It has been over 10 years since the last college football video game was released. Everyone remembers the days of playing NCAA 14 dynasty mode and turning a lesser-known school into a perennial powerhouse or playing road to glory mode and rising through the depth charts with their created player.
Finally, after the long absence and fans pleading for a new game to be released, EA Sports College Football 25 will be released in Summer 2024. NCAA Football 14 was released back on July 9, 2013, and at the time no one knew that it would be the last college football video game for ten years.
The franchise was put on hiatus due to multiple conferences revoking their trademarks for the game and multiple lawsuits against Electronic Arts for using player’s likenesses in-game. The savior of the franchise came with the addition of name, image and likeness, NIL, deals to college sports. Now college athletes can make money off of their name, image, or likeness and the college football video game franchise can return.
Over the years Madden, the National Football League’s video game franchise, has fallen flat and is under much scrutiny by its fanbase. With the revitalization of the college football franchise, College Football 25 will be the biggest sports video game release of all time and blow every other Madden release out of the water.
“I was only seven years old when NCAA 14 came out and I never got to play the game, so now I’m excited to finally play the game and see what all the hype is about,” EA Sports community member Brett McClintock said.
The game modes that will be released in College Football 25 are better than their equivalent in Madden because there is way more detail in the college version. In Dynasty Mode, the mode where you take control of the team, there are over 130 teams to choose from and in Madden, there are only 32 teams. The playing cycle is different as well because in the college version, players leave every four years which forces you to rebuild the roster continually and adds to the immersiveness. Where in Madden you can resign your players so they stay on the same team for their whole career.
“I remember making multiple dynasties when the game first came out and even now I still have a dynasty that I still occasionally play on,” longtime NCAA 14 player Jake McClintock said. “I never thought a new game would come out.”
Also when comparing both games’ Career Mode, the college version is way more immersive than Madden. In the college franchise, you start in high school and different colleges are actively trying to recruit you and once you decide where to commit you have to rise in the depth chart to play in the games. In Madden, you basically just create your players, put them on whichever team you want, and then play.
In College Football 25 there is a strong emphasis on making the game feel as realistic as it can be. Multiple real-life commentators as well as multiple on-screen analysts are confirmed for the video games pregame and postgame shows. Most notable is Chris Fowler, who is the lead play-by-play commentator for ESPN.
“Everything you could see in a football game, even the mundane plays, I have said into that microphone many different ways,” Fowler said in a post on Instagram, “EA insists on realism, I sat here for hours saying touchdown calls for every team in the game.”
