state capital’s workforce.

In addition to Dane County’s growth, Democratic turnout here and Democratic candidates’ percentage of the vote have also increased. Biden won 75% of the vote in 2020, beating Trump by 181,000 votes in the county while carrying the state by fewer than 21,000.

But in the last month of Biden’s campaign, voters answering their doors in Madison’s most robustly Democratic neighborhoods were talking more about whether the party would have a competitive presidential nominee than their desire to volunteer, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler said.

“That created a world where volunteers started to fall off. The conversations at the doors in the final weeks left people worried rather than energized,” Wikler said. “That engine felt like it was sputtering. And now the engine is roaring.”

Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Brian Schimming said in a press conference Tuesday that Harris was experiencing “a little honeymoon.”

“But I don’t think it’s going to last,” he said.

Further, he said, Biden was suffering “clear across the state in every Democratic stronghold” to the point Democrats “had nowhere to go but up.”

According to interviews with more than a dozen Madison Democrats, Harris’ attention to specific party priorities, in addition to her younger age and livelier style, have helped restore their enthusiasm.

Daniel Zaydman, 24, pointed to Harris’ March public call for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war, a conflict that has divided the Democratic base. Biden has also pushed for a cease-fire while continuing to back weapons shipments to Israel as it conducts a war in Gaza that has resulted in at least 39,000 Palestinian deaths.

“She had come out against the genocide in Gaza, not just in recent days but months ago,” said the former state legislative aide, who noted that he is Jewish. “At the time, I was like, wow, the vice president is ahead of the president on this.”

“She had been in Biden’s shadow, and no one my age group liked his position on Gaza. And that has been a huge sticking point with voters in my age group,” he said. “But no longer.”

For Sam Heesacker, Harris is noticeably more vocal and convincing in her advocacy of abortion rights, a top priority for the 28-year-old University of Wisconsin graduate student in education curriculum. Biden struggled during his debate with Trump to complete an answer about the Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed a national right to abortion. Trump nominated three of the justices who voted to overturn Roe.

“She’s more progressive than Biden, calling it what it is: Reproductive freedom,” she said, taking a break from studying at a coffee shop on Madison’s bustling State Street.

Shea Head felt a new sense of optimism, noting Harris’ visibility supporting the priorities of the LGBTQ+ community.

The 59-year-old education researcher said from a corner seat in a west-side cafe that she had read last spring where Harris had spoken about the 20-year anniversary of same-sex marriages being performed in California. Head recalled Harris’ more public profile on the issues after seeing the candidate make a voter registration plug on “RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars” last week.

“She was on talking about gay rights and trans rights. Obviously, she knows in that situation she’s speaking to a population that knows our rights are in danger,” Head said. “She’s speaking to me in a way that Biden wasn’t, or maybe couldn’t as convincingly.”

The observations reflect broader enthusiasm toward Harris among Democrats nationally.

An AP-NORC poll conducted after Biden withdrew from the race found that about 8 in 10 Democrats would be somewhat or very satisfied if Harris became their party’s nominee. That’s a big change from another AP-NORC poll conducted before Biden dropped out, which found that only 37% of Democrats were very or somewhat satisfied that he was the Democratic Party’s likely nominee for president.

Strategists in both parties point to other college towns in swing states that they think Harris will invigorate younger adults and traditional liberals. In Michigan, there’s Ingraham County, home of Michigan State University and the Democratic-heavy capital city of Lansing, and Washtenaw County, home of the University of Michigan. Biden won them with 65% and 72% of the vote respectively enroute to carrying Michigan by fewer than 3 percentage points in 2020.

Though he lost North Carolina by fewer than 2 percentage points, Biden won 67% of the vote in Wake County, a booming hub around the capital Raleigh and the region’s Duke University, North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina.

Anzalone, Biden’s former pollster, said there had been fear within the party before Biden decided not to run that there was going to be a universe including younger voters who might not vote or consider going to third-party candidates.

“I was worried even loyal Democratic voters might feel apathetic about their choices,” 38-year-old Leah Kechele, a nursing instructor, said between Zoom meetings at a popular Madison cafe. “I think she can fire them up.”

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Associated Press polling editor Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.