NORFOLK — In a virtual world, Ricky Rahne knows he wouldn’t stand a chance.
If the fifth-year Old Dominion coach were an avatar in a college football video game today, as he once was, his own current player would take him out.
Monarchs All-American linebacker Jason Henderson is a prominent figure in EA Sports’ new and wildly popular College Football 25, ranking 50th among all FBS players in overall ability.
Rahne, a quarterback at Cornell in the early 2000s whose likeness could once be found in an earlier iteration of the game, would not want the virtual Henderson pursuing him.
“I was a bad athlete who could throw the ball,” Rahne said Tuesday in New Orleans as part of Sun Belt Media Days. “Jason’s a tremendous athlete. I definitely would’ve got sacked. Also, I think I finished my career with negative rushing yards, so I’m gonna say that, yeah, he probably would’ve brought me down.”
The 6-foot-1, 227-pound Henderson, who is recovering from a knee injury in real life, has an overall ranking of 91 out of 100 in the video game. The Sun Belt Preseason Defensive Player of the Year, he is the league’s lone player to crack the top 100.
But it’s not something over which the senior from Dingmans Ferry, Pennsylvania, obsesses.
“It’s really cool,” Henderson said. “I don’t play the game personally a lot. I’ve never had a console. But obviously, I’ve been on the game since it came out. I think it’s awesome. I think it’s great for all the players.”
Rahne was no slouch at Cornell, where he was a three-year starter who graduated with school records for completions, passing yards and touchdown passes.
Henderson, though, is a different animal. He led the nation with 14.2 tackles per game last season, and he might well have broken the single-season record for tackles had he not been injured late in the 2022 season.
The Monarchs, on the heels of a 6-7 season that included an overtime loss to Western Kentucky in the Famous Toastery Bowl, were picked to finish sixth in the Sun Belt’s East Division in a preseason poll. But Henderson remains an undeniable bright spot.
Having him be a part of something that’s bringing people together, Rahne said, is icing on the cake.
Rahne described a scene in which 20 or so of his players were enjoying the game in one room.
“We live in a pretty divisive country where everything we did is right and wrong and this sort of thing,” Rahne said. “This video game is the only thing that I’ve heard about where everybody loves it. This might be the most uniting thing that we’ve ever been around.”
Henderson, a former high school wrestling star with enough focus for an entire corps of linebackers, said he’s “feeling really good” with his progress since the injury, which he suffered late last season.
The video game, he said, only fuels him.
“I think it’s really cool that you get to hop on, whether it’s with your teammates, your buddies, anything, and just kind of sit there and talk a little trash to each other and play a video game,” Henderson said. “And then you get to wake up the next morning, and the reason you’re in that video game you get to pursue the whole entire next day. And to me, I think that’s just awesome.”
David Hall, david.hall@pilotonline.com.
