Sports
The minds behind EA Sports FC, NBA 2K, Madden soundtracks seek music from everywhere but the obvious
Steve Schnur can’t sleep. He calls it a blessing and a curse.
In pursuit of the next great sports video game soundtrack, Schnur scrolls social media in the middle of the night, discovering new music and sending it to his colleagues who have long gone to bed.
That’s how he found Lola Young.
Swiping through Instagram one morning last November, Schnur, the president of music at Electronic Arts, came across Young’s raspy, soulful voice. “Holy … you know what,” he thought, and immediately texted Cybele Pettus, EA’s senior music supervisor.
Two days later, they attended a rooftop party in Los Angeles where three emerging musicians performed for a crowd of industry veterans. Out walked a young British woman with long dark hair, choppy bangs and nose rings. The same singer-songwriter Schnur had texted Pettus about at 3 a.m.
“We literally fell in love with her,” Pettus said. “She was just so engaging, so interesting, such a storyteller with her music. We went right up to her, told her how much we loved her set — which was like three songs — met her manager. She was very recently signed at the time to a label … I don’t even think her record was done.”
Schnur and Pettus wanted her for EA Sports FC 25, the latest edition of the wildly popular soccer game. Young doesn’t play video games or follow sports outside of watching the World Cup. But she knew it was a big deal. Her song “Flicker of Light” is nestled among 117 songs from artists in 27 countries.
“It’s interesting because it’s quite a male-dominated game, but there are loads of women who play it. It’s exciting to me that I’m going to be in the game because I’m a female artist doing my thing,” Young said.
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Not all tracks emerge from serendipitous rooftop encounters. But Schnur’s path to Young is emblematic of the modern effort to build a quality, fresh video game soundtrack.
To curate such an expansive collection of varied tracks requires an ear for what will be the next breakout song rather than merely having a finger on the pulse of what already is topping charts or going viral on TikTok. At EA, Schnur challenges his team to a musical scavenger hunt with a rule: don’t listen to the radio or any major outlet where music is played.
“I don’t want the influence of what is today to influence what will be in the next six months,” Schnur said. “You can’t title a game ‘Madden 25’ and have it sound like 2023. It has to be, by a matter of design, a place of discovery, a place that cements what the next year ahead is going to sound like. A place where the sport itself will be a part of this sound.”
To achieve this, Schnur and his fellow songseekers scour the globe for fresh tracks. They attend concerts of up-and-coming artists, take suggestions from current athletes and field submissions from the biggest names in the industry.
Everyone from Green Day to Billie Eilish and her brother/producer Finneas want to know what they have to do to be featured in the wildly popular video games. In the former’s case, that meant playing “American Idiot” on acoustic guitars for Schnur to lobby for its placement on Madden 2005. In the latter, Schnur got to hear Eilish’s new album “Hit Me Hard and Soft” before it was finished because the nine-time Grammy winner wanted to be in FC 25. Eilish’s “CHIHIRO” appears in the game.
Album sneak peeks and concert tickets are perks, but the job also comes with some pressure. Curating a video game soundtrack means creating a playlist that millions will hear — over, and over, and over. Avid gamers will remember the music for better or worse. And the best ones are remembered even decades later, when a song immediately conjures memories of a game and a time and place.
The teams responsible for piecing together the soundtracks are well aware that their work will live on as virtual time capsules once a current game is superseded by a future iteration, but they strive for the initial experience to be an introduction to new sounds instead of a recognition of old favorites.
“The sound of the NFL to a 20-, 25-year-old is very different than their parents because their associated tone with football comes from Madden,” Schnur said. “It does not come through broadcasts or live football games. It comes from the virtual experience. With that comes an enormous responsibility of getting it right and knowing that you’re defining the sound of the sport going forward.”
That’s something David Kelley, the director of music partnerships and licensing at 2K, considers when selecting songs for the NBA2K franchise.
“The most important part for us is that we want it to be future-facing, always. We want it to sound like something you’ve really not heard before,” he said.
One artist 2K tabbed for its 2025 installment, released Sept. 3, was as future-facing as it gets.
In June, 310babii, an 18-year-old rapper from Inglewood, Calif., collected his high school diploma and a platinum plaque for his hit single “Soak City (Do It)” on the same day. An avid 2K player, he jumped at the opportunity to secure a coveted spot on the soundtrack. He wrote and recorded “forward, back,” a basketball-inspired track, exclusively for NBA2K25 and hopes to hear it when the game shows replays of LeBron James dunking on other players.
