Goodbye NCAA Football 14, Welcome EA Sports College Football 25

When EA Sports College Football 25 releases on July 19th, it will have been over 11 years since the last game in the series was released. EA Sports College Football series began in 1993 with Bill Walsh College Football on the SNES, Sega Genesis, and Sega CD. The series became an annual release for EA Sports until 2013 when NCAA Football 14 was released.

Now, 11 years later, sports fans are eagerly making plans for what is heading our way on July 19th. Gamers are already requesting off work and trying to decide what team to run their first dynasty with. However, before the new game arrives, I think it is necessary to review what happened over these last 11 years. Before we move on to the next game in the series, I want to give a proper sendoff to the game that kept us hoping and saw a community come together to keep the dream alive in a way sports gamers had never seen before. This is my farewell to NCAA Football 14.

Goodbye NCAA Football 14, Welcome EA Sports College Football 25

Initial Announcement

The first official news for NCAA Football 14 came in March 2013 when former Michigan QB Denard Robinson won the fan vote to become the game’s cover athlete. This vote wasn’t without controversy though. Early on in the voting, Robinson had a large lead over his competitor, Texas A&M WR Ryan Swope. However, within hours Swope somehow was able to take the lead. EA investigated and found that Texas A&M fans had created fake Facebook accounts to place extra votes for Swope. Robinson won the vote in a landslide once the botted votes were removed.

EA Sports officially announced the game on April 3, 2013. The press release focused on the new Infinity Engine 2. EA said the new engine “unlocks the unpredictability and innovation of college football with the introduction of real-time physics and the new force impact system.” The new option plays coming to the game we’re also mentioned, hoping to make the game feel more like actual college football. EA Sports would release more information on the game in the lead-up to release, focusing on things like Presentation, Dynasty, and Ultimate Team, which was making its debut in the NCAA Football series.

E3 2013

A couple of months later was E3 2013. This was honestly one of the best years in the event’s history. Konami showed off Metal Gear Solid V, Microsoft and Sony debuted their next-gen consoles in the Xbox One and the PS4, and Nintendo gave first looks at big-name titles like Super Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8, and Super Smash Bros for Wii U and 3DS.

Not to be outdone, EA came with a pretty good press conference. They showed off a new Plants vs Zombies game, a brand new IP from Respawn called Titanfall, a gameplay demo of Battlefield 4, and a teaser trailer for a new Star Wars Battlefront game that would be a launch title for the new consoles. This was such a great press conference! I remember watching it on TV and being so excited. I mean every single game looked like an absolute must-buy. Then the EA Sports part of the press conference started, where they showed… everything but college football.

Yeah, EA said up front that they were only going to be talking about the new games coming to PS4 and Xbox One during the presentation. They talked about the return of the NBA Live series, showed new things coming to Madden and FIFA that year, and finished by announcing their new UFC franchise. These were all great announcements and looked good, but it was kind of sad to see EA Sports leave out a huge title that was just weeks away from launch.

That doesn’t mean NCAA Football 14 wasn’t at E3 at all. Several media members got a chance to go hands-on with the game during the event. Most of them walked away saying the improvements to presentation and recruiting were phenomenal. The new gameplay engine also helped make this game have that authentic college football feel to it. After these reports came out, the hype for NCAA Football 14 went through the roof.

Reviews

NCAA Football 14 officially released a few weeks later on July 9, 2013. Though highly anticipated, the game received pretty mixed reviews upon release. GamesRadar+ rated the game a 90, saying “… NCAA 14 hits a ton of high notes and marks a great start to the upcoming fall sports game blitz.” However, most other reviews weren’t as positive. IGN rated the game a 7.4, calling the game “… far from an impressive package.” As of the writing of this article, the game sits at 77 on Metacritic.

Gameplay

On the field, the new gameplay engine made the game feel different from previous versions. New hard cuts made it easier to change direction and fake out defenders. Several new option types helped differentiate this game from that year’s Madden NFL game. While today most players are incredibly tired of how this game plays, in 2013 this gameplay was pretty fun and fresh.

