LucianoJ has taken a break from his regular FIFA articles to share his NCAA 2010 wishlist. SportsGamer will be releasing their weekly War Room discussion featuring wishes from participants later this week. What are some of your wishes? Share them in our forum.
Each year this series is one of my favorites. But like the BCS system, EA Sports re-creation of the college football experience is far too flawed to be perfect. It has all of the qualities of a spectacle: good graphics, good audio, and enough of the on-campus atmosphere to draw you in. I like the work Tiburon does, but I am not satisfied with the finished product, and find NCAA Football 09 to be a bit of a disappointment. I hope EA will make the necessary upgrades and tweaks to give it Last Gen playability, fully harness the power of Next Gen hardware, and bring it up to the gameplay level of NHL and FIFA. An drastic overhaul like for Madden 09 isn’t what I am asking for, leave much of the surface of the game alone. Tiburon needs to do arthroscopic surgery on the NCAA franchise.
Improve the pass rush: sacks in NCAA Football 09 were few and far between. How often can you remember seeing your defensive linemen flipped like gymnasts by overpowering CPU O-Linemen? Blitzing doesn’t help, and changing the number of men up front doesn’t help, either.
Balance out the turnovers: this year there have been too many interceptions and not enough fumbles. NCAA 09 has more pick sixes than the Illinois Lottery. Granted, some of the previous versions I played have been fumble fests. When you got ahead, you had to cringe when your best runner or receiver would cough up the ball and the momentum would shift. Turnovers should increase and dropped passes should be more likely in bad weather. Let QBs fumble a snap every once in a while.
End the Robo QB: Quarterbacks are far too accurate. Only the best should go 16-for-20. The ratings and overall quality of the QB should factor into the passer rating. Make a QB more inaccurate on his next couple of passes if he took a shot while running the option. On 3rd downs the CPU was certain to convert because of this pinpoint accuracy. Teams with bad or jittery receivers should drop a few passes to drive down the completion percentage.
Improve the CPU play calling: Throwing with a 7-3 lead with 32 seconds in a game is not smart. Whereas previous CPU QBs would throw deep with to a devastating degree, this year’s opposing AI throws short too much, in my opinion. Running excessive zone reads instead of using a feature back is a mistake. When do you ever see a CPU draw? CPU play-action? Making CPU running backs better on simple run plays could be the counter-balance to killing off the Robo QB.
Fix the option: the mechanics are off, the pitches and catches by the running backs are awkward looking, and the QB practically jogs. The option is a thing of beauty when run correctly. Offensive football is more than the passing game.
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Fix the sprinting: the 
animation is choppy, and the difference in speed between defenders and offensive players is ridiculous. Even in pursuit the offensive players chasing someone down who is on the way to yet another Pick Six are too slow. Give them a sense of urgency to run down that DB headed for the house.
Bring back Create-A-Playbook: Allow us to select a dozen formations, then check off the specific plays from that set. Previous versions of Madden had it.
Allow for Create-A-School, with FCS School uniform templates: While there are some out there who want to play with Appalachian State, EA was lazy about updating the old D1-AA rosters from year to year. Give us this option to build a program from the ground up, but cap player ratings to keep us from having FCS schools with players rated in the 90’s as well. In Create-A-School, you could have players on existing teams transfer to your program, as well.
Bring back refs, chain gang, and coaches on the sidelines: While this year’s players standing along the sidelines looked ok, not having coaches hassling refs, or some player-coach interaction doesn’t look authentic. Can’t someone at EA do motion capture of someone getting a Gatorade bath? Should there be an official spotting the ball, instead of just giving the signal for penalties?
Another improvement to the presentation could be making better use of the ESPN license. Does that last sentence sound familiar? Keep the announcing team, but don’t worry about the goofy-looking, pre-game Corso picks. New warmup video during pre-game would be good. Give us more school-specific opening material, other than the blimp shot of the stadium. Why not have a sideline reporter, like Erin Andrews or Lisa Salters, open up the second half or end the first half with comments on her interviews with the coaches? This interview could essentially be gameplay hints to gamers. This would also serve the same purpose as those coaching pop-ups in NCAA Basketball.
Don't forget the special teams! Bring back blocked kicks. Allow for bad snaps on punts and field goals. Bring back reverses on returns.
And finally, a special request. Please let us create a conference. This could be like taking online dynasties one step further. For example, let’s say you decide to create a conference of only Texas schools. Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, TCU, SMU, Rice, North Texas, Houston, Baylor would play a round robin schedule. You could set this up as online with eight other friends, or play it offline against the CPU. You could create a conference of up to thirteen teams. If you wanted to check off an option of having a season-ending conference championship, you could.
