How EA Missed the Boat on Heisman Challenge

[PowerofRed25]

The NCAA Facebook Poll thread and some of the responses got me to thinking a lot deeper about the new game mode. A lot of the people in that thread made some really good comments on Heisman Challenge that I think needed to be focused on separately. The main theme of that thread seems to be that the Heisman Challenge simply doesn't have vast appeal. That is certainly true. It seems that in theory, the mode could have been unique and intriguing to all demographics. Unfortunately, EA completely missed the boat with this mode. I am hoping this thread will remain constructive, I think the distaste for the game mode has been made clear by most of OS, so let's try to avoid doing that here.

First of all, as some mentioned, EA handcuffed themselves by making it Heisman only. I get that the whole point is "Heisman Challenge", but some of the most incredible and beloved all-time NCAA players never won a Heisman Trophy, guys that have had lasting impacts on their fan base, and college football as a whole. For me, the two that stick out there are Tommie Frazier and Vince Young. Arguably the best and most dynamic players in college football during their entire career, neither won a Heisman Trophy but both are immortal. There are many more just like them. Any one of us, no matter what teams we are fans of, would have LOVED to play as those guys.

Most of the guys on the list of Heisman players featured in the game simply don't have appeal across all of college football. I mean Carson Palmer? Doug Flutie? Charlie Ward? Eddie George? Matt Leinart? Mark Ingram? Jim Plunkett? Who cares? They're all great players but nothing there sticks out at me as unique or special. I wouldn't even want to play with Carson Palmer or Matt Leinart in Madden.

EA really went about this game mode the wrong way. I don't mind so much that they didn't do full throwback uniforms, equipment, gear, rosters, etc. It'd be nice, but that is asking way too much of the development team and I am not naive enough to think they should be bound to doing it. But by limiting it to 16 different Heisman winners, half of which most casual fans have never heard of, seen play or care about; they really handcuff the mode to a very small demographic. Additionally, by not creating a gameplay environment that makes this mode special, outside of bullet time camera mode, it truly creates a pointless game mode.

I have been wanting EA to explore and embrace the historical side of college football for a while, I think a lot of us have; but if they are going to do it, they have to do it in a way that makes sense and appeals across the spectrum. In order to do that, they need to do a couple things:

1) Create and accurately implement historical offenses. There is a great book out by Tim Layden called Blood, Sweat and Chalk and it is essentially a timeline of the evolution of football strategy. It talks about the truly innovative coaches and offenses and how a lot of what we saw back then has returned in current day. That means they need to create the Single and Double Wing, Wing T, the Wishbone Veer, Air Coryell, more accurate Air Raid and One back offenses and any number of very popular offenses of old times.

This is the number one thing EA can do to embrace the historical aspect of football. They could even do it for defense, like the Ryan Family 4-6 defense, double A gap blitzes and Tampa 2.

2) Realize that the most beloved and important players in college football history never won a Heisman Trophy. Just from my Nebraska perspective, the most loved players in our history never won a Heisman. Turner Gill, Tommie Frazier and Scott Frost at QB, Ahman Green at IB, Ndamukong Suh at DT. Recreate those types of guys. It doesn't need to be a complete list across all eras and teams, but there are some iconic guys who we would all much rather play with than the guys picked for this game mode.

3) Iconic coaches. This is the big one. If you want to embrace history, you have to embrace the coaches who changed college football. The coaches who ARE college football. Joe Paterno, Bobby Bowden, Tom Osborne, Barry Switzer, Bear Bryant, LaVell Edwards, Frank Beamer. This one kind of ties with suggestion #1 in that these big time coaches are icons for the sport of football and brought innovative ideas to the game both on and off the field.

Which brings me to my suggestions for how EA could implement more innovative game modes which embrace history without alienating most of the fan base.

1) Historical road to glory. Implement it similar to how it is done now, but with all of those iconic coaches. Create your own recruit and work to impress for those iconic coaches in their iconic offenses. Road to Glory mode as it stands now is simply impersonal, it can be fun, but it lacks the emotional aspect to really reel you in. But how awesome would it be to be recruited by Tom Osborne to run the option on those 90's teams? Want goals and PSN trophies? How about trying to replicate the careers of Tommie Frazier (33-3 as a starter, 2 National Championships)?

This would be a good mode to have historical equipment, but again, not necessary. Heck, it doesn't even need historical rosters, they could be generic.

