I am a Miami Hurricane while my good friend back home loves the Florida Gators. We can already envision our football school rivalry transforming into an online-dynasty classic for multiple seasons. Thanks to the new competitive recruiting options, it will be an even more intense fight of program prestige and recruiting power. The Gators will no longer be stealing the five-star athletes from the U under my reign as head coach.

July 14, 2009, marks the release-date for the latest installment of the NCAA Football franchise by EA Sports. Entitled NCAA Football 10 for the 2009-2010 collegiate football season, NCAA Football gaming returns in the heart of the summer with more options for users than ever before. After being in development for the past year, EA Tiburon hopes to bring the coveted college atmosphere to consoles across the nation.

Tiburon has added many new features for this season. More Online Dynasty components such as competitive recruiting and custom conferences have been added to the online platform. Other enhancements have been made to game play physics and game planning. A Team Building feature has been added along with new atmospheric effects and improved commentary featuring the beautiful Erin Andrews.

Will you help build the Utes into a national powerhouse?

Dynasty

Online dynasties are back with more features than ever. Last year, OperationSports.com readers considered NCAA Football 09 the best online sports title solely because of the online dynasty game mode.

In NCAA Football 10, online “commissioners” will be able to adjust conferences allowing for the ultimate matchups with friends across the nation. Users now can create historic conferences or their very own unique conferences. Custom Conferences will change the entire landscape of a user’s online dynasty. The amount of influence on the BCS will be unprecedented with the NCAA Football franchise.

Establish a strong program within dynasty mode and explore new avenues during recruiting practices. Promises can be made to the athletes targeted during the off-season. Make sure you live up to your word though, or your coach’s integrity will decline. This will result in less players believing in your promises during the recruiting process.

Apart from establishing your coach’s credibility, users will now be able to attack a rival school’s integrity with Competitive Recruiting. Select a school in your prospect’s top ten and see all the pitches that opposing schools have offered him. Your goal is to find out what he wants and lower his interest in pitches from rivals. The Gators can offer ‘ok’ things like cars and money. My Canes will just pitch our program prestige, academic excellence (I’m serious. It’s a great institution), or maybe just send them over keys to an Escalade if all else fails.

Minor attribute ratings tweaks have been made for incoming freshmen. Prospects don't arrive with such high ratings anymore. Expect for more player progression as your dynasties build than in the past.

Game Play Adjustments

This year, expect more realistic 40 times in the game. Athletes should be running real-time speeds down the length of the field.

In a recent interview with ESPN.com videogames, NCAA Football 10 Developer Ben Haumiller discussed the real-time speed ratings:”We had a bunch of Usain Bolts running around [Laughs]. So we tuned that back. Now the 99 speed guys will dip into the lower 4.2s, but never in the 4.1s.”

New game play additions and improvements in NCAA Football 10 from EA Sports show the game’s progress with even more on-the-field dynamics. Tiburon studios spent tons time improving player pursuit angles, lateral movements, and defensive player locks. The computer will now pursue the ball carrier with the appropriate angles, even during jukes and spins.

Defensive player-lock in NCAA Football 10 will sync users into a specific camera angle and lock on one individual selected. This allows users to control a specific player for any given play. The dynamic camera angles will also improve the game play for regular game situations; the camera angles move on a swivel with the flow of the action.

Defending players like Crabtree won't be easy any time, but the new gameplanning features help.

Game Planning & Strategy

In NCAA Football 10, you can now set the offensive and defensive game plan tactics from the play calling screen, after time-outs and during halftime. Each strategy implemented is assigned a level of emphasis: aggressive, normal, or conservative.

On offense, users now can instruct players to protect the rock, instruct linemen to hold blocks to open up running back lanes, and more.

There will be a counterproductive element in place to ensure users do not abuse the strategies. For example, your offensive linemen will get flagged for holding penalties if you continually instruct them to open gaps for the running backs.

Setup plays are plays in the playbook that are linked to one another. These are plays in the same formation. For example, a running play can be selected from I-formation; next, after this play has been ran a few times, it will activate a play-action pass play that is linked to it.

The percentage of how close to fully active the play is will be displayed on the play-calling screen. This will give users the best opportunity to fake out the defense while establishing a consistent offense through variety in their formations.

On defense, you now can coach your defensive backs, linebacker corps, or your linemen with a number of strategies depending on the game situation. Some of the strategies includes: strip balls, jump routes to get picks, or play conservative and swat the ball.

The idea here is to identify the opponent’s key strategies and shut ‘em down. Is Tim Tebow running through the heart on your defense? Spotlight the middle of the field in the play-select screen and focus in on his area and stop the run. Spotlight receivers that are owning a particular side of the field and attempt to shut them down. You will have to keep in mind that focusing on certain areas or players will leave other players potentially overlooked.

Team Builder allows you to put whatever team you want on the field in NCAA 10.

Team Builder

Team Builder is the number one new feature this year in NCAA Football 10. Everything created is online on your web browser. Once you finish it, it can be shared over the web. Users can upload picture files from their computers and smack them on the helmets in the game or on the field.

With this feature, users will be able to customize team names, locations, prestige, academics, rosters and more. Users may select the stadium types, turf types, and the end zones. You know your typical create-a-stadium features.

You will have limitless options, which is always a good thing.  Team Builder is currently available online on the EA Sports World site.

Atmosphere and Graphical Improvements

EA Sports and the Tiburon NCAA Football team started improving their game’s high-energy crowd by adding realistic atmospheric effects to the game. These subtle effects go a long way to add a polished feel to emulate the college stadium energy.

It starts with new specifically designed end zones. The EA Sports designers have developed a new way to add specific and customized end zones to each of the NCAA’s football stadiums. Also added were new camera flashes that increase or decrease depending on the game situation and magnitude of games such as bowl matchups.

Another subtle feature is the jersey editor. Now users can mix and match alternative jerseys with home helmets, and away uniform pants. The possibilities are opened-up with these available options. This could potentially be a favorite of mine so I can customize my Hurricanes in their sweet gear.

The improved commentary in NCAA Football 10 will also feature the beautiful Erin Andrews as a sideline reporter. Also, Lee Corso and the gang will be back, after providing new material at EA Tiburon’s studios.

The NCAA Football team at EA Sports has developed many promising additions to this year’s college football title. The online dynasties will be taken to new heights with this year’s addition. We’ll see how the game play holds up on July 14. For the latest media on NCAA Football 10, visit the NCAA Football 10 page on OperationSports.com.