6 Things We Need to See From EA’s New College Football Game

MIAMI, FL - JANUARY 11: Najee Harris #22 of the Alabama Crimson Tide holds a National Champions sign after their win over The Ohio State Buckeyes in the College Football Playoff National Championship at Hard Rock Stadium on January 11, 2021 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by UA Athletics/Collegiate Images/Getty Images)

There was a weird twist in the announcement: Holt said the game is currently planned to include rosters without names, images, or likenesses of real college players. In other words, if the game had come out this year, you could play as some anonymous Alabama WR or Ohio State QB, but those guys wouldn’t in any way resemble Devonta Smith or Justin Fields.

To which we all said: Huh? Who wants to play a game without the real players?

We want the real players included in the game, without a doubt—and we want to see those players be compensated. EA Sports’ plan is rooted in the current NCAA rule that players can’t sell their likeness while in school, but that rule seems destined to change, given the recent Fair Pay to Play Act, which became a law in September.

EA Sports said it’s monitoring the situation.

“That won’t be a problem for us,” Holt said. “But it’s really, that’s not an answer for us right now to decide. We’re as much passengers as anyone else. So we make sure we deliver what our college football game players would want in a game. And that starts with just a very immersive experience, and there’s lots of things we can do to bring the true college game play and game day to the virtual world.”

The legislation is indeed beyond EA Sports’ control, but it’s hard to imagine this game being a success if real players aren’t a part of it. I mean...would you buy that game?

Athletes have (justifiably) argued previous versions of the game used their likeness but didn’t pay them. When NCAA commissioner Mark Emmert spoke on the issue in late 2019, he said if the game were to return, any athletes involved in it would need to be paid.

We’d love to see EA Sports College Football mark a very public turning point in athletes being compensated for the use of their likeness. Put them in the game, and this time around, as Jay-Z rapped on “They Don’t Love You No More,” let the young fellas get paid.

Dynasty mode had to be the best part of the old NCAA Football games, right? Remember when you pieced together an epic 10-year run, turning around a struggling school and transforming the fledgling program into the perennial national champion? Good times.

It’s been sad to live without the feature since the game has gone dormant. We want it back, of course—and we also want it to be better than ever.

Recruiting has changed a lot in the past six years. Nowadays, players start promoting themselves on social media in middle school and practically have production crews compiling their highlight reels in 4K. We’re hopeful we’ll see the full recruiting experience, with all its self-promotion and drama, built into this game.

We’d also like to see more business control incorporated into this version. Imagine if you could negotiate merchandise and broadcast deals on behalf of the school, in addition to scheduling. Maybe you could even have a say in the marketing strategy on social media. 

The bottom line is that we want more from dynasty mode. Let’s make it as elaborate and realistic as possible.

It might sound over the top, but hey, all of this stuff has become hyper-relevant to IRL college football.

In the years since NCAA Football 14, coaches have had an ever-increasing role in the college football spotlight. Sure, back in the day, everyone knew the big-name head coaches—Mack Brown, Pete Carroll, and Urban Meyer.

But nowadays, people know the hot-shot assistants—Joe Brady, Steve Sarkisian, Brent Venables. People are even intimately familiar with schemes, like Lincoln Riley’s Air Raid attack at Oklahoma. Fans’ awareness of coaches, on a personal level and in terms of Xs and Os, has reached new heights.

This game should be geared around the players, of course, but we’d love to see more attention paid to the coaches as well. Perhaps NCAA Football 14 players could develop a coach into a big name around the country, then negotiate his next contract, or they could be challenged to hold onto their offensive coordinator if their passing attack takes off and a rival school wants to scoop him up as its next head coach.

There’s a lot of room to innovate here. EA can be creative.

Back when NCAA Football 14 was around, the Bowl Championship Series was still a thing. It wasn’t retired until 2014.

This should go without saying, but we want the new game to reflect the current structure of the college game, which builds up to the College Football Playoff. The CFP is a win-or-go-home knockout tournament between the top four teams in the country. 

No. 1 plays No. 4, and No. 2 plays No. 3, then the winners meet in the CFP National Championship Game. The CFP has produced some unforgettable moments since its introduction, including the epic Clemson-Alabama battle in 2017 (Deshaun Watson to Hunter Renfrow) and equally legendary Georgia-Alabama title game in 2018 (Tua Tagovailoa to DeVonta Smith).

For some reason, the CFP is way more fun than the BCS.

A committee selects and seeds the four teams that qualify for the CFP, but there’s speculation all year about who’s in the mix. We want to see that same buzz throughout the season, and the same hyped-up conclusion to the campaign, in EA Sports College Football.

The player empowerment movement in sports really took off around the time the NCAA Football franchise was shutting down. It extended into the college football ranks, too—not just through the Fair Pay to Play Act, but also through the introduction of the transfer portal.

It used to be much harder for a player to get out of one school and into a new situation. These days, players have a ton of control over their allegiance. They can bounce for a host of reasons.

This can be good and bad. It’s good for players, of course, but often bad for teams—like the Houston Cougars, whose star QB, D’Eriq King, decided after the first four games of the 2019 season to take a redshirt, then transferred to Miami. Houston fans were salty about King leaving for a better situation.

We want all the greatness and terribleness of the transfer portal included in EA Sports College Football. That means the pressure will be on the player to make sure athletes are satisfied.

Madden is the second most popular sports video game, behind only FIFA, and it has a cult following. It only makes sense that EA Sports College Football includes extensive integration with its NFL counterpart.

In previous versions of NCAA Football, you could import draft classes into Madden. We’d like to see that again, at a bare minimum. But there’s opportunity for more build-out.

Since NCAA Football was on the scene, first-person narratives have exploded in sports video games. Madden’s feature is called "Face of the Franchise: Rise to Fame." There’s incredible depth in this mode, allowing player control both on and off the field while progressing through life.

We’d love to see EA Sports College Football provide a similar feature and seamless integration between the two games. Imagine controlling all aspects of your player’s college experience, then taking that same intimate control to the next level after Roger Goodell calls your player’s name.

Holt said the company is focused on game play for now, but there seems to be a lot of room to shake things up.

“Whether that’s a reimagining or an evolution of things that were in the game before or new things and new ways to play, I don’t want to get into the details of what we’re already planning and what we’ll put in that,” Holt said. “But it will be something that our core fans, if they appreciated and loved NCAA 14, they will love this game because that’s just the starting point.”

(Marshawn Lynch voice): Play tiiiime.