Much in the way that Millennial gamers equate Madden 04 with Blink-182 and Yellowcard or hearken back to the Tony Hawk Pro Skater soundtrack, 310babii associates the NBA2K installments of his childhood with the artists featured.
“For me, 2K16 is one of my favorites. When I was in fifth grade, I remember DJ Khaled having the craziest songs on there. That’s what made that game special to me aside from the gameplay itself,” he said. “For a 10-year-old kid, my song could be that for him.”
At EA and 2K, the process for scoring a game begins the day after the previous edition launches. Figuring out how the songs flow together to establish a vibe is just as imperative as choosing the individual tracks.
“You’re kind of like a DJ in a club. You can be having a great set, then if you play one song that feels out of place, you’ll lose the whole audience and you’ve got to build that trust back,” Kelley said. “It’s something we take very seriously.”
Nailing an authentic sound means molding the soundtrack to fit the sport. That doesn’t necessarily mean zeroing in on a particular genre, though hip-hop, rap, R&B and pop tracks are frequent choices, but it does mean keying in on what athletes and fans are listening to. Kelley said Milwaukee Bucks point guard Damian Lillard and Phoenix Suns forward Kevin Durant even send songs or artists for consideration.
For MLB: The Show, finding the right vibe can mean looking to players’ walk-up songs for inspiration. Ramone Russell, PlayStation’s director of product development communications and brand strategy, said they’ve tried to lean more into the different cultures and ethnicities represented within the sport.
“We’ve started to have more Latin music, more reggaeton, some bachata. We have to do that if we’re being accurate to the source material,” he said. “We’re making a Major League Baseball game based off of something that’s real life. If in real life 40 percent of the players are Latin, and the music that they listen to on average is Latin, our soundtrack should probably have some Latin music in it.”
The team putting together the MLB: The Show soundtrack receives about 50 albums per day from labels and publishers hoping to land an artist’s track in the game, PlayStation Studios director of music affairs Alex Hackford said in an email. Along with partners at Sony Music, Hackford sends ideas to Russell’s team, which then decides what fits on the game’s base soundtrack.
The team also curates a specific set of music for the game’s “Storylines” mode, which allows gamers to play out narratives from baseball history. The songs for the “Storylines” mode that centered on the Negro Leagues were chosen solely by Russell, with the intention of expressing the more somber aspects of baseball’s history through music.
“That’s not necessarily a happy story to tell, but what we try to focus on here is what these men and women accomplished despite the racism and the Jim Crow.” Russell said. “We don’t shy away from the ugliness that’s in this story, but we celebrate what these men and women accomplished despite those things. ”
That’s particularly evident with the introduction of Toni Stone, the first woman to play regularly in a men’s major league, into MLB: The Show 24.
“When we decided we were going to do Toni Stone, the first song that came to mind was ‘It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World’ by James Brown. I’m like, ‘This has to be her intro song because it is perfect. The nuance is there. It’ll just get people into the right mindset for the kind of story that we’re telling.’ Because it is still very much a man’s world, and it was very much a man’s world back then,” Russell said. “But as James Brown said, it wouldn’t be anything without a woman. There’s that duality there that really helps tie everything together.”
Through each new video game released year after year, these soundtracks weave across sports and through time to become cultural touchstones. The songs bind the gameplay experience to moments that go beyond scoring virtual touchdowns or blasting animated home runs.
“Nobody remembers that unique piece of gameplay that came about in 2009,” Schnur said, “But everybody remembers the music.”
(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; Photos: Kevin Mazur, Sean Gallup / Getty Images)
Sports
South Carolina legend Steve Taneyhill, known for iconic ‘home run’ touchdown celebration, dead at 52
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Former South Carolina quarterback Steve Taneyhill, who played for the Gamecocks from 1992-95, has died at 52.
The Gamecocks athletic department confirmed on Monday that Taneyhill died overnight in his sleep, though no cause of death was provided.
“Taneyhill was inducted into the University of South Carolina Athletics Hall of Fame in 2006,” the Gamecocks said in a statement about his death. “He was named Freshman of the Year by Sports Illustrated and Football News Freshman All-America in 1992.
USC Steve Taneyhill taunts Clemson fans after USC beat Clemson 24-13 at Clemson in 1992. (Tim Dominick/The State/Tribune News Service)
“An exciting player, Taneyhill was known for his iconic mullet hair and his ‘home run swing’ after touchdown passes.”