Dynasty

In Dynasty mode, the new recruiting system drastically streamlined things. You no longer had to spend hours calling each individual recruit. Now, you just had to assign scouting points to your recruits. Every week, their top schools would update, and you would move up or down depending on how many points you assigned to them. Players, at least in 2013, welcomed the more set-it-and-forget-it style of recruiting. Also, several assistance features would help do most of the recruiting for you if you just wanted to focus on playing the games.

Alongside the new recruiting system were the new coach skill trees. This allowed you to upgrade your coach, as well as your assistant coaches throughout the season. Head coaches get two skill trees, one focused on gameplay and one focused on recruiting. The recruiting skills in particular can become pretty overpowered when stacked together. Gamers definitely abused the ability to 100% scout recruits and have up to a 15% chance of an instant commitment upon offering a scholarship.

Road to Glory

In Road to Glory, things weren’t that different from previous years. The mode remained pretty similar to how it had always been. You create yourself, play your senior season of high school football to earn college scholarship offers, and then go on to play your college career. One problem I had with both NCAA Football and Madden NFL’s career modes from this period was the lack of many positions. On the PS2 and Xbox games in these series, you were often able to use less popular positions like kicker or offensive lineman in career mode. But in the PS3 and Xbox 360 games, your options were much more limited. In NCAA Football 14, positions like TE, OL, K, and P were all excluded.

Road to Glory was much more streamlined in NCAA Football 14 compared to some earlier games. For example, in NCAA Football 10, you had to manage nightly activities to balance your player’s progression and keep your GPA high enough to remain eligible. By the time NCAA Football 14 was released, that was all gone. Now you just go to practice to earn training points, spend those training points on attribute upgrades, and play your games. There isn’t much else to keep you invested in the mode. You can’t transfer, you can’t develop rivalries with players on other teams, and you can’t become academically ineligible if your grades drop too much. I feel like in an attempt to streamline Road to Glory over the years, the mode lost a lot of its soul which made it so popular in the first place.

Ultimate Team made its debut in NCAA Football 14. I never played it back then, and the servers are off so I couldn’t review it now if I wanted to. Which I don’t.

Presentation

Presentation in NCAA Football 14 was the peak in the sports gaming genre in 2013. The game featured full ESPN licensing and broadcast package. Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit provided play-by-play and commentary. Reece Davis provided frequent studio updates on other games going on around the country. The music, halftime show, and graphics all looked exactly like an actual college football game on ESPN in 2013. The game had some of the best presentation we had ever seen in a sports game at the time, up there with games like ESPN NFL 2K5. In the years since we have seen things like MLB Network being featured in MLB The Show, and NBA 2K having incredible presentation year after year. But for when it came out, NCAA Football 14 was pushing the genre forward in this aspect.

The Beginning of the End

Despite these improvements and impressive sales, the writing was on the wall for the series. In the weeks following NCAA Football 14’s release, a series of dominoes fell into place that would lead to the end of college football video games. The first of those dominoes came years earlier in 2009. Former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon sued the NCAA, EA Sports, and the Collegiate Licensing Company (CLC) for using the image and likeness of student-athletes for financial gain. O’Bannon filed the suit after he saw his likeness being used in college basketball video games. The suit argued athletes should be entitled to compensation for the commercial use of their likeness after they graduate.

Following this lawsuit, EA Sports discontinued the NCAA Basketball series in 2010. They continued publishing the NCAA Football series, now with historical teams removed from the game. However, as the lawsuit progressed, it became clear the end was nearing. Just a week after NCAA Football 14 was released, the NCAA announced they would not renew their licensing deal with EA Sports. This single move though was not enough to kill the series. EA Sports planned to continue the series under the College Football title while continuing to license teams through their partnership with CLC. CLC announced that same day they would be extending their licensing deal with EA Sports through 2017. EA Sports executive VP at the time Andrew Wilson stated the next installment in the series was already in development.

Entering Hiatus

In the weeks to come though, the series would suffer one loss after another. Major conferences like the SEC, Big Ten, and PAC-12 all refused to license their trademarks to EA Sports. Eventually, it became clear that it would be almost impossible for EA Sports to continue the series under the current circumstances.

