IcyVert walked across Chodoff Field at Edberg-Olson Hall earlier this month and was starstruck by what he was about to witness. The Twitter user turned Twitch streamer has blown up online playing as Temple Football in the newly-released EA Sports College Football 25 video game.
His internet success serving as the virtual “coach” of Temple Football earned him an invitation to one of the Owls’ fall practices.
But once IcyVert arrived at the facility to watch the team practice, the roles were instantly reversed. It was the Temple players who were starstruck by the man who secured Temple’s “first” National Championship; albeit it didn’t happen until the year 2048 of his Dynasty, a mode in the game that allows players to take control of a program over a prolonged period of time.
Players came up to IcyVert and told him how much they liked his content — the exact opposite reaction he was expecting. He started out just streaming the game for fun, and he became a viral sensation overnight.
“For the players it was surreal,” said IcyVert, who chose not to reveal his real name after multiple followers uncovered private details about his personal life. “I’m a fan of them, like they’re playing football, they’re doing their thing that is so cool. We’re all the same age, for them to be ‘Hey, like I’m a big fan of you, what you’re doing is hilarious,’ that’s like my goal. I want people to think I’m funny and have fun along with me and for them to actually say that to me in person. It made my day.”
The Delaware County, Pennsylvania, native has been playing video games his entire life, usually just sticking to first-person shooter games like Call of Duty. He was usually never a huge fan of football games, but the release of CFB 25 changed that.
It was the first college football game since EA Sports NCAA 14 — which was released more than a decade ago. The series came to a halt after a former UCLA basketball player sued over the inclusion of his likeness in a different video game. But once it became legal for NCAA athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness in June 2021, EA Sports got back to work on creating another game.
IcyVert immediately decided to dip his toe into playing Dynasty mode. He just needed to pick a team to play as, which started and ended with the school that rejected him his senior year of high school; Temple.
IcyVert didn’t grow up a Temple sports fan. His alliance usually bounced around from team to team, but he primarily rooted for his former high school classmates Marvin Harrison Jr. and Kyle Mccord at Ohio State last season.
“I was like ‘I don’t think their program is very great’ so I knew it would be a hard rebuild,” IcyVert said. “I’ve never played a dynasty mode before, I played the old game but I didn’t play how you should. Then they were also like the closest school to me.”
Once he had a team, IcyVert decided to begin live streaming his games on Twitch. He had done it in the past, usually racking up around five or six viewers. But this time it was different. His first stream had 200 people, then it went to 600, and that number continued to rise into the thousands.
The clips he posted on his Twitter account caught fire, and he took the momentum he had and ran with it.
The more he streamed, the more his viewership rose. His popularity also grew on Twitter, with his followers spiking and more people tuning in to his games. The only problem was he was unable to get over the hump and win a “national championship,” highlighting his self-proclaimed lack of skill.
“I expected it to be like a five-year thing. I thought it was gonna be really easy,” IcyVert said. “I never played the game before so I didn’t know what I was up against. Am I playing it up for content? Yes. Am I [losing] on purpose? No.”
His online presence caught the attention of representatives from Temple Football, and the official account retweeted his tweets and players even commented on his posts.
The internet craze caught the eye of Andy Carl, the executive director of The TUFF Fund, Temple’s most prominent independent NIL collective. Carl is the exact opposite of IcyVert. He isn’t a big video game fan and the last console he remembers getting was a Super Nintendo in 1989.
However, Carl noticed IcyVert’s Temple-related internet rise and immediately decided to reach out. The pair created a relationship and Carl began to think of a way to get the fictional Temple “coach” involved with the team in real life.
Temple held an open practice in early August for season ticket holders like Carl, the perfect way to make his idea a reality.
“Obviously I know [head football coach Stan Drayton] and the staff and folks in the athletic department and like, how do we get him involved?” Carl said. “Up until [a few days before the practice], I didn’t anticipate going. I planned on going to the beach, but I reached out to Katie Colbridge Ganzelli. I said ‘Hey, can you add him to the list?’”
Colbridge Ganzelli, who serves as Temple’s marketing coordinator for on-campus initiatives, also had IcyVert on her radar. She agreed with Carl’s idea and The Tuff Fund sent out a tweet that garnered more than 700,000 impressions.
Colbridge Ganzelli was the driving force behind Temple’s online interactions with IcyVert. Though not a gamer herself, she was excited about the launch of CFB 25 and saw the game, along with IcyVert, come up on her social media feeds.
“Everyone is like, ‘Who is this coach?’”Coolbridge Ganzelli said. “Some people, like, if they didn’t know it was with the video game, they thought that this person was an actual Temple coach, which is kind of funny.”
IcyVert finally brought a “national title” to North Broad Street in 2048, almost two in-game decades after he initially began playing the video game. It took him longer than he expected to win a championship, and an army of online trolls playfully poked fun at his inability to get Temple to the top.
Once he did, Coolbridge Ganzelli orchestrated Temple Football’s Twitter account, congratulating their “coach” on the achievement.
The collaboration also gave IcyVert the opportunity to attend the practice, giving the Owls two head coaches for the day. The popularity was something that was important not just to IcyVert, but to the school as well.
“There’s something to be said with our programs having their ups and downs,” Carl said. “It’s easy to lead Georgia to another national championship, or Alabama to another national championship. I certainly recognize that this is not real life, just to have that engagement on a game.”
IcyVert ended his Temple dynasty following the “national championship” win and began rebuilding Shippensburg, the school he attends in real life. Shippensburg, a Division II program, isn’t actually in the video game, but CFB 25’s “team builder” feature allows players to create their own custom programs.
Now that his time as serving as Temple’s “coach” is over, IcyVert is just happy with the exposure the dynasty drew and the publicity gained from it, he said.
“I didn’t expect anything from this,” IcyVert said. “The fact that I got anything out of it at all was just super kind. I’m super grateful because I personally had a lot of fun. It was a very different experience that I didn’t think I would get.”
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