Taneyhill led the Gamecocks to its first-ever bowl victory in program history in 1994, his junior season at South Carolina. They defeated West Virginia in the Carquest Bowl.
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And when Taneyhill threw touchdowns, he would perform his famous “home run swing,” as the statement read, in celebration.
A native of Altoona, Pennsylvania, Taneyhill notched South Carolina records with 753 completions and 62 passing touchdowns over his four seasons. He also was second with 8,782 passing yards and seventh with a 60.5 completion rate.
Taneyhill’s senior season in 1995 saw him lead the SEC in completions (261), pass attempts (389) and completion percentage (67.1) on his way to 3,094 passing yards with 29 touchdowns and nine interceptions.
Quarterback Steve Taneyhill of South Carolina University drops back to pass during a 42-23 loss to the University of Georgia at Sanford Stadium in Athens, Georgia on Sept. 2 1995. (Jamie Squire/Allsport)
For his performance as a Gamecocks star, Taneyhill was later inducted into the South Carolina Athletics Hall of Fame in 2006.
To this day, Taneyhill is responsible for three of the to four highest-passing-yardage games in school history, including a 471-yard day against Mississippi State in 1995.
Taneyhill was never able to break into the NFL, though, joining the Jacksonville Jaguars as an undrafted free agent in 1997. However, he was released during the preseason and never once played in the league.
He later became a high school football coach, leading his Chesterfield High to the South Carolina state title for three straight seasons in 2007-09.
Steve Taneyhill , Quarterback for the University of South Carolina Gamecocks throws a pass downfield during the NCAA Southeastern Conference college football game against the University of Georgia Bulldogs on Sept. 2,1995 at the Sanford Stadium in Athens, Georgia, United States. (Jamie Squire/Allsport)
South Carolina’s statement said that he also purchased and operated businesses in Columbia and Spartanburg, South Carolina after his coaching days were over.
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Moments after Marc Dos Santos was formally introduced as the third head coach in LAFC history, he was led out of a news conference and onto the field at BMO Stadium to meet the most important constituency he’ll have to win over in his new job.
The fans.
Since the club entered MLS in 2018, no team has won more games, scored more goals, earned more points or won more trophies than LAFC. Yet as Dos Santos, a top assistant for five of those eight seasons, was hugging and mugging with some of the people who are soon to become his fiercest critics, another supporter approached general manager John Thorrington with a question.
“How do you separate [him] being a part of that coaching staff and telling the fans ‘look, it’s going to be different with this person?’” he asked.
If Dos Santos had been uncertain about the job description, that question made things clear: being the best is no longer good enough. He will have to be better than that.
And Dos Santos is not just fine with that, he’s embracing it.
“I knew the pressure,” he said. “You live once. You live scared, buy a Doberman or something, right? It’s a great opportunity. But I think it’s a privilege when you coach a team in Los Angeles.
“Every sport here is pressure. Every team here is win, win. It’s a winning city and the culture of the city. So I understand that.”
Oh, did we also mention that just winning isn’t enough? For LAFC’s famously demanding supporters, how you win is almost as important.
“We have to win and we have to entertain,” Thorrington said. “We’ve done a lot of that over the years. But we have to drill down on that.”
That means attacking, staying on the front foot, being aggressive, relentless and tireless. Also no problem for Dos Santos, since that’s exactly the kind of soccer he likes to play.
“My style is the LAFC style,” he said. “What we want to be is consistent in our intensity. That’s not negotiable, our intensity.”
So far Dos Santos is saying all the right words and hugging all the right people, but his first test on the field won’t come until mid-February, when LAFC begins play in the CONCACAF Champions Cup in Honduras, followed by its MLS opener in the Coliseum against Lionel Messi and league champion Inter Miami.
And Dos Santos has some oversized cleats to fill.
In its first four seasons under Bob Bradley, LAFC made three playoffs appearances, won a Supporters’ Shield, played in the CONCACAF Champions League final and broke the MLS record for most points in a season. The team was even better the last four seasons under Steve Cherundolo, winning a second Supporters’ Shield and a U.S. Open Cup, playing in a second Champions League final and reaching two MLS Cup finals, winning one.
Dos Santos, 48, was a big part of all that, helping Bradley set the tone as part of the coaching staff in LAFC’s first season, then assisting Cherundolo the last four years. In between, he spent 2½ seasons managing a Vancouver Whitecaps team that lost more games than it won.
