After two weeks of articles oozing with negativity, I thought it my be therapeutic to relinquish my role as Operation Sports’ resident pessimist, (at least for one week) and talk about something I’m very, very excited about.

Although it didn’t make my official NCAA 09 wishlist, Formation-Specific audibles is something I have been clamoring for since NCAA 2003, when I first began using audibles as a strategic means to outsmart human opponents.

While the lack of such an audible system seems like a huge negative, its absence has been tolerable over the years, namely because EA Sports has done a fantastic job of using simple tools to create effective pre-play adjustments. Hot Routes, “Playmaker” play-flips (play flips without formation changes), protection shifts, and a small handful of audibles have all allowed us to wield a basic yet veritable arsenal of pre-snap weapons. However, the lack of a formation-audible system was a constant reminder of the game’s constant fiction.

NCAA Football has always boasted a more satisfying playbook than its EA Sports NFL counterpart. Developers have a much more eclectic mix of offenses to implement, from the fun-and-gun to the wishbone, the Spread to the Power-I. The variety of offenses has always given NCAA a more lasting appeal to me. When a Dynasty mode felt old and tired, I could always start over with a new team, and find dozens of new ways to make CPU defenders look simple.

Last season’s NCAA 08 came armed with perhaps the best playbook yet. While the playbooks were certainly not perfect, they did what no football game’s playbooks had done before (at least not to the same degree): they allowed us to scheme.

Within the robust playbooks, there were many, many plays that “played off of each other,” or began with nearly identical action. A play-action pass, halfback sweep, triple-option, and QB/Slot option play might all start from the same formation and initial action. Such a system made playcalling a much more cerebral activity, especially when facing a human opponent. Assigning a collection of such similarly-themed plays to your audibles was likely to give your opponents fits, especially when throwing a little no-huddle in here and there.

As fun as the playbooks were last season, they didn’t reach their full potential. Despite the uncanny similarity in certain collections of plays, you could only assign one such group to your audibles. Thus, the unpredictability of such a system had a short shelf life, especially if you happened to frequently square off against the same group of friends. By allowing for formation-specific audibles, we now have the opportunity to further increase our football IQ (or douchebag-ness as my girlfriend would likely call it), and create many, many schemes to make our buddies break their controllers against the drywall.

Online Dynasty and Formation Audibles – The Perfect Couple

As you already know, NCAA 09 will allow us to play through Dynasties online. I cannot adequately put into words, the joy this brings to me. As I no longer call the dorm, the frat house, or the old off-campus house home, and as I no longer live within 180 miles of my core college group of compatriots, NCAA Football has become largely a solo affair. Only the occasional online contest would break my fortress of NCAA solitude.

Thankfully, EA Sports has smiled upon us all, bringing a happy ending to sob-stories like mine. Now, I can revive the old rivalries via the magic of Xbox Live. The same can be said for countless working-world NCAA’ers across the country.

NCAA Football will see a very sharp spike of online activity with this introduction of the online dynasty. For many of us, this will also mean a sharp spike in human vs. human contests from previous seasons. Although it may be overdue, there is no better time for EA Sports to implement formation-specific audibles, a feature that largely, will help you when facing an animate opponent.

Leveling the Playing Field?

Logically speaking, there are two types of NCAA gamers. Those who try to win with their thumbs, and those who try to win with their minds. While I am no slouch on the sticks, I would have to classify myself as the latter. Traditionally within a heated contest, I have a tendency to fall short against those uber-skilled thumbstick-jockeys.

While I don’t expect football gaming to become an intellectual activity, I would like so-called “sims” to become as close to the real thing as possible. There is quite a bit of strategy and scheming that go on within a football game, and I am rather excited to see some of it take shape in the form of an expanded audible system.

It now seems plausible that I can better my record against those whose thumbstick skills supersede my own, simply by creating a complex and flexible gameplan with formation-specific audibles. After all these years, my nerdy nature has been rewarded.

Wrap-Up

I cannot wait to spend the first two hours of July 15th going through my favorite team’s playbook, and meticulously selecting audibles for different formations, cackling menacingly as I prepare for dynasties to come. Yes, it is pathetic. Join me in my douchebag-ness.


Until next week, Adios, Turd Nuggets.