How to Bring Back the NCAA Football Series Part 1: No Official Licenses - thescoop's Blog

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How to Bring Back the NCAA Football Series Part 1: No Official Licenses

Posted on December 4, 2016 at 06:21 PM.

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A fiction cover for a fictional NCAA 17

We all miss the NCAA Football series. The the summer wait until Madden's release became much longer after we had our college football series stolen from us. No longer did we have the endless "are the rosters ready yet" posts on the forum. (Not that those are truly missed.) No matter how you feel about the lawsuits that led to the end of the series, we gamers were and still are the biggest losers.

Does it have to be this way? Some would say yes. Others would point out that with a little imagination, we could see a return of not just college football but a return of college video games as a whole.

In my new four part series, we will discuss the different option that one could use to bring back the NCAA or College football series. Those options include: No official licenses, limited licensing, deals with only the major conferences, and new agreement with NCAA and players.

PART ONE: No Official Licenses

This is the option that most won't like. But the good news is it gets you a game. This option takes you back to the days of Bill Walsh College Football. Instead of playing as Notre Dame, you are South Bend. You want to run with Texas A&M? Well you are welcomed with College Station instead. You now get the idea.

In this work around, you still get teams, just not their official names. Sure, Alabama might still get to be Alabama but it isn't the Alabama Crimson Tide. You would either just be Alabama generic mascot or Tuscaloosa. Also a result, everything is unique but familiar at the same time.

They would also have to create fake conferences. Instead of the SEC you'd get the East South Conference, or the Big Ten becomes the Big MidWest, etc. The names aren't as important as long as you can tell who is who when you fire up the game.

In this set up, you could bring back many of the other elements from the game, like Dynasty mode, recruiting and so on. This would bring back the series by taking it back to its original roots.

You also get the familiar plays and settings that you usually only see in the college game. This game has the feel of college, minus the official licenses. Bowl games are there, just using generic names in the familiar cities you expect to see the games.

Also, having no licenses means you could mean the long awaited return of seeing the goal posts come down following upsets or big wins. The NCAA made this disappear from the old series early in the series existence. Other features, such as penalties and sanctions can be put into Dynasty mode as well.

Adding penalties and sanctions into Dynasty mode could change the game completely too. With no NCAA license you could expand and allow you to chose to run a dirty program. You could agree to allow boosters to buy you players, ignore grades and other issues. But if you do and get caught, you could be placed on probation and/or fired. This would add something new to the way you play. Sure cheating would get you to the championship faster, but could prevent you from playing for a title soon or make you end up at a smaller school with far less title chances.

Also, we could create our own playoff systems however we liked it. Were you more a fan of the old Bowl system, bring it back. You are more of a fan of the current four team playoff system, keep it going. You want a huge 32 team playoff? You get to create it. Without the NCAA to dictate how to make the game, they could really open up the possibilities.

Some of you reading are already rejecting this option as if you can't be your school, then you're not playing college football. This is why using this option should also come with a pretty healthy customization options.

So imagine this option with a Teambuilder type option that allowed you to customize everything about your team down to logo, uniforms, mascot and fight song? The manufacturer allows the gaming community to create the content they don't have the license to create themselves.

Roster editing could be tied to this as well. To be safe, the game designer's rosters won't be as easy to edit as adding names. My suggestion would be for true fake rosters, mean fake names that would have to be changed instead of simple numbers. Also, don't keep the names the same as the real life players either. Allow all of this to be edited and those that want realism can still achieve this.

This allows the gamers to have the familiar schools and conferences. And with customization tools we see in video games now a days, this wouldn't be too hard. It would be best if there is some way to share these custom made schools but of course some fear my prevent that. If they don't, it could be a difference in a successful game or a failure.

The biggest con in this option is the lack of real teams. We live in an era of gaming where we're spoiled by realism. The question is if we could accept a game missing so much we take for granted. In 1993, when Bill Walsh College Football came out, sports gaming was new. A lot of games didn't have official licenses. It was much easier to accept that South Bend was a stand in for Norte Dame. Could we do again, even with the promise of customization? That's a huge question mark here.

I do feel that the desire for a College football game would outweigh the need for the actual license and if done right, this option could work. Well, I've laid out the pros and cons of this option. The question is, would you buy a game using the option one model?

Comments

# 16 thescoop @ Dec 11

Thanks to everyone for the feedback. I'm hoping I have a little time today to post part 2, Limited Licensing. Al of you who left feedback are why I enjoy writing this blog.

# 17 MetalBeldo @ Dec 13

I love this idea, especially with the choice of running a "dirty" program, and risk getting caught.

# 18 mcdowell31 @ Dec 13

Yeah MetalBeldo, a "dirty" program is intrigueing. EA Sports March Madness did it in 2004 I think. You, as coach, would receive a message about a player skipping class or cheating on a test. You could take care of it by suspending the player from 1-5 games or doing nothing: 5 games meant using more scouting/recruiting action points. Doing nothing used zero points, but it increased the risk of being caught if you handled things this way consistently. Getting caught would put the team on post-season probation for a predetermined time. I think each player had a discipline rating that related to getting in trouble. Of course some of the best players were high risk and disruptive to the team. It was a consideration because one player could distract from future recruiting, thus hurting the program. It was well balanced; it would be good seeing this implemented again.

# 19 thescoop @ Dec 13

Hey McDowell, that system was the base of my idea. I think one of the NCAA games had that feature as well but it may have just been a March Maddness feature. If this game didn't have any official licenses, they could event take that a step further and have booster be an issue. You could choose to listen to the booster, win faster but risk probation or you could ignore them but first sign of not winning leads them to having you fired.

The options would be far more unlimited with no NCAA looking over them and telling them what they can can't do. Thanks for you the feedback. Also, don't foget to check out Part 2 of this series.

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