Today has been the biggest flood of EA Sports College Football 25 news we’ve received since the game was first announced, and it’s opened up some exciting new questions about what the game will look like when it launches at some point this summer.
Chris Vannini of The Athletic, Michael Rothstein at ESPN, (the legend himself) Matt Brown, and probably some other folks as well have all done a lot of good reporting today after speaking with representatives at EA, and it’s led to this deluge of news. It’s also at that point in the cycle where the questions are more exciting than scary. Since the official reveal isn’t until May, we still have that mystery box and all our hopes and dreams could be inside.
Of course, they won’t be — and that’s okay. But the point is we can still ask some informed questions at this point about what EA Sports College Football 25 may or may not look like now that we at least have a rough outline of some things.
Unanswered EA Sports College Football 25 Questions
This list could be a mile long, but I’m going to mostly keep it focused around stuff a lot of OS people probably care about, while also assuming people have read enough of the news to know more or less what was confirmed today.
Are 85-Man Rosters A Thing?
With that in mind, I feel like I have to start with 85-man rosters being mentioned, specifically by Matt Brown.
This would be a first for an EA game if it comes to pass. EA has not confirmed the actual roster sizes in the game, but if they’re committing to representing 85 players, then why wouldn’t we have 85 on the roster? In NCAA Football 14, the cap was 70 players so you’d end up making cuts and so forth (roster makers would as well) and it hurt the realism for the real hardcore folks out there. Of the questions I’m posing, this one feels closest to having a very real answer in the positive.
It also leads to probably the biggest question we’ll now have about rosters.
Is Roster Share A Thing?
We know for sure that EA Sports College Football 25 will have real athletes. As of today, EA is offering the 11,000 or so college football players to sign on the dotted line until some point in April. After the deadline in April, EA is saying it gets more complicated to get them in the game, and thus those players would likely just be “generic” players.
The part where it gets interesting comes from ESPN’s story and a summation that comes from EA’s Daryl Holt.
One thing that will not be customizable: If a player chooses to not be included in the game, he will not be able to be created in the game by users — although Holt wouldn’t say how they would prevent that, only that it will not be allowed.
This is interesting because EA has simultaneously been very clear in stating user-generated content is important for EA Sports College Football 25 and thus create-a-player is still going to be a thing — after all, Road to Glory is back — and at the same time saying clear restrictions are going to be in place here.
So does this mean the generic players of folks who opted out will be the ones who are locked? Does it mean that if you edit someone your roster becomes locked? Does it mean we can create players but not edit the “real” rosters? Does it simply mean the “vital info” of players names/weight/position etc. will be locked?
This is a new undertaking for everyone and so this is something where we’re just going to have the most questions by default. There have been more stringent versions of roster sharing in older EA college football games (I’m talking NCAA Football 10 or so era) where you couldn’t really import a fully edited roster without tagging it to your EA account, and some other archaic stuff I only half-remember at this point. Simply put, while user-generated content is going to be important here, I feel like we can definitely expect some trickiness surrounding editing the “base” rosters — at least the generic players — and sharing rosters is probably going to have some restrictions on it if it exists at all.
That said, I do think if EA isn’t on it this season, I still imagine we’ll get “share” features surrounding things like Team Builder, recruiting classes, etc. at some point even if the roster sharing itself continues to be handcuffed to some extent to avoid legal issues.
Now, if this game ever comes to PC then all bets are off, so that’s a side question of sorts. I’ll be surprised to see this game on PC in year one even though we know it’s based on Madden’s engine and Madden is obviously on PC (and great with mods).
Is ESPN Integration And College GameDay Back? Are Multiple Broadcast Teams A Thing?
I have a very hard time believing ESPN presentation isn’t coming back along with College GameDay considering all the names who were confirmed today. It’s not everyone who appears on College GameDay (Pat McAfee is a big one missing there) but it’s more than enough to make it work. Plus, it would be weird in general for ESPN to have all their talents in the game but then it’s just a more generic EA pregame or halftime show (or maybe something only in dynasty mode).
Will that transfer to the actual on-field presentation? While EA has gone away from mimicking the TV-style look of other broadcasts, it would certainly feel awkward if you had College GameDay but not ESPN’s look on the field. However, I don’t feel as confident in saying ESPN will be slapped all over this game beyond what’s looking like some sort of College GameDay show of sorts.
The broader question is we had other names like Jesse Palmer confirmed today who have done plenty of work in the broadcast booth rather than just on halftime shows and such. We also know Madden is going to have multiple broadcast teams in the future, so it doesn’t seem crazy to think we could see it in EA Sports College Football 25. That said, there’s so much work going into this game as is that having multiple commentary teams is another undertaking on top of everything else.
What’s Going On With Dynasty Mode?
Again, I think it’s safe to assume we’re getting a very real dynasty mode this year (including online dynasty), and it seems like some other goodies will be in there. It’s confirmed that the transfer portal and NIL components will be in there in some capacity. I don’t think we’re getting infractions and some of the other potentially wild stuff, but it does seem like recruiting will have some very new aspects to it this time around.
We’ve also seen some Senior Bowl news today.
The Senior Bowl is something that works in theory in both EA Sports College Football and Madden, but it seems like this is definitely for EA Sports College Football. My thinking is this probably relates more to Road to Glory than anything since the Senior Bowl is for folks who would be leaving your program, but that also leads us into the next (and final) question.
Importing Draft Classes In Madden?
Whether or not we get imported draft classes probably depends on how the licensing works for the college players. Are they only allowed to be in EA Sports College Football 25 otherwise it’s outside the agreement? Again, this is new territory so I’m thinking we won’t get “true” draft class importing in Madden this year.
However, at the very least I do think we could get some sort of integration between Road to Glory and then importing that player into Madden as it’s something that both games have dealt with in prior years.
Published: Feb 22, 2024 07:45 pm