Yeah, it's smart positioning. I found an article that goes a little more in depth about the NIL issues and plans:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2021/02/02/ea-sports-college-football/
Relevant quotes:
"The game will include school names, logos, traditions, fight songs, mascots, colors, uniforms and stadiums. Navigating around potentially litigious NIL matter was a delicate matter, and barring users from being able to customize players to their liking was an important stipulation for the schools, said Cory Moss, CLC’s chief executive. EA Sports was able to do a trial run of sorts with recent Madden titles, which incorporated a handful of college team options but did not include specific players.
“We wanted to work with EA just in that small module to see how they could work to formulate the rosters and work with the schools on the approval process to make sure there wasn’t any possibility of using any current student-athlete’s name, image and likeness,” he said.
Weber signaled EA Sports’ interest in pursuing rights to college player likenesses should they become available, saying also there is no way to do so at the moment. “We’re designing the game so it can stand on its own without the use of player, name, image likeness,” Weber said, adding that EA “will be ready and excited to participate in a future when those rights become available
.”"