Remember EA Sports NCAA 2001 Football - CoachModer's Blog

CoachModer's Blog

Remember EA Sports NCAA 2001 Football

Posted on July 29, 2016 at 04:52 AM.

(5)

EA Sports NCAA 2001 was one of the best NCAA football games out during that time, currently rated as an 8.3 out of 10 by IGN and one I still consider the best and play. First off, yes, I know the graphics were just coming of age (32 bit) and style of play. Besides kicking, I would choose the play and let the my team do the work and it was hands off (coach mode) to include some house rules.

It had the following key features;

Momentum meter - went up and down based on first downs and key plays, long runs/passes, sacks, etc. Turnovers took the momentum from you to your opponent (and vice versa) if you had the momentum. Great feature.
24 Team playoff with Bowl Games named for each bracket. First 8 team had a bye. Best playoff system to date under an excellent playoff system.
There were no sliders to chase. You have Freshman, Varsity, All-American, and Heisman. I played coach mode on Varsity vs. Varsity and it was challenging to say the least, if you went higher you go destroyed. Where now with the games you have to lower to slider to almost 0 to get a good game on Heisman and it still appears easy - Great graphics though, but terrible game play for a serious gamer, unless you like the arcade style and just rack up points which most people don't. EA just cannot get it right and the same goes for Madden now since NCAA is no longer made.

I would say if you don't own a copy, pick one up and give it a shot. If you can get past the early 2000 graphics which were 32 bit, you will not be disappointed. I have played countless number of dynasty seasons and only one I believe without looking 1 or 2 titles over 15 seasons or so.

When NCAA was still being made, I wrote the EA Sports and offered suggestions and tips and sent them my findings and stats. It was funny when I wrote them in concerning naming the playoff brackets as Bowl Games and some others, that in the 2001 game the brackets were named. Never got a reply back, but not saying they took my advice or even read my letter at the time, but it was interesting and sort of rewarding to see that feature added.

I will look to post some historic stats from my dynasty seasons on the blog shortly.

Thanks for listening,

Coach

Comments

# 1 thescoop @ Jul 30

I use to use that games "Bowl Playoff Mode" as my suggested model in wishlist for a playoff mode for the game. That version nailed what was an amazing fantasy for a true college football playoff.

# 2 tril @ Jul 31

I liked was the playoff mode. just looked at the graphics and there is no way I could play this game again.
wish NCAA 14 had a built in playoff system.

# 3 CoachModer @ Jul 31

I agree the graphics are tough to get by,but it's crazy that a game made in 2000, has a better game engine than NCAA 2014, about the only thing 14 has is life like graphics. If they could take the game engine from NCAA 2001 and put that in 2014 plus the playoffs and the momentum Meyer wow need I say more. The broken slider system and arcade play have been the down fall of all football series. When you have to play on Heisman and lower the sliders so far down for example fives, tens, or zeros there's an issue with the game engine. It is obvious he is testers have no idea what true football simulation resembles. It appears that all of their efforts go into making outstanding graphics to amaze and suck in all their customers. In turn they put little or no effort into true gameplay and it looks like they place it on you the customer to figure it out with custom sliders. It is evident from the amount of posts on Madden and NCAA sliders forum that is a broken system because everyone has a different opinion on which sliders work the best. EA I am sure gets plenty of suggestions each year, but it appears they take no advice by putting out football games with excellent graphics and poor game play.

# 4 PSimp21 @ Aug 3

I agree. I loved playing that year with Nebraska and Eric Crouch

# 5 luckyshot04 @ Aug 13

Great throwback blog post! Although I didn't start playing NCAA football until a few years after 2001, I was hooked the instant I put the disc in. I really remember thinking how far that college football had come every year for gamers and what the future was going to hold. Being from Kentucky, I always had a long road in football but March Madness gave me a chance to take out the woes of a long suffering football fan (as we are referred to by a sportswriter) on the rest of the collegiate basketball landscape. I specifically remember how I thought the last version of March Madness was playing similar to NBA Live and they had hit a stride. Then along came Ed O'Bannon, the car salesman who for some reason thought his likeness was being used as a UCLA player. Ed O'who? Really, I was bummed that O'Bannon pushed such an issue and to be fair, the players weren't looking like themselves in his days. It's sad that the student athlete, who has no say in these issues and receives no royalty for their images/likeness being used, couldn't even play as themselves in a video game. I remember reading and hearing that a lot of college players enjoyed NCAA football and basketball. I play NBA 2K16 and now just thought about how epic football or basketball would be at this point. Maybe one of these days....