Our best NCAA Football memories: What we missed without a college football video game

Stressing the question concerning values which have remained vivid in discussions of the old games, one should mention the following. lviii Who and what did we fail to see over the past decade? What do we have to look forward to now that there has been an addition to the mass at last? R. Cory Newman caught up with Chris Vannini, Max Olson, Christopher Kamrani, Cameron Teague Robinson, and Jason Jones for some reflection and planning.

What is the one memory that instantly pops into your mind when you think of previous college football video games?

Chris Vannini: It is funny that I do not remember the specifics of the games, but I remember the feelings that one gets while playing NCAA Football games. Me and my youth hockey teammate steve went to FuncoLand for the midnight release of the game a few times and basically played the game on and off for weeks straight with a stock full of Doritos and Mountain Dew. We began with one-star programmes and then move up to even the biggest program teams. Recruiting used to be a thing that was separate from the in-season, and you could power through seasons and pretty comfortably get 10-15 years into your dynasty. Continuing that thought, we’d create ourselves as prospects and export our draft classes to Madden. Sadly, those features are absent in this new game. As far as I am concerned, one does not remember online play, Ultimate team or any of those new things. It is watching cartoons late at night with best friends, and keep on playing until one is too tired to continue.

Max Olson: Right, I have to say that the NCAA Football 11 dynasty I had with three of my best friends in college ranks as an all-timer. I inherited the post Tim Tebow Florida and created a superpower team that relied on a powerful rushing duo of Trey Burton and Mike Gillislee while relying on the finesse of top pass rusher Ronald Powell on the other side of the defense. My buddies hated Ohio State and rolled with Oregon and Texas. The nights when we would have those head-to-head showdowns were some of the best and worst: they got so heated, in fact, that the controller was once thrown and broke. Oh, we surely did take this dynasty far more seriously than most of our college lectures and yes, to this very day, we talk about the legends of these teams – LaMichael James, Marquise Goodwin, not to mention Jake Stoneburner.

Chris Kamrani: Everything I had was the use of the turbo button. Alone, I depressed the one button even more than any other person in the world. I write that because my only chance of out-doing the friends who played the game like real human beings — carrying the football — was to use speed. I was always finding myself behind from what was expected. Thus, the least-talented player got to play with the most fun teams to compete against them and God smiled upon me when I went on a rampage with West Virginia / Pat White, Steve Slaton and Noel Devine in NCAA Football 2008. This was perhaps my first significant victory against my friends who had been associated with Florida and Ohio State. I perhaps was defeated each time afterward, but I will never forget that W; I am not sure if Totino’s Pizza Rolls were involved.

Cameron Teague Robinson: The last NCAA game was actually my best and I have my best memory to it. My roommate and I had same as our resident adviser during our freshman year in college and he is one of my best friends to date. We three and some partners had an online dynasty of may be six. Our rule was, if for example a man at Ohio State wanted to go to Michigan as an assistant, he had to first become a Group of 5 head coach. You know, that’s something me and our RA never saw eye to eye when I got to Mississippi State and he had Rutgers as his team. I think we faced each other in the national championship for two years in a row and probably began to compete for the same players on the recruiting trail. Yeah, I’m a Madden guy; that is where my competitiveness is most active, but the NCAA experience is always having your Friends’ best recruit go to the week before signing day or their dream job during the offseason.

Jason Jones: I had long hair still in the early to mid 1990s. Playing PlayStation was probably a large component of my decision to get my hair braided, and NCAA Football was always the game of choice at the time. Many seasons were recorded on memory cards (yes, kids, back in the day you had to buy a memory card). I was with Cal then and frankly we were not a very good team but me and my friends were having fun pretending to make ordinary people become college legends. It also had some benefits being a Long Beach Poly grad, as most of my high school football team mates where going n to college. I would go into playback and rename the players according to their actual names to see if I can get my friends to the NFL.

What is the best Dynasty you ever have ?

