‘EA Sports College Football 25’ Mailbag: Answering Your Burning Questions About Dynasty, Gameplay, And More

The impending July 19 release of EA Sports College Football 25 has fans extremely excited, and that excitement has also featured a bit of frustration over the past few months with a lack of information and detail about the game.

We finally got covers and a gameplay trailer in May, but still there wasn’t much about the various game modes. Happily, that all changed today when the embargo lifted on everything we got to learn about the game at the EA Sports summit last week in Orlando, where a select group of media members, podcasters, and streamers got to play the game for the first time and sit through some fascinating presentations about the game.

We have detailed looks at gameplay, Dynasty mode, and Road to Glory, but I also wanted to directly answer as many of your questions as possible and asked folks on Twitter to send in the things they wanted to know. Here, I tried to answer all of them that I can, with the understanding that some things may change and additions could be coming between now and release (and various in-season patches).

HC/OC/DC selection is indeed back. You will be able to pick where you start your career (as well as your archetype and skill tree), and then you’ll get offers in the coaching carousel to jump to different schools based on your performance. As head coach, you can also use the coaching carousel to hire and fire coaches, looking to fill out your staff with the best possible fits for your program needs based on how you want to build it out — more recruiters, better tacticians, or better motivators. More on all that is in the full Dynasty breakdown.

Conference games are still locked and set in the dates based on the real rotation of games from the conferences themselves — or that EA eventually extrapolates into the future. However, you will be able to have more control over custom conferences, and can change rules to play more conference games, tweak every team’s annual guaranteed opponents, and more. I also believe game times will be a bit more fluid and smarter about big matchups in this year’s game than in the past, but that’s TBD on how well that works exactly.

Rivalry games are back, and they all have the appropriate name in the game — i.e., the War on I-4, the Battle for Paul Bunyan’s axe, etc. — and the trophies are also all in the game, which means there should be a trophy case for your Dynasty as well. As for NIL, there is not anything in this version for a pretty good reason, things have been constantly changing and up until literally the day of the presentation, schools weren’t allowed to do it themselves. They didn’t want to build an NIL system and have to scrap it, and since as a coach you weren’t supposed to be handing out money yourself, it’s not part of Dynasty beyond having one of the pitch grades for your school being Brand Recognition.

That last point goes hand-in-hand here, but even as NIL enters the game in future iterations, the answer to this will be: Not very. As I was told, the game is rated E for Everyone, so they’re not ever planning on giving you a chance to commit crimes (or anything seedy, really).

1. No crossplay for Online Dynasty. Only for Play Now, Ultimate Team, and Road to the College Football Playoff.
2. You do not start in high school any longer, instead picking your star level as a recruit and what’s important to you and getting offers based on what schools align with your pitch grades.
3. No dorm rooms to customize (that we saw), and most of the story mode seems to be played out of the main menu, with scenarios coming to you on your phone.
4. Managing GPA is all about allocating hours to study to be prepared for tests (which you will not have to take yourself). You have a progress bar telling you how prepared you are for that upcoming test, and that will determine how well you do and whether you keep a strong GPA or become academically ineligible.
5. It looks very good. The art team did a pretty incredible job with the look and feel of everything in the game — also, the weather will impact how the game plays, not just looks, so ball security is a bit tricky in the rain.

Five positions — QB/RB/WR/MLB/CB. As for playing both ways, we were told “stay tuned.” I don’t know if that means more news will be coming later on that and it will be available at launch or if that’s something they’ll explore for later or what. But, that’s what we know.

1. Full song list is here, but no to Enter Sandman or Baba O’Riley for now. They will look to add songs, but licensing costs will surely play a role (Metallica is expensive).
2. I’m not sure anything seemed rushed, but I do think there will be tweaks needed in the future. Road to Glory’s changes have gotten a lot of pushback from longtime fans of the mode, but I do think they’ll like it better (somewhat) once they get their hands on it. The new passing system is going to take some time to adjust to and will probably require some tuning. Homefield Advantage and Stadium Pulse will be the same thing, as it could be a bit more impactful than some will want. And I’d say the same with Wear & Tear, which gets me to your last question.
3. I don’t want to say definitively one way or another after three hours on the sticks, but I do think it probably is a bigger factor than a lot of people will want out of a video game. I appreciate what they want to do with it and think it can be a really good addition once they have some more time with it and can tune how impactful it is and that it doesn’t become the main thing.

You know it, baby.

Yes, you can import your full TeamBuilder school build, including unis, into Dynasty.

We did not learn much about Ultimate Team in EA CFB, so I don’t know what online modes will be associated with that, but Road to the College Football Playoff is basically an online season mode with ranked games that allow you to climb the rankings and make the playoff. From there, it’s Dynasty, Road to Glory, and Play Now as the other options.

Uproxx was invited on a hosted trip by EA Sports for reporting on this piece. They did not review or approve this story. You can find out more about our policy on press trips/hostings here.