My Love Affair with NCAA Football - Part 1 - The JareBear's Blog

The JareBear's Blog

My Love Affair with NCAA Football - Part 1

Posted on June 9, 2011 at 08:53 PM.

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I didn't own a football game in 2008 or 2009. I rented Madden 09 but that was it. Before that the last football game I owned was Madden 07 on 360. This was back in the day where you could come out in Five Wide and basically run a ball control offense on slants and hitches. This was my trick online. I would use Kansas City and just hit To-Go all day and grind whole quarters down in ranked matches. Cheap? Yeah, but I was 21, go easy on me.

In 2009 I was living in a house with 3 roommates and one of them had a PS3. One of the original, fat models.

He owned Madden 10 and one night, upon sharing a beer or seven, he asked if I wanted to play co-op with him. Needless to say it didn't take much convincing. We created "ourselves," and by ourselves I mean Me, J-Lib, a 6 foot 7 defensive end, 99 overall, and him, Aaron, a 6 foot 2 safety with 99 speed and 99 catch. We put ourselves on the Eagles and let it rip.

One game turned to two, two games turned to 3, 3 games turned to 9. We literally played past the halfway point in one night. Every time a game ended we both kinda sighed, talked about the stats, and as the silence grew when the Franchise menu was loading we would look at each other and say, "One more?"

I liked Madden 10 so much I pretty much bought a PS3 just for it, to have my own copy of it. Sure, I picked up GTA IV, GoW 3, and MGS 4 with the purchase, but still, Madden was the first game I put in. I played the crap out of that game. I adjusted my sliders every three games to reflect changes I felt necessary to provide a tough, realistic challange and true to life stats. After 9 seasons I had an AWESOME set. I hadn't found OS at that point so I never posted them, but I wish I had, because I was the giants and always won between 9 and 11 games a year, Eli always had around 3600 yards and a medicre INT-TD ratio, two RBs around 1000 yards, etc. It was so much fun. This was the first time in my life I developed a penchant for "sim gaming." Since then I have been addicted to custom rosters and slider sets designed to represent real life football the best the game can.

I didn't know much about NCAA 11 until probably....June last year. I was working full time at a casino, graveyard food service, and coaching Track at the same time, it was brutal. I forgot what it was, or where it was, but I randomly saw a video that had Clemson vs. Mizzou and I was blown away. The no huddle, the spread offenses, the graphics, it all looked AMAZING. Locomotion looked great and the more vids I watched, the more I started to really get invested in the game without even playing it. When the game came out I went to Wal-Mart at 2:30 a.m. after getting off work early that night. My first play now game was Navy vs Colorado and I was in heaven. It felt great, it just clicked, especially on Slow game speed the game just speed to "Pop."

I remember those first couple weeks, pre-patch, pre-tuner. I latched onto SilentNature's sliders set and tested out a Navy season with them. Ended up going 6-6 and making a bowl game. The stats were great in that one, I was second in the nation in rushing, like 90th in passing, middle of the road on defense, it was a lot of fun. Recruiting was tough. Each game felt like a battle, it was fun to post recaps and stats in the slider forum and compare results with other test games. Doing online dynasties for the very first time ever was a great experience as well. Tinkering around with the dynasty wire stuff was a lot of fun at first as it was brand new to me.