Vannini: The only video game, in which I played, was NCAA Football 05; and within it I developed a Ball State dynasty. When Michigan freshman Chad Henne outplayed him in practice and during the season and took his job away from him in both scenarios, he transferred to Ball State, thus beginning the conference’s domination. Soon my Cardinals posted few 10-win seasons, and MAC championships, before they were admitted to BIG TEN thus ousting Indiana. I left Muncie, Ind. , after five years before joining Notre Dame. I thought it was the best for my family and that I wanted to compete for national championships.

Olson: It is practically impossible to list all of them as the number is simply innumerable. Once I spent 10 years with the color and mascot of the University of Oregon team, the Ducks. Let me explain how I turned Kiehl Frazier into the all-time Auburn great at the back of my logo. The reader will recall theaccount of how Iturned LSU into the triple-option programme. This I made out UTSA like a monster with recruiting a five-star recruit Robert Nkemdiche as both the defensive end and the running back. Last but not the least, I have done Jeff Scott from Clemson offenser coordinator to Temple head coach to USC and then Alabama.

Kamrani: Easy. Cheats and codes for Cal on NCAA Football 06. Other cross over celebrities include; Marshawn Lynch, Justin Forsett and DeSean Jackson. They set me up and paved way for me to be able to clinch all the five-stars within the state of recruiting.

Teague Robinson: I created Mississippi State as a run-first offense in the dynasty mode and simply loved Bulldogs’ running back LaDarius Perkins so much that when he got injured two weeks before winning the Heisman Trophy, I was willing to restart the whole dynasty. The team failed to retain the national title in that year since Perkins was not present but we returned the next year to win the Heisman and the title hence enabling me to attract the best talents in the form of running backs each year.

Jones: It is very difficult to name a few, they are just too many. Hopefully, Tops is the name dominating the field with victory with Kyle Boller on the keyboard for Cal, enabling the group to go to the Rose Bowl and so. My friends always got frustrated when I would bring-up UCLA (Cade McNown, Freddie Mitchell and Deshaun Foster were the bomb, yo). This is due to the play ability in running and passing, Johnson considered McNown to be a weapon. Much later, it will all be about Michael Vick!

What’s your favorite go to call whether it’s third down and your backed up, or you’re on the one yard line?

Vannini: The third down go-to in the spread, the open field, is “HB Angle”: Jam the halfway line coming out of the backfield on the running back. At the goal line the play is “Fake FB Dive HB Toss. ”

Olson: This is probably why in our college dynasty user games our games were very high-risk, I practically became a hesitant play-caller who was afraid to pass and risk a turnover. The sure bet in the book for using my Florida dynasty was an I-formation power run with Gillislee. It was entirely foreseeable but efficient in getting the task accomplished. In the new game though, let’s opine that I am going to over rely on the RPO calls on crisis downs.

Kamrani: Me and my friends to this day occasionally text back and forth with “689 Hook” about once a year. It was the play that the team fell back on irrespective of the coverage received on the field. Under a three-receiver, two-running back set, the inside receiver stood on the right for some reason, if he cut in on his post route against the linebackers or safeties, he was open. It was a house call often; It later was outlawed as a play call.

Teague Robinson: I hold two. I previously established a Bowling Green dynasty and I eventually recruited pure athleticism and used the “Motion WR Option” play out of pistol scheme. So if you had a fast slot receiver, that meant touchdown most of the time because he comes on an end-around and takes the option pitch. My other was “Stretch” or “Power O” with Mississippi State, a go-to whether at the goal line or not. A common proverb when it comes to organizational structures, especially after a successful period of team performance is ‘if ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. That was my motto.

Jones: I used to love running the option a lot. That is why I appreciated having a mobile quarterback. It is a rudimentary play that has the potential to cause havoc on a defense in several ways close to the end zone. But had I had a little more space as a quarterback, the fade to the wide receiver was always the best. I can not understand why that route was so difficult for the corners to stop on the game. That route I used to move the ball routinely.

