Well, that was easier than I ever expected.
As we enter the college football offseason, we are entering it knowing for a fact that we won’t be greeted on the other end of these dark days with EA’s NCAA Football game heralding the Autumn Saturday’s back into our living rooms next July.
NCAA Football always stood as the marker of Summer’s peak and the slow wane to Autumn. NCAA was a marker that the glory days of College Football season were fast approaching, despite the fact it went on sale nearly a full two months before the kickoff of the season.
I think the fact it was so easy to let this season of college football go is that I didn't fully recognize that the wait is going to be longer this time around. There is a lot of change coming to the sport, one of those is that there won't be a video game representing it on store shelves in July.
The July release, of course, always led to some embarrassing roster gaffes of those players who weren’t (but really were) their real-life counterparts.
It was no problem though, because NCAA Football fans were the crazy sort who would sit up all night and input names onto rosters so that they and their fellow man could enjoy a more authentic experience within the game. You could say NCAA brought out the best in people, but then again there was always a bit of background drama behind the rosters throughout the history of the series as well.
Then there were the numerous online dynasties which started up year after year. If EA provides server support for NCAA, one could theorize those could last for quite some time. However, it’s just as likely that the plug will be pulled on the NCAA Football servers at the first possible instant.
Which really brings home the question of how long do we really have left with a fully functioning NCAA Football?
Roster editors could update the game heading into 2014’s season no problem, but with no playoff option in the post-season — the game is and will always be a relic of an era now passed on. It wasn’t long ago when we had college basketball and college football represented digitally — now college sports have zero video game support and no real leads into the future to return to gaming platforms.
The advent of the power-5 conferences gaining more autonomy will help us move towards a move back towards having college sports games into the future, but it’s also entirely possible only the Power Five conferences will be represented in any future college sports games if their conferences are the only one’s with more lax rules on athlete representation and compensation.
Sorry East Caronlina. Louisana-Monroe. Tulsa. New Mexico.
Really, we just don’t have a clue what the future holds just yet because we don’t know what the future holds with the NCAA and its governance structure. Change is coming, but to what and to what extent are both questions we still do not know.
We could see the likelihood of college sports being represented in video games higher than ever, or we could see that possibility snuffed out forever. Both are equally possible heading into the future.
What we do know is that after the final whistle sounded at the BCS National Championship and after the crystal football was raised, we entered the college football offseason. Recruiting news and star ratings will give way to silence and patience — this time until August instead of July, when Fall practice starts back up and not when we fire up the NCAA Football series.
I have a feeling that extra month is probably going to be a lot harder to deal with than we think.