2) Player specific historical game situations. Instead of having a full mode where you put the historical player inside of any current team for a full season, what about simply trying to recreate some of the more iconic moments in college football history. If I recall correctly, a mode similar to this has existed in an EA game before, I don't know if it was NCAA or Madden, but it rings a bell.

Take those historical players and try and recreate those moments that have been immortalized forever. Off the top of my head:

- Doug Flutie and Kordell Stewart's Hail Mary
- Desmond Howard's Punt Return w/Heisman Pose
- Vince Young's final drive to beat USC
- Tommie Frazier's 75 yard run shaking off 9 Florida Gator's in the National Championship (another good Nebraska one would be Osborne's decision to go for 2 to win the National Championship outright, rather than tie and win it that way)
- Cal-Stanford Band on the Field
- Boise State's final few possessions of the Fiesta Bowl

Recreating these immortal moments would be way better than playing full seasons with guys most of us could care less about. Frankly, EA needs to embrace the mini-games that were once very popular in this franchise, they'd get a lot more play time than Heisman Challenge.

Which brings me to my favorite:

3) All-Decade Teams. If you want to create situations where these iconic players are able to play on teams that aren't there own, how about create it so that they can play with other iconic players? Hold a fan vote for the All-70's, 80's, 90's, 2000's teams and put them in the game. Give them era specific equipment and let them face off.

These are just some basic ideas I wanted to bring up and have people discuss on here as a way to get a more improved and innovative historical game mode in NCAA, rather than the narrow-minded Heisman Challenge mode. If you have any ideas for other game modes or way to introduce history into the game and make it appealing across all demographics, speak up. Hopefully something good can come of this.

[TDavis45]

Great write-up and I agree with you completely.. It is a "cool feature" but has more potential then what they limited it to. I think it will be interesting to see what happens with this mode come next year and if NCAA will get Connected Careers or not.

[BLACKjersey53]

Great wrtie-up indeed! I think it would be cool to have era specific equipment/jerseys in a historical RTG and I wouldn't mind generic rosters one bit. I think the game mode you mentioned in number 2 was called ESPN Instant Classics or something like that, and I absolutely loved that game mode on the ps2.

[PowerofRed25]

Quote: Originally Posted by BLACKjersey53

Great wrtie-up indeed! I think it would be cool to have era specific equipment/jerseys in a historical RTG and I wouldn't mind generic rosters one bit. I think the game mode you mentioned in number 2 was called ESPN Instant Classics or something like that, and I absolutely loved that game mode on the ps2.

Something about it rang a bell as I was writing and for some reason, it seemed like it had been done. I feel like I remember playing as BYU making that 1980 Holiday Bowl comeback against SMU. Man that was a fun game mode.

EA really hurt themselves when they failed to continue those mini-games in the game. A historical instant classic mode would kill in current day, especially if it was updated with a few recent ones (Boise St vs OU Fiesta Bowl, Vince Young's final Rose Bowl drive vs USC, anything with Tim Tebow being Tim Tebow).

Those mini-games like option challenge or whatever it was called were the coolest things. I miss those.

[Skull]

cool they can spend more resource on this next year instead of improving dynasty!

[PowerofRed25]

Quote: Originally Posted by Skull

cool they can spend more resource on this next year instead of improving dynasty!

At this point, I'm not entirely sure what more people want from dynasty in the current generation of games. They fixed recruiting and added scouting, it is what it is. I don't see how dynasty mode requires any more attention outside of a few tweaks like being able to select weather, being able to schedule neutral site games and a few other very minor things.

When the next generation comes around, dynasty (online and off) will need to take a big step forward, but they've done all they can do with the game mode for this generation.

In terms of game play, many of the suggestions made above would go hand in hand with improving it. By adding authentic old time offenses, things like the option, running styles, player models and movement would all have to improve. They are hand in hand. That is one of the points of my post, EA needs to start instituting game modes that improve game play simultaneously.

[JerzeyReign]

Wow, thats a really good concept -- nice write up! Things like this would actually make someone like myself, who normally ignores them, sit down and play through a bunch of them.

[FOREST007]

Quote: Originally Posted by PowerofRed25

2) Player specific historical game situations. Instead of having a full mode where you put the historical player inside of any current team for a full season, what about simply trying to recreate some of the more iconic moments in college football history. If I recall correctly, a mode similar to this has existed in an EA game before, I don't know if it was NCAA or Madden, but it rings a bell.

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