The Return Of NCAA Football Games: 5 Things I Want And 5 I Don't Want

 

Two days ago we god our first proof that 2021 is going to be better than 2020 in the form of an announcement from EA Sports that the NCAA Football series will be returning, date TBD. At first I was ecstatic. I haven’t stopped playing NCAA 14 since it’s initial release, being disgustingly far into dynasty mode, having completed dozens of road to glory careers, and having about 10 various roster files saved on my XBOX so that I can seamlessly change between years, depending on if I want to play as Johnny Manziel, Baker Mayfield, or Joe Burrow. I love these games, they mean a lot to me. So when EA’s announcement came I was initially pumped about the prospect of new versions of these games returning.

Then I remembered… EA Sports sucks nowadays. The company that brought us all so much joy throughout our childhoods is now a money crazed, incompetent, out of touch, absolute waste of a video game company. Seriously. Madden 21 currently has a 0.2/10.0 user rating on metacritic. That’s hilariously low. To put that into prespective, do you remember the movie Jack and Jill? Jack and Jill, is the notoriously bad Adam Sandler movie in which Sandler plays both Jack AND his twin sister Jill who constantly bicker, and has a subplot of Al Pacino trying to court Jill (who again is played by Adam Sandler), much to the disarray of Jack (again, also played by Adam Sandler). Just a preposterously insane, terrible movie. Well guess what? On rotten tomatoes the user score for Jack and Jill is a 36%, or 3.6/10. Users enjoy Jack and Jill 180 times, or 18000% more than they enjoy Madden 21. And the people who made that game are in charge of making the reboot of the NCAA Football franchise.

This is what it must feel like when your favorite tv show gets rebooted or reunites years later. A moment of happiness and then constant anxiety about all the ways the corporate assholes could ruin it. But fear not, if EA Sports can follow these simple 5 do’s and 5 do not’s, I garuntee we could be looking at one of the best installments in the franchise.

DO:

• KEEP THE GAME ARCADE-Y  

One of the great things about the NCAA franchise is it was a less serious version of Madden. Throughout the years as Madden changed their mechanics to make it nearly impossible to break around a corner on a run, or change directions swiftly on a kick return or throw a ball on the run more than ten yards downfield, the NCAA games leaned into the fun big plays that make college football as exciting as it is. I can’t tell you how fun it is to take a pitch around the corner or switch directions on a dime on a counter. This is not something to change when the game returns. College football is ridiculous, filled with insane plays, a lot less by the book than the NFL, and that is why we love it. NCAA is not meant to be Madden for college football, it is its own game and should not pick up the more simulation style gameplay Madden has leaned into the past 5-6 years.

• THE GAME IS STILL FOCUSED AROUND DYNASTY AND ROAD TO GLORY

NCAA Football games bread and butter was the dynasty and road to glory game modes. For those who are unfamiliar, Dynasty mode is when you create a coach and take over a schools football program. From there you must recruit high school recruits to your school, play games, and upgrade your coach to gain gameplay and recruiting advantages. Road To Glory mode is a game mode where you create a high school football player from wherever you please in the country and play out his senior season, gaining attention and various scholarships from universities based on how good your recruit is, then after your season commit to a college and play out his college career trying to win games, awards, and upgrade your player along his four years at his school. These two modes are the backbone of this game and they NEED to be essential in future installments of the franchise. This is what gets the fans going. If you hit on Dynasty and Road To Glory, bringing them into the new gen era with updated features but still keeping the classic feel of the late 00’s games (and maybe even layout), fans will be overjoyed.

• BRING BACK FCS SCHOOLS 

Hand up, maybe it’s because I go to an FCS school now, but up until NCAA 09 you used to be able to play as FCS schools in play now exhibition games, and choose an FCS team to be called up into FBS in Dynasty mode moving them into any conference of your choosing. I like the prospect of bringing them back into the game and getting to build an FCS school into a Power 5 blue blood over a grueling 20 year dynasty mode. I also think Dynasty mode should go a step further and give an option to create new conferences or bring up entire conferences for dynasty mode. I mean how fun would it be to prove North Dakota State can play with the big boys or to bring the Ivy League up and take Harvard into CFP glory #FeelsLike(18)98. Bringing FCS schools back into the mix if they can legally seems like a no brainer to me, hopefully they do this.

• GIVE US LEGENDS TEAMS

This is something I feel like everybody has wanted for a long time. The ability to play with legends teams. May it be the ’08 Florida Gators or the ’19 LSU Tigers or ’04 USC Trojans, everyone has a team they’d be itching to play with. This would be especially fun with teams from the past eight years that never got their chance to shine in NCAA football games.

• MASCOT MASHUP

Mascot Mashup is hilarious. If you don’t think so you’re no fun. For those of you who are unfamiliar it is a game mode that is just a normal game, with the small exception that instead of normal teams, every player is replaced with mascots running around the field playing football. This is even wilder when you realize schools like Stanford have a tree as their mascot. Everyone at EA who thought of, created, or approved of this game mode is an absolute menace to society, probably needs to be on many medications and definitely deserves to be put behind bars for a long time. It truly is the most horrific yet glorious thing mankind has ever done. Just do yourself a favor and google mascot mashup on youtube and click on any video, I promise you will be beside yourself laughing.

DO NOT:

• ULTIMATE TEAM

WE DO NOT WANT ULTIMATE TEAM. WE DO NOT WANT ULTIMATE TEAM. WE DO NOT WANT ULTIMATE TEAM. Ultimate team is a cancer to the sports video game world. It is the number one reason Madden is garbage and it almost took down NHL too. It quite literally only makes sense in FIFA because there are 10000000000 different teams and players to get. However, Ultimate Team is a cash cow so I am sure it will weasel its way in and be the most probable cause of this game failing aswell. EA made over 1.4 BILLION dollars on Ultimate Team next year and the pay for win game mode keeps growing so I would be surprised if people aren’t spending $200 to pack a Johnny Manziel legend card when this game drops.

• THAT STUPID THING WHERE WHEN YOU PRESS LT IT SLOWS TIME DOWN IN NCAA 13

Okay this one is really nitpicking but nobody used that button when they’re playing. The only times people pressed LT is when they forgot it didn’t lateral or enhance moves/throws anymore. If anyone I was playing with used it on purpose and unironically I probably would never talk to them again.

• A MADDEN CARBON COPY 

This is the big one to me. I touched on it in my first pro, but I can not stress enough how important it is to not make a Madden carbon copy when making this game. In fact if EA just made every opposite decision they made while making Madden, it’d probably be a pretty decent game off that alone. NCAA needs to have its own voice and feel, please keep Madden creatives far away from this game.

• MAKE RECRUITING ANY EASIER

This is an unpopular opinion but I absolutely hate NCAA 14’s recruiting function in Dynasty. It is way to easy to sustain dominance and get good recruits. I know a lot of people like it so I won’t pitch to change it, but if I had it my way recruiting would go back to the recruiting from 07-10 ish where you had to call each recruit and pitch them the school based upon their personal interests, and missteps would lead to them getting offended and hanging up on you. It was much harder and way more personal. But if that can’t come back just don’t dumb it down any more than it already has been.

• FUCK IT UP

Don’t fuck it up. Simple as that.