Should future College Football games incorporate academics? - RaychelSnr's Blog

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Should future College Football games incorporate academics? Stuck

Posted on August 12, 2013 at 11:30 AM.

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One of the things I've always thought would add a new layer to recruiting and team management, and it would be an easily implemented one -- is the presence of academics in the process.

How many other simple and easy to implement features would add as much as true academics into the game?

Consider this: You'd suddenly have to recruit to your school based on your academic standards. A Stanford or Notre Dame would require you are much more picky than a North Texas. And what of players who don't qualify or players who are academically on the ropes through their career?

NCAA Football 14 does a lot of things right, and I have found the simplicity and depth within the recruiting is something to be celebrated and protected. I don't necessarily want to see recruiting get back to a hugely complex affair -- but instituting real academics into the process would add a simple step which would require you to consider one huge factor: whether a kid is good enough in the classroom for your school.

There would be potential issues with licensed schools, you don't want to be known as a school with low academic standing after all. However, there is a simple way to make member schools happy, just have recruits have an academic rating and have each schools required SAT entrance scores and find a way to compute both into a 100 point scale.

Either a player qualifies for your school or he doesn't -- and when playing with schools like Notre Dame, Duke, Stanford, etc. with high entrance requirements, this would make the jobs much tougher as they are in real life.

The academic process could continue into managing your current roster, but frankly the requirements to rate current players might make for a rather tough political game. By just incorporating academics into recruiting you'd be adding a simple new layer of strategy to move the new recruiting forward while emphasizing the essence that is managing student athlete rosters.

It might make everyone happy and emphasize the student part of student athletes. Just a small thought on this Monday!

Would you like to have to consider academics as an added layer in the new NCAA recruiting?

Comments

# 1 ngreatshark @ Aug 12

I think that stuff is overkill, how deep of an experience do you need, next it will be you have to get a job to pay tuition if your scholarship fell through, the game is going to be more The Sims & less football. If you put too much reality into video games, they start to lose some of their effect of being an escape from reality. And in sports at then end of the day all we care about is the product on the field

# 2 glennbo80 @ Aug 12

Couldn't agree with you more, ngreatshark! Well Said!

# 3 Williekemp15 @ Aug 12

It had that in older games.. i remember NCAA 2005 players could be suspended for grades and rule violations. I enjoyed it until one time my star QB had to sit out in a big game :/ lol but it should return in my opinion.

# 4 timbosliceGB @ Aug 12

past ncaa football games had school stuff already.

# 5 Jadakiss88 @ Aug 12

@ngreatshark While I respect your opinion and I'm not trying to stomp on it...but like others have said it was a feature they had a few years back and actually added more strategy to the game. But that's why they have options. Just because it might be overkill for you doesn't mean it will be for others.

I have been begging for EA Sports to bring this back and as well as the Spring Games and mini drills for use in the offseason. Some people like to dive deep into a game while others just want the vanilla product it's all about options and the more options you have the better you cater to your audience.

# 6 Retropyro @ Aug 12

I absolutely want it brought back. I use to love having to manage my discipline points. Do you sit the kid who is failing and then end up not having enough discipline points when something really bad happens and the end up on probation?! I loved having that stuff in the game and with how well Dynasty is running right now those added little details would be a knock out.

# 7 Jimbo614 @ Aug 12

Here's how it could work.. Your Recruits could be rated by Academics, sure.. But then, What if that players football IQ was directly rated to his Academic IQ? So a 99 Acad would translate into a 99 Football Knowledge.
And then... What if lower rated players had a higher probability of flunking out or getting suspended?
Truth be told, they should say if the player was lost to Academics, NCAA Violation, or criminal actions. Might not be politically correct but would add realism.

# 8 David Brown @ Aug 12

I think the others have spoken for many of us who would like to have the school situations brought back. It be fun and greatly affect your team. I love the idea.

# 9 tarek @ Aug 12

I think this is a great idea.
And for those who also agree, I urge you to take a look at Grey Dog Software's Total College Basketball, where the academic aspect features quite well. A brief description (and I hope I do it justice). Each student-athlete has a GPA that fluctuates during the season. Each school has a GPA threshold and if your student is performing below academically, you can urge them to focus on their study. Depending on their 'personality' they will either make and effort or not, after which YOU as coach have the option to suspend them for a game (to prove a point) or do nothing and see whether the NCAA takes action and suspends them (which could be for longer or for a crucial game like the guy above mentioned).
In terms of recruiting, you have your minimum SAT requirement and throughout the high school season you get to see a projected 'range' which a student will achieve in their SAT. That way you can plan to go after the borderline cases or give up and go for a different recruit who has a better chance of meeting the academic standards. The fallout is that this recruit could be lesser, or if you press and decide to continue to target the borderline case you could get a commit, but they fall below the required score and become ineligible (effectively wasting all the effort you put into them!)

All that sounds very complex, but believe me it works if you are into that sort of thing. Sorry for the long post.

# 10 TDenverFan @ Aug 12

Perhaps you could simply sort schools into 3 categories for academic standards: Average, Above Average, and High. That way, you avoid insulting schools with lower standards.

Recruits could be sorted into 5 levels for how academically strong they are: Low, Average, Above Average, High, Very High, with higher academics correlating to a higher awareness. A player with academics lower than your school's standards can still commit to your school, however they might sit out a year or so. They would need to raise their academic standards.

You could have something like this:
If a player's academics are below your school's standards, they have a 10% chance of raising their academics by 1 level each week of the season. During the offseason, they have a 75% chance of raising their academic level. Players have a 5% chance of dropping a level during the offseason, and if they go below your school's standards, they have to raise it up again.

Ex: I'm Duke, with High academic standards. I recruit a kid with a High academic level, but after his sophmore year it drops down to above average. Each week of the season, it has a 10% chance of going back up to High, and when the offseason hits, he has a 75% chance of going back up to high academics.

Hope this makes sense

# 11 tril @ Aug 13

just add an academic potential rating into the equation. This rating will determine the likely-hood of a student failing out.
Do you recruit that top 10 running back with a low academic potential. To keep the academic rating from being predictable, you'd have to make the outcome random.

# 12 pirateraider @ Aug 13

Sometimes when I play as a school like Duke or Northwestern, to add the academic element I'll only consider players being considered by other prestigious academic institutions. Like, as Northwestern I could only recruit a player if they're being looked at by Notre Dame and Duke also

# 13 LILNICB15 @ Aug 13

Awesome idea. I hope they take a big step in next gen with adding on academic as a big role for dynasty.

# 14 stefangrey @ Aug 13

Academics, like discipline, will never make it back in to the games. You would have to present the downsides (guys not qualifying academically, guys leaving programs due to poor grades, schools that sacrifice academics for talent, etc) and the NCAA didn't like it last time (with discipline points, etc) and I doubt the CLC will allow it back in.