Is NCAA 2006 coming out a week early?

Sitting for hours on end gives me the opportunity to scour the internet for anything that has the slightest chance to entertain me.

Today, I ran across a couple of message boards that are speculating about NCAA Football 2006 - which was scheduled to be released on Tuesday, July 12.

The much-anticipated release may be moved up due to CompUSA, specifically the stores located in Northern Kentucky.

Apparently CompUSA began selling copies of NCAA 2006 on July 2, a full 10 days ahead of schedule. While it may not seem like a big deal at first glance, this has wreaked havoc within the industry and EA Sports has landed itself in quite a pickle.

As a result of CompUSA's actions - who now list the game as a sell-out on its web site - patrons were going to Electronics Boutique, GameSpot, FYE, etc., and cancelling their pre-orders so they could go and purchase the game from CompUSA. Obviously - this is a big problem.

Some other stores joined the fray, following CompUSA's lead and breaking the release date. This is, afterall, one of the biggest gaming releases of the entire year, and missing out on the craze would short companies huge profits.

EASports ordered all companies to stop selling the video game ahead of the release date, but now may be forced to release the game in the next 24 hours. At the very worst, by Tuesday, July 5, a week early.

Many customers - both pre-orders through EA's web site and through other companies - are clamoring for their game. Distributors are irate because of the advanced release and lost profits. All companies from coast-to-coast already have the game in stock, therefore, giving a green light to begin selling the game to the public wouldn't be difficult.

Upon conducting a quick search of web sites, the games release date has been changed to "current" on EA's web site at easports.com. Additionally, Target has changed its release date from 7/12/05 to 7/06/05. The internet buzz, combined with these changes, lead me to believe there's substantial merit to these rumors.

As someone mired in the mundaneness of the dog days of summer - and someone with a tremendous amount of spare time on my hands at work - this would be a fantastic development.

Stay tuned.