College Football Trumps the NFL in Gaming

Feature Article

Submitted on: 07/30/2008 by Rob Fetter

The NFL is currently the reigning king of sports, but it’s not the only game in town. College football is getting more and more popular every year; there's a fan base of students and alumni that have always followed their teams, but the popularity of the NFL is creating fans who are branching out into college football to get even more of that pigskin fix every fall. In gaming, the story has been no different, the NFL has always been the king of sports video games. The NFL year in and year out slaughters its college football competitors in video game sales. However this really shouldn’t be the case. Gaming-wise college football just brings more to the table. While the masses side with the NFL I’m going to tell you why college football has more to offer gamers than the juggernaut that is the NFL.

College football has a unique advantage over its professional counterpart, the opportunity to pick from over 100 different teams. The different teams don’t just mean that you’ve got a different logo, new uniforms, and a change of venue, it means a different style of play. Sure in the NFL you do see some different styles of play: You might see a team operate more out of the shotgun, or line up more frequently with three or four wide receivers, but that is nothing like the differences you see in college football. In college, if you notice things are getting a bit stale playing with a pro-style team like USC, you can simply shake things up and start playing with Navy and its power option running game, or get crazy and go out to Florida with its wide-open spread offense. Switching from one team to another can change the experience of the game completely, since you’re now playing an entirely different style of football.

However few NFL rivalries can compare to the passion and pure hatred you have in college football: Ohio State vs. Michigan, Oklahoma vs. Texas, Alabama vs. Auburn, Army vs. Navy, and that’s just scratching the surface of college football rivalries.

One of the reasons that football in general translates so well to video games is because of the short seasons that you play. The fact that you can play 20 games or less and finish an entire season definitely trumps the idea of taking on a full 162 game baseball season or 82 game NBA season. The thought alone of playing that many games is intimidating. Sure you can simulate some of the games, but what’s the point if you’re simming the majority of your season? Plus, if you shorten the season it just takes away authenticity from the game. While any type of football game is great in this department, college football manages to even top the NFL. In college football, you’re only going to play a max of 14 games, even if you play a conference championship, and a bowl game. In the NFL you’re going to play an extra two games minimum and likely add two to four more to that, since odds are your team is going to the playoffs. That means that the college season is actually about 25 percent shorter, helping you to get through multiple seasons and giving you more of an opportunity to go deeper into your favorite team’s future.

In the NFL you see some great rivalries: You’ve got the Patriots and the Colts, the Cowboys vs. Redskins, or Raiders vs. Broncos. However few NFL rivalries can compare to the passion and pure hatred you have in college football: Ohio State vs. Michigan, Oklahoma vs. Texas, Alabama vs. Auburn, Army vs. Navy, and that’s just scratching the surface of college football rivalries.

... while in college football you can actually go out and choose to play who you want, where you want, when you want, for your non-conference games.

Great rivalries aren’t the only scheduling advantage in college football. College sports are unique in that you can pick your schedule. In the NFL you’re locked into what they give you for scheduling in a season, while in college football you can actually go out and choose to play who you want, where you want, when you want, for your non-conference games. This gives you more of an opportunity for that open-ended story line that you can write each season.

Developers are going to give us what they give us for gameplay. Currently we’re left at the mercy of EA for both NFL and college football games because of the exclusive license deals with both leagues, so EA can pick and choose where to spend its development money. The big name players and the popularity of the NFL will help to keep it on top of the sports world. But when you look purely from a gaming aspect and what each brings to the table, college football offers a unique experience that should have it at the top of gaming lists when it comes to pigskin-related sports.

This article is also featured on Bleacher Report. Bleacher Report is where the sports bar meets the press box, the place for fan-journalists to create and critique high-quality sports analysis. Visit Bleacher Report for more video games news.

Member Comments

# 1 mercalnd @ 07/30/08 05:42 PM

The reasons you listed are pretty much why I used to like college football games better than NFL games but lately I've been leaning in the opposite direction and have chosen to go NFL only this year so I'll offer an opposite viewpoint to your arguments:

-Different styles: While the different styles of NCAA teams do indeed provide some nice variety, they are hardly well represented in the game when the teams are controlled by the AI. On top of that, they tend to make finding consistently good competitive settings next to impossible since no set of settings will work well with every type of team from Navy to USC to Texas Tech. The similarity in style of NFL teams facilitates finding a consistently good set of sliders/settings adapted to one's skill level.

-Big games: While you are right that the big college rivalries are much bigger than anything found in the NFL, those games are few and far between. The typical college season for any given big team consists of 2 or 3 big games, 2 or 3 "trap" games and 6 or so games against much weaker teams that should be a W most of the time barring a very bad showing. In the NFL you're facing a competent team every week.

People rave about the pressure to win every game in college to get a chance at a championship but this very aspect of the college game also tends to make games meaningless after a loss or two since you no longer have a shot at a NC barring a collapse by every other big team. In the NFL, you can hover around .500 and fight tooth and nail throughout the year to get a 9-7 or 10-6 record and make the playoffs. My best memories in football games have been these kinds of seasons.

-Recruiting: I used to love recruiting much more that free agency, trades and the draft. I also used to hope for a more involving system. Low and behold now that it's here I find it tedious and time consuming. I find myself wanting to play the games rather than have to spend 30 or so minutes recruiting between each game. And they haven't really made it harder, just more time consuming.

-Scheduling OOC games: Another aspect I used to love. However, it's a choice between a total departure from realism and stacking up the OOC schedule with big teams in hopes of shooting up the rankings (or even get a loss or two overlooked beacuse of a strong schedule) or keeping it realistic and making most of your OOC games meaningless games against pushover teams.

-The fact that Madden comes out a month after NCAA tends to make its gameplay a bit better. The points you mentioned are the reasons why some people always prefer the NCAA series for its overall package but the on-the-field product is generally better in Madden.

I've come to realize that what I love about college football is following the developments, upsets, rivalries and big games across the nation. Following one team through it's week to week games (which is basically what you do in a video game) is not so interesting to me. No disrespect to hardcore fans and alumni of all these great schools of course.

# 2 asu666 @ 07/30/08 06:18 PM

I miss the days when NCAA Football was clearly better than Madden. I shutter to think of how insanely great College Football 2K3 could have been if it got to run off the 2K5 or 2K8 engine.

This year's NCAA product disappoints me because it still doesn't have all of the real stadiums, some of the players move like they are running through mud, the defense is under powered, and the passing game isn't balance well. There are some things to like about it, but it still feels like it is going to be at least another year before the formula begins to gel.

# 3 TheVinylHippo @ 08/03/08 07:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by asu666


	I miss the days when NCAA Football was clearly better than Madden. I shutter to think of how insanely great College Football 2K3 could have been if it got to run off the 2K5 or 2K8 engine. This year's NCAA product disappoints me because it still doesn't have all of the real stadiums, some of the players move like they are running through mud, the defense is under powered, and the passing game isn't balance well. There are some things to like about it, but it still feels like it is going to be at least another year before the formula begins to gel.

Totally agree on College Football 2K3. I loved that game. I think Jamal Lord was on the cover.

Anyways, as for College Football vs. NFL, College Football is vastly superior to NFL for me, and it's not even close. College Football has an epic feel that NFL doesn't, except for the playoffs and the Super Bowl, and I could care less about both if Dallas isn't in it. When programs like USC/Ohio State and Texas/Ohio State get together, it has an epic feel that the NFL can't touch.

# 4 auburntigersfan @ 08/06/08 06:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheVinylHippo


	Totally agree on College Football 2K3. I loved that game. I think Jamal Lord was on the cover.

It was Eric Crouch.

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