On September 26, 2013, EA Sports announced they would not release a new NCAA Football game in 2014, saying in a statement, “We have been stuck in the middle of a dispute between the NCAA and student-athletes who seek compensation for playing college football. Just like companies that broadcast college games and those that provide equipment and apparel, we follow rules that are set by the NCAA – but those rules are being challenged by some student-athletes. For our part, we are working to settle the lawsuits with the student-athletes. Meanwhile, the NCAA and a number of conferences have withdrawn their support of our game. The ongoing legal issues combined with increased questions surrounding schools and conferences have left us in a difficult position – one that challenges our ability to deliver an authentic sports experience, which is the very foundation of EA SPORTS games.”

That same day, EA Sports exited the O’Bannon lawsuit, settling for a reported $40 million. The NCAA Football series had officially entered its hiatus.

Roster Updates

Despite the end of the series, this was the beginning of something new. One feature NCAA Football 14 had that wasn’t talked about much at its release was the ability to share roster files. Gamers often used this feature to put the actual names of players into the game when EA Sports was not allowed to. However, now that no new games would be coming out, players took it to the next level.

Every year, a group of dedicated fans spent countless hours updating the rosters for all 126 teams in the game. This kept the game alive for thousands of college football fans. We would all download the new rosters before the season started and get sucked back into a new dynasty all over again. In 2018, ESPN interviewed some members of the team that made these updates. One team member said that it took him about 25 hours to complete one of the 30 teams he was responsible for. This added up to more than 750 hours of editing for a single year’s update.

CFB Revamped

On January 1, 2021, the now 7-year-old title came back into the spotlight again in a brand new way. On this day, the College Football Revamped mod team released their interface update. This release updated much of the game’s user interface from the 2013 ESPN style to the modern 2021 style. New score bugs, menus, team select screens, logos, graphics, and much more helped bring the game into the new decade. It made NCAA Football 14 feel like a brand-new release and gave the game a completely new life. Videos and streams of the game became incredibly popular on YouTube and Twitch. It wasn’t uncommon after this mod was released to see the NCAA Football 14 Twitch directory have more viewers than Madden NFL 21’s.

In the years to come, CFB Revamped released even more updates to the game. New logos, jerseys, helmets, teams, stadiums, and more would be added into the game. This mod also inspired several others to create their own mods for games like this. Community members released mods for NCAA Football 14 that added the CFB Playoff, revived online multiplayer, revamped recruiting, and increased transfer frequency. Similar projects like March Madness Legacy for NCAA Basketball 10 and NCAA NEXT for NCAA Football 06 also became incredibly popular.

A New Beginning

We all know how the rest of the story goes. Just over a month after CFB Revamped’s interface update, EA Sports announced the College Football series would be returning. Ever since, fans have been eager for every bit of news or updates surrounding the game’s return. We here at Sports Gamers Online have followed this news alongside you, covering everything from trailers, updates, leaks, and more. Now, here we sit just over a month away from the game’s release. It is an understatement to say that the hype for this game is high. The excitement and eagerness for this game is unprecedented in the sports gaming genre.

Thank You

Before we completely move on though, we should acknowledge all that was accomplished over the last 11 years. So much passion and creativity have been poured into this game over the past decade. From roster updates and mods to custom teams and dynasty series, the community helped keep this game alive in a way I had never seen before for a sports game. In part, it was that passion that helped show EA Sports that fans desperately wanted the series to make a comeback.

So, to everyone who contributed to that in some way over the last 11 years, I just want to say thank you. To the developers who originally worked on and released NCAA Football 14 all those years ago, thank you. I know you probably never imagined so many of us would still be playing this game all these years later. To all the people who helped keep the game alive during the hiatus, from the CFB Revamped and roster update teams to the content creators, online users, and everyone in between, thank you. And to the game that refused to die and helped scratch that college football itch every year until the new game arrived, to NCAA Football 14, thank you and goodbye.