The EA Sports College Football Features We Need to Return

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EA Sports College Football 25 officially released today, though myself and many others have been playing it by pre-ordering the Deluxe Edition a few days ago. You’ve heard all the hype, and I can safely say that CFB 25 delivered. The game feels fluid, fast, is fun to play, and is an amazing continuation of the fast-paced NCAA series that had sat on the shelf for more than a decade.

However, given that this is essentially a brand-new series and EA had to start from scratch. Not every great feature in the previous NCAA series made it to the first iteration of the new series. That is both understandable and somewhat disappointing, but overall, it is more important to get the base game correct first, which EA did. Regardless, there are a few features that we remember fondly from the previous generation of games which we’d love to see come back in future installments. 

High School in Road to Glory

Road to Glory is a beloved game mode in the NCAA/CFB Series where you create your own player and take him through the ranks of college football. Part of the fun of this mode took place before you even set foot on a college campus, as you played your senior season of high school to earn collegiate offers. How you performed on the field would determine the level of recruit you were, and this allowed you to immerse yourself in the lore of your created character and give him a backstory to support your college career.

Whether you ended up as a blue chip QB from California an underdog two-star who walked on to his hometown team or the best high school football player Montana has ever seen, high school was a great way to set up the story of your RTG career and is sorely missed in CFB 25. Though the gameplay is fun, it feels somewhat shallow to just pick the caliber of player you start as and immediately get into college, and I hope that the high school intro makes a return in next year’s installment.

Heisman Challenge

Essentially a sub-mode under Road to Glory, Heisman Challenge allowed you to select from a number of iconic Heisman Trophy Winners in an attempt to recreate their season or create a new legacy with them on a different school.

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Whether you’re a Florida Gator fan who wants to shred defenses with Tim Tebow again or a fan of a smaller school who wants to have Reggie Bush lead your team to the national championship, Heisman Challenge was an incredibly fun game mode that allowed us to relive great moments from years past and create our own as well.

Mascot Mashup

A fun extra mode that didn’t take itself seriously at all, Mascot Mashup was a great game mode for when you were with friends or didn’t feel like diving deep into a dynasty. All players were given 99 to all attributes and their models were replaced with the mascot of the team they play for, and yes, it was both as fun and stupid as it sounds. There’s something heartwarming about playing as Stanford and seeing a bunch of Christmas trees with a dumb smile on them running around scoring touchdowns.

Heisman Trophy Ceremony

The Heisman Trophy is the most prestigious honor that a college player can receive, and yet after the PS2 era of NCAA Football it was reduced to nothing more than a screen shown right before bowl season. After 12 or 13 hard-fought games playing out a story of 134 FBS teams, we should be given some closure and excitement over the best player of the year.

Starting in NCAA Football 06 on the PS2 and original Xbox and never porting over to the following generation of consoles, a Heisman ceremony was shown to you after conference championship week and featured the five nominees, a brief rundown of their stats and a short cutscene of the winner holding the trophy on stage. While modest, it provided a little payoff for getting a player into the Heisman conversation and an extra sense of accomplishment.

Real Coaches/Coach Editing

Likely to come next year, it still feels a bit deflating to play Dynasty Mode against a bunch of Joe Randoms as coaches and coordinators. Going up against actual coaches, hiring and firing real coordinators, and knowing your history against them adds a great sense of detail and immersion to Dynasty Mode. EA Sport’s Madden NFL series still doesn’t have real coordinators, and hasn’t had them since 2011—hopefully EA doesn’t skimp out on that for CFB next year.

Player Suspensions

Player suspensions were a wrinkle in the Dynasty Modes of the PS2-era NCAA games and added extra depth to the mode. You would have to make tough calls regarding certain infractions your players may have accrued during the week at the peril of your team. Sure, you can lay down the law on some third-string lineman who skipped class, but do you have the guts to bench your star QB going into rivalry week?

It wasn’t just window dressing either. If you failed to responsibly discipline your players, the NCAA could sanction your program and institute a bowl game ban and loss of scholarships. This is a feature that obviously cannot be implemented with the actual players in the game due to NIL rules and possible defamation, however, it would be great to see this utilized with the fake in-game recruits, and even work it into the recruiting process.

Actual Classes in Road To Glory

The Road to Glory mode is somewhat hollowed out in CFB 25, which was to be expected considering it’s the first game in more than a decade. However, some of the bells and whistles of old could help improve the product and provide a more immersive experience. For example, picking a major and attending classes provided an extra feeling of really being a collegiate student-athlete.

Once again, there was substance to this rather than just style. Whichever major you chose (all of them with varying difficulties) provided certain attribute bonuses to improve and personalize your player. A history major could help your QB with his awareness rating and enhance his composure in big games, for example. However, if you didn’t want to use your brain for anything other than football activities, a simpler major such as college conferences or team nicknames was available, albeit with a smaller attribute boost.

Obviously, we all don’t want to have to actually take college classes to play a dang video game, but the classes were more of a mini-game quiz type of feel than anything boring or tedious. It would be a big improvement over a simple menu option to raise your GPA like in CFB 25.

Classic Teams

Classic teams were a great addition to NCAA and added even more hours of fun to the experience. Being able to put 2004 USC against a team like 1923 Notre Dame with an option attack made for intriguing gameplay, and now there’s even more potential. Being able to play with teams like 2008 Florida, 2012 Texas A&M, 2006 Oklahoma, and even more recent teams that we didn’t get to see in a video game such as 2017 UCF, 2019 LSU or 2016 Louisville, would be tons of fun. Many of the iconic players from these teams will likely make an appearance in Ultimate Team, but it’s not the same as playing with the original rosters.

Exporting Draft Classes to Madden

This is unfortunately tricky due to licensing reasons. The NIL agreement with EA Sports currently only ensures that the college athletes are portrayed in the EA CFB series and would not cover them being ported over to Madden officially. Because of this, the ability to export draft classes is missing in EA CFB and it is unclear if it will ever return.

Exporting your NCAA draft classes was a great way to build a connection within Madden’s franchise mode, as you could recruit a player from high school, develop him into a star, draft him into the NFL and play out his whole career. Storylines like that are what keep us invested in these game modes for month at a time, and now a big chunk of that is missing. I’m sure some dedicated souls will painstakingly recreate the projected draft classes from CFB into Madden, but it should be no more difficult than the click of a button.

 While EA CFB 25 is a great starting point for what we hope to be a return to form for EA Sports, the game still has a long way to go from being perfect. What other features do you hope to make a return to the CFB/NCAA video game series? Let us know in the comments.