College Football

Bill Walsh College Football

After spending 15 years on the sidelines, college football finally got into the game in 1993. Electronic Arts saw the light at last and founded a Sega Genesis series based on the John Madden Football line, but it featured collegiate clubs instead of their professional counterparts. Bill Walsh College Football took a bow in 1993 and soon developed a strong following--not surprising given the rabid fan base that draws around 100,000 people to games at big schools like the University of Florida.

Bill Walsh College Football for the Genesis in 1993.

At first, Bill Walsh College Football was nothing more than a carbon copy of the latest Madden game, with 24 current clubs and 24 of the best college teams since 1978 taking the place of the 28 NFL franchises. There was no NCAA license, so these teams represented fictional schools with close ties to their real-world equivalents. South Bend, for example, stood in for Notre Dame, and Los Angeles replaced UCLA. The fact that this was a quickie port of an NFL game was apparent in almost every way. Season mode was absent, bowl play was replaced with an unrealistic playoff system, and many trademark college formations were left out. Aside from the presence of Stanford legend Bill Walsh, there simply wasn't much of a collegiate feel in this game.

That changed with the acquisition of the NCAA license for the sequel. Bill Walsh College Football 95 boasted 36 of the top collegiate teams in the nation with complete rosters. Even better, you could put them through their paces in full season play that led to either a bowl appearance or a playoff to determine a national champion. Playbooks were finally reworked to include such college standbys as the offensive wishbone and the flex--and the defensive plays needed to counter them.

A look at EA Sports' broadcast booth from the front end.

NCAA College Football

Chaos at EA (see the above section on John Madden Football for more) the following year made things uncertain for both the Madden and Bill Walsh lines. While Madden survived that year's cancellations on the PC and the Sony PlayStation, its sister title vanished for good. College ball fans at the time had a good alternative to turn to with Sega's College National Championship, though. This series, which survived for just the 1994 and 1995 editions, combined the latter-day Joe Montana engine with college teams and revamped playbooks. Gameplay was quite good, and as the title suggested, you could guide your favorite club on a national title drive over a full season. Sega's interest in college football continued more recently with NCAA College Football 2K2 for the Dreamcast. Critical reception for that game ranged from lukewarm to positive, so the series continued, with NCAA College Football 2K3 on the Xbox, PS2, and GameCube platforms. Unfortunately, the series failed to improve much in its transition to the other platform. The arcadelike feel of the franchise just failed to catch on with college football fanatics, who were looking for a game that really highlighted the subtle differences between college and pro games. The tepid response to 2K3 by critics and consumers, as well as a renewed focus on pro franchises by Visual Concepts, meant that there wouldn't be an NCAA College Football 2K4

At one point, NCAA GameBreaker may actually have been the best college football game.

NCAA GameBreaker

Meanwhile, 989 Sports began its own college football franchise with NCAA GameBreaker for the PlayStation in 1996. The game offered a fantastic presentation, but a clunky interface relegated it to second-string status in the minds of many. The series finally hit its stride with GameBreaker '99, which included commentary from legendary announcer Keith Jackson and offered the ability to pitch the ball--an important feature for college, where option offenses can flourish with the right backfield. GameBreaker 2000 continued that excellence, with a dynasty mode that offered you the chance to recruit new players and send your graduating classes into the draft for 989's NFL GameDay. Unfortunately, the series failed to step up its game when the PlayStation 2 arrived. The first GameBreaker on the PS2 looked too much like a PS game and didn't add much in the way of gameplay. Year after year, GameBreaker was getting left further and further behind by the competition, which utilized the new hardware for graphics and features better than Sony's franchise. A year after Sega and Visual Concepts gave up on college football, Sony followed suit, making NCAA GameBreaker 2004 the last in a promising series that just didn't evolve fast enough for the times. That left EA all alone, with a de facto monopoly on college football.

EA's NCAA Football series succeeded the Bill Walsh games.

NCAA Football

EA Sports got back into the college game in 1997 with NCAA Football 98. This outstanding title for the PlayStation included more than 100 teams, a dynasty mode of play that stretched over numerous seasons, college playbooks, and the distinct flavor of being on campus, with school fight songs, logos, and mascots. A limited version of the game found its way to the PC for the first two years of the franchise's existence, though it wasn't very successful, and that platform has been bereft of college football ever since.

The series continued on both the PlayStation and the PlayStation 2, gradually improving with each passing season. NCAA 2001 on the PlayStation let you rename players, getting around the NCAA rule that licensed products cannot bear the names of its amateur players. NCAA 2002, the first such game on the PlayStation 2, offered authentic-looking stadiums and teams that truly played like their real-life counterparts. BYU would air it out, while many Big XII schools, like Nebraska, ground out their yards in option offenses. Where the series really began to shine was with NCAA 2004, the first time the series was playable online (PS2 only). That iteration of the game nailed down the nuances and intricacies of the college game just right and also offered a fully fleshed out dynasty mode that let you spend weeks recruiting players and making pitches to prospects. The next year, EA released NCAA 2005, which added online play to the Xbox version as well as the PS2 version and tried to further impart a college flavor to the game by modeling player morale. The effects of a road stadium on a visiting team were also modeled. Unfortunately these effects were a bit overexaggerated, and most egregiously, receivers dropped far too many balls, resulting in a game that many felt took a step back from the previous year. This was a huge concern, as EA was the only publisher making NCAA football video games at this point. The anxiety of college football fans was fueled even more when, months before the release of NCAA 2006, Electronic Arts snapped up the exclusive license to create video games based on NCAA football for six years.

NCAA from EA is the only college football series left, but if 06 was any indication, college football fans have nothing to worry about.

Fortunately for those of us who love college football, NCAA 2006 addressed many of the concerns from the previous year's edition, bringing back the near-perfect play balance from NCAA 2004 and adding in-season recruiting and a Race for the Heisman mode, which let you play out a single player's career over the course of four seasons. At least in the short term, the quality of the game sated the concerns of those who were afraid EA might rest on its laurels, having earned both a de facto and a de jure monopoly on the sport. EA holds control for another five years, so it will be interesting to see how it evolves its college football simulation into the next generation of consoles.