Sask. CFL fan gives video game lovers a chance to play as favourite teams and players in new video game

WATCH: A Saskatchewan CFL fan is giving video game lovers a chance to play as their favourite teams and players in a new video game. Donovan Maess has more.

It’s been a long time since the Canadian Football League (CFL) had a licensed video game, but one fan from Saskatchewan is giving gamers across the country the chance to play as their favourite teams and players.

Nelson Hackewich says he’s been a fan of the CFL for as long as he can remember.

“The 1997 Grey Cup’s memorable,” he said about falling in love with the game. “It was in Edmonton; we had a Grey Cup party [at home]. And I just remember the basement being full of people, the Roughriders miraculously were in that game and [they] got blown out by Toronto.”

He also recalled a couple years earlier, the Grey Cup game happened to fall on his birthday.

“They used to have a parade and I thought they were having a parade for my birthday,” he joked.

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As Hackewich got older, he found a love in video games. Particularly Madden NFL and college football games where he quickly realized his favourite league was always missing.

“I would always play as the [Green Bay] Packers because they were green and had somewhat of the same atmosphere as the Riders,” Hackewich recalled. “But I want to play with the teams and the players I know and love and that’s only happened once.”

In 1999, a video game developer out of B.C. created ‘CFL Football‘ 99.’ Hackewich had the game but he says it was not very good.

“It was all flat, 2D and they got the team licensing, but they didn’t get the player licensing,” he explained. “It was Saskatchewan Roughriders number 17 throws to 80. And you were like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s Don Narcisse catching that football.’ It was good enough.”

‘A passion project’

As football games began to advance, so too did the options to customize teams and players.

For the first time in 2004, Hackewich put the Saskatchewan Roughriders into the Madden NFL video game.

“I started to edit the rosters, logos and play as CFL teams,” he said.

Now for the past 21 years, he continues to modify games and use team builders to add each CFL team, their logos, jerseys and full rosters into the game, doing so most recently in EA Sports’ ‘College Football 26.’

“I get the game and the itch to play as the Riders and recreate the Labour Day Classic,” Hackewich said. “Then I do it, put it out there and see what happens.”

It’s a process which takes multiple hours for each of the nine clubs.

“[The hardest part] is giving [players] their ratings,” Hackewich said. “[I] want to be realistic, and I feel like every player is going to reach out and say, ‘I deserve a better rating.’”

“But it is Vernon Adams the best quarterback? He’s certainly showing it right now,” he added.

When Hackewich first started creating the CFL teams, he would play them with his dad and friends most often.

“He would stop the game like, ‘I have to change this.’ And then two hours later, ‘Dad come back and play,” his father Lance said.

With the expansion of online play, the ability to share created teams has also grown, including the option to play as Hackewich’s CFL.

“The internet is always vocal, good or bad,” he said. “There’s limitations EA puts in place with how many logos you can have on a helmet or on a jersey. You have to take everything within the limitations of what you can accomplish.”

Yet with the release of each game every year, Hackewich hits the lab to input each team into the game.

Since the release of CFB ’26, Hackewich says more than 100 fans have downloaded his CFL creations.

“It’s still four downs, but it’s a passion project really,” he said. “I’m not getting paid for it, I’m doing it because I love the CFL and I want to play as those teams in Madden or College Football 26.”

“And it feels good that the response has been great,” Hackewich added.

Growing the game

In recent months, talks about growing the Canadian style of gridiron football have been getting louder.

Hackewich says bringing the CFL to video games is his part in trying to grow the game.

“I hope there’s some parents getting the game for their kid and they’re able to make that connection with a guy like Kian Schaffer-Baker or Brady Olivera, and then want to go see them in person.”

And while it hasn’t happened in this century, the thought of the CFL getting their own video game again, is still a long way away.

“It needs to be 110 yards [long] and 65 yards wide,” Hackewich said. “But financially it’s a big struggle [for the league].”

“It’s a pipe dream, but I’d love to see it one day,” he added.

To download Hackewich’s CFL teams on College Football 26, search “hack28yqr” in the ‘Team Builder’ section.