Marc Dos Santos watches a match between the Vancouver Whitecaps and Toronto FC in April 2021.
(Phelan M. Ebenhack / Associated Press)
There were extenuating circumstances, however, such as the COVID-19 pandemic that forced the Whitecaps to split one season between sequesters in Canada and Portland, Ore., then start the next season quarantined in Utah. But Dos Santos says the bruises he received there made him a better coach and a better person.
“If I was a GM, I would never try to hire a coach that only wins. Because I want to know when he fell, can he get up?” he said. “That shows personality and character. I never felt, ‘oh, just because it went bad in one club, that I’m gonna stay on the ground.’
“No, you have to get up and punch back. So that’s what I want to do.”
Besides, the Whitecap years are a small sample of the experience on Dos Santos’ resume. He got his start in Montreal, where he was born, and went on to coach with 11 teams in three countries over the last 18 years, winning everywhere he managed but Vancouver.
That made him a strong contender for the LAFC job when Cherundolo announced in April that he would return to his wife’s native Germany at the end of the season. And though that gave Thorrington plenty of time to find a replacement, allowing him to cast a wide net and consider more than 100 inquiries, he eventually settled on the guy who had been right under his nose.
The same process played out four years ago when Thorrington conducted a global search for Bradley’s replacement before promoting Cherundolo, then coach of LAFC’s affiliate in the second-tier USL Championship.
One thing that worked in Dos Santos’ favor, Thorrington said, was the number of players who sidled up to say how much they wanted to play for Dos Santos. He also had the advantage of continuity, an understanding of LAFC’s culture and a loyalty to the organization Not only did he return after being sacked in Vancouver, but he said he turned down another MLS coaching job this fall to stay in L.A.
“I could have chosen another club that maybe [had] more comfort, not as much pressure,” he said. “But when John opened the door for the interview process. I went in with everything I had.”
Now comes the hard part.
Although Dos Santos is planning changes to his staff — assistant Ante Razov, the only member of the technical staff that has been with LAFC all eight seasons, is unlikely to return after being passed over for the top job a second time — the core of the roster that took the team to 36 wins over the last two seasons will be back. For LAFC’s ravenous fan base, that leaves just one way to go: up.
Dos Santos says he’s ready for that challenge.
“It’s a hard job. Coaching is hard,” he said.
“There’s going to be opinions. But it’s a privilege also to be in a position that has so much pressure. This is a club of pressure that wants to win.”
⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.
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LeBron James got the last laugh on Sunday night as he sank two free throws in the final 3.9 seconds to lift the Los Angeles Lakers over the Phoenix Suns, 116-114.
James may be in the twilight of his career, but he showed he still had some fight. He was battling with Suns forward Dillon Brooks throughout the night. The two got into multiple skirmishes as the intensity was turned up a notch.
Phoenix Suns forward Dillon Brooks fouls Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James (23) during the second half of an NBA basketball game, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025, in Phoenix. Brooks was ejected from the game after the foul. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)
As the game came down to the wire, Brooks hit a clutch 3-pointer to put the Suns up one point with 12.2 seconds left. James ran through him and knocked him down. Brooks got back up and stuck his chest out to ever-so-gently tap James.
A referee came over to stop the conflict from escalating any further. Brooks was ejected from the game.
“I just like to compete,” James said of going up against Brooks, via ESPN. “He’s going to compete. I’m going to compete. We’re going to get up in each other’s face. Try not to go borderline with it. I don’t really take it there. But we’re just competing and did that almost all the way to the end of the game.”
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Phoenix Suns forward Dillon Brooks (3) and Los Angeles Lakers forward Lebron James (23) react after a turnover during the second half of an NBA basketball game, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)
Suns star Devin Booker supported Brooks’ intensity.
“Yeah, I mean there’s history there,” he said. “I love to see it. People always say everything’s too friendly in the NBA and then Dillon comes around and now it’s too much. So like I said, I’d rather it the other way — that it’d be too much.”
James scored 26 points on 8-of-17 from the field. Luka Doncic led Los Angeles with 29 points and six assists. The Lakers improved to 18-7 with the win.
Los Angeles Lakers guard Luka Doncic (77) looks to shoot over Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker, front left, during the first half of an NBA basketball game, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)
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Brooks had 18 points in 25 minutes. Booker led the team with 27 points and was 13-of-16 from the free-throw line. Phoenix is 14-12 on the year.
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