All the College Football Playoff with four teams was established and all that time there was no college football video game. To which team and/or player you would have most liked to have used in a game over the pass decade?

Vannini: This one is rather easy as the starter for Baltimore Ravens is Lamar Jackson. The 2016 Heisman Trophy winner was the perfect type of video game player with lightning-quick dual-threat talent. In college some of my friends and I enacted a moratorium on the use of Ohio State because Terrelle Pryor was so good. It would have been the same with Jackson, when the Legitimate Locomotive Leapers celebrated Bobby’s retirement, for instance.

Olson: In NCAA Football 14, my favorite style of play was using spread-option team strategies such as Oregon and using a lot of zone read and triple option with fast quarterbacks; I only signed athletes to be my quarterbacks. Applying it to the style I enjoy using, I can arguably not find a better playmaker than Jackson of Louisville. We never had a chance of using him in the college game and it is such a loss to us. I even think that Kyler Murray’s 2018 offences from Oklahoma would slot in as well.

Kamrani: Yeah, that year LSU team! Joe Burrow may not have wheels necessary to turbo out of a corner blitz but if you got the ball out fast to Ja’Marr Chase or Justin Jefferson or hit Clyde Edwards-Helaire in the flat you’d be made in the shade.

Teague Robinson: Without any doubt it is Jackson. He is certainly my favorite college football player to this date which I have personally only watched as a spectator and not as a reporter. I think running the option with him would be clear sailing. An option that would have gone unnoticed would be, Justin Fields. Just like Jackson, his run and pass would have been so much fun to use in the match.

Jones: Does anyone know a Jackson? Ha! If having fun was the criteria for playing with Vick, then Jackson would have fit in that same category. Another one of Lincoln Riley’s Oklahoma offenses would’ve been fun, too, with Murray or Jalen Hurts.

What is dominant in College Football 25?

Vannini: I am especially anticipating just how this connective tissue will increase the feel of college football as a spectator sport . I’m so disappointed I can’t even remember we used to be able to call upon a game and play it on a Friday before the actual event happened the following Saturday. I’m also interested in finding out the best players in the game and then congratulating them in the football field, real life. College football changed that aspect and that is where it suffered from its reduced role in the context of popular culture. It is amusing that I have noticed people who do not have any grasp of college football and this game they are discussing. I am sure that because of this game we all are going to have some closer feelings in relation to the schools we belong to, the players and other members of this large footballing community. The feeling is back.

Olson: I am still in awe that College Football 25 has the actual name and the real life image of the player. This must be me; the nerd wasting hours in the old days of NCAA Football trying to input players’ real names in aiming to make rosters as authentic as possible. In the latter years, you had to wait for a few days for someone to upload named rosters that you can download. I can only rejoice that the players are getting a chance to opt in this game make money out of it. It took them is years — years! — to make that even possible and I’m glad they happened upon the correct answer just in time for this game’s reappearance.

Kamrani: Given the fact that I have become extremely old and a bore now, my retired Xbox One will not be gracing my house with the ’25 version, at least for the time being. The thing I am most excited for is discovering a means to take a game over to a buddy’s house as if it is still 2004. I believe that the same will be fascinating for the players themselves as well. A fantastic subplot to what could be the greatest college football season yet.

Teague Robinson: Actually entering people’s names in such a cool thing because from that point I feel more involved in the sport than ever before. But for me it was dynasty mode, again. I have my 10-person dynasty ready for release day as do my buddies. The rest of my bases on the difference of opinion in the group chat, trash talk, ethereum betting, and the eventual CFP matchups. I’m willing to take that hill or whatever group of five team I pick out from a hat, and paint them into becoming a new better version of Nick Saban’s Alabama teams.

Jones: Bring me the dynasty mode in this new world of college football, I’m ready for it. Cal entering the ACC is still rather new to me, so I’m going to try and beat Florida State and get into the playoff with my Bears. Perhaps, I will be coming up against USC in a game that will determine a win and advancement to the finals/national championship.