I have something of an unhealthy obsession with EA's NCAA Football games. While I know they've long been the redheaded stepchild next to the more popular Madden franchise, I honestly feel that there's a ton more relevance to the games if you are, like me, a gamer who doesn't come from a city with an NFL franchise in it or even have one nearby. Disclaimer, I am an ardent Boise State University Bronco fan where I got my undergraduate degree from. My other rooting school of interest is the University of Oregon where I got my Masters degree.



With that out of the way, there are a lot of ways that EA could really improve this franchise if they had the inclination and were willing to put in the time and effort to do so. The EA tagline for their sports games used to be: "If it's in the game, it's in the game." This was later shortened to simple, "It's in the game." With the NCAA Football games, however, this simply is not true. I'm here to prove it by listing a few new features that would freshen up a franchise that has begun to feel a bit like a ripoff due to lack of innovations and customers paying full price for what effectively has amounted to a fresh coat of paint and a roster update in recent years. 1. Let me act like the Athletic Director if I want to. For years, NCAA football has allowed you to assume the role of head coach when you're not actively running plays. You recruit players. You call the plays. You manage the substitution patterns. That's all well and good, even if player recruitment is basically nothing more than a glorified mini-game. But what about the other aspects of college football? True, you can do custom scheduling. But how about letting me raise funds for stadium expansion? Or facilities upgrades? What about managing some finances? As a BSU fan, I know that my school is at a large competitive disadvantage due to not being a member of an AQ conference. Our athletic budget is tiny compared to many others. Our stadium is small, which makes getting teams to come and play us at home very difficult and also has a very real impact on recruitment of top blue chip players. My team has succeeded nicely on the field despite some of these handicaps for years, but wouldn't it be fun if these sorts of things were included somehow? Imagine how much fun it would be to have options to raise funds and then purchase optional stadium upgrades to improve your program. There are all sorts of things you could include in this feature. Additional seating, better jumbotrons, improved sound-system, stadium designs that trapped noise to give a better home field advantage, etc. In addition to making the game as a whole more realistic, it would make fans of schools that don't already have these things in place have even more fun playing out their dreams in real time. 2. Update recruiting to reflect reality a little better. This can tie into #1 above by beefing up the GM aspect so you have to actually work to improve things like TV exposure and scheduling top opponents or bigger/better stadiums, but other things that could be included could be the ability to make under-the-table deals with recruits. Several of the biggest name schools in the nation are currently either under investigation, or have just recently finished being investigated, for shady/illegal recruiting practices. Getting rid of the smiling footballs was nice and all, but what about the option to offer money or other benefits to a prospect under the table? How about incorporating the risk of being caught and, if caught, the option to assess your own penalties or stonewall similar to what exists in the real world of college football. Do you think it might be an exciting thing to run the risk of being banned from postseason play or having scholarships revoked in return for better odds of landing a true blue-chip stud player? How about if doing this was combined with an auto-save feature so you're stuck with the consequences either way and can't reset and go back to where you were before? 3. Expand player stats to include things other than their athletic skill. Each year there are thousands of kids coming out of high school who have a chance to play football at the next level. Some are good kids. Some are bad kids. Some are smart and excel in the classroom. Others struggle to qualify academically and end up at Junior Colleges. Some obey all team rules and show exceptional leadership. Others pull crap like this and then fight with fans and cops on the way out. My point? Other than the fact that Blount is a complete jackass I mean? Well, my point is that some people - some college football players - ARE complete jackasses. Why not have stats to reflect that? You can recruit "troubled" talent if you want to do so and are willing to accept the risk of something like the video I linked taking place. Maybe they get involved with steroids or something else instead? Or you can recruit players with low academics scores and run the risk of them failing to make the grades and missing crucial games. Alternatively, maybe there are kids out there with sky-high leadership stats that can help keep troublemakers in line? Perhaps kids with good leadership talent also help in recruiting by reaching out to kids that came from their same high school but are a couple of years behind them? The possibilities are as limitless as reality and completely unexplored at present with EA's recent offerings. But the point of all this is that it would actually make the kids on your team more "real" to you. If the tagline of EA's sports games is to make the game feel as authentic and real as possible, then why not? I know at this point some people are probably thinking that there's a limit to how realistic that they want their games and if you add too much of this stuff in, then you could genuinely get in the way of being able to go out and "just play some ****ing football!" So, make these things optional. You can turn them on or off without losing a thing. 4. Personalize the schools better. (Note: It looks like NCAA Football 2012 is attempting this.) The franchise is off to a nice start with this. They've got each team's unique stadium. They flash little bits of trivia information during loading screens. They show mascots. But part of what makes college football great is the pageantry of it all. Using my own school as an example, one of the trivia bits that gets shown to people while Boise State games load is that, yes, we do have a real horse that a hot blonde babe rides around the stadium on the track after each Bronco touchdown.



Author's Note: Bronco riding blonde babe, if you happen to be a gamer and you're reading this and ever want to say hello at some point. Please feel free to drop me a PM. :P So why not show that? Or Notre Dame's "Touchdown Jesus"? Or any of the thousand or so OTHER unique things that each school has? You don't have to go overboard, but including maybe one or two unique things for each school as a way to make them stand out a little more could only aid in immersion. These are the sorts of ongoing and continual innovations that could be added gradually over time with each new iteration of the franchise that would partially justify the currently absurd $60 price tag for each new yearly NCAA Football release. Those are my ideas. What does everyone think?