After more than a decade without a college football game, EA Sports College Football 25 was a sight for sore eyes. Football fans were so starved for a CFB game that they made it the best-selling sports title in video game history, and I think for the most part people enjoyed the game. There were, as always in simulation games, some hiccups, but the game absolutely scratched the itch that we all wanted it to.
Earlier this month, EA Sports confirmed the game will be back for this summer for another edition (which was a lock given how well it sold), and we are hopeful they will build off of their success to make ’26 even better. The ’25 edition was, by design, a fairly stripped down model as they wanted to get the important things right and had to spend a ton of development time just building out all of the things that make college football what it is — stadiums, mascots, bands, traditions, etc. Now that they have all of that done, we hope they can shift a bit more focus to the game play and game modes to give them more depth. Here, we identified six things that we hope will be the focal points of ’26 and make it a game worth investing in again as fans.
Coordinator mode in Dynasty
I absolutely love Dynasty mode, and think that for the most part, they got it right in their first year back. My one gripe is that I’d love it if you could choose to start your career as a straight-up coordinator with your responsibilities being exclusive to being a coordinator. That means only calling plays and recruiting on one side of the ball, and then when you take a head coaching job, your team has an edge in one way or another that is in line with your coaching archetype — for example, if you’re a recruiter who starts as a defensive coordinator, when you take a HC job, you automatically have a leg-up in recruiting defensive talent, but recruiting on offense and in-game/player development stuff on both sides of the ball is something you have to work on. It’d be a fun way, I think, to make the climb to becoming a successful head coach a little more difficult.
Make coordinator hires mean more
Kind of going off of that: There’s a very delicate balance that needs to be struck between making this matter and making the game more difficult. Having said that, I think leaning into coordinators having specific archetypes and there being consequences related to your coordinators would be a fun twist. Part of this comes via their specific archetypes — say, hiring a recruiter means player development is harder and in-game stuff is more difficult — but also, coordinators taking head coaching jobs and bringing players from their current school is a common thing in college football. Why would that not be a common thing here?
How To Play mode
I know a lot of people who still complain about, say, how many interceptions they throw, while I know I can really struggle with the defensive side of things. A big part of this, in my opinion, is that you get thrown right into games, and have to learn stuff based entirely on in-game reps. John Madden wanted the Madden franchise to exist as a way to teach fans the game, so why not do something in the spirit of that here? Give fans an instructional mode where they can learn how to follow their blocks in the running game, or how to read coverages before the snap and during a play, or how to understand defensive assignments/gap integrity/whatever else on that side of the ball. A lot of people went a long, long time without seriously playing a football video game, so this can help them get up to speed now that a college football game is back.
Bring back Mascot Mashup
Self-explanatory. If you played the game when Mascot Mashup was in it, you get it. If you did not, imagine playing an exhibition game, only with mascots. It rocks. Next!
Back to the drawing board for Road To Glory
In the game’s first year back, EA Sports made it very clear that Dynasty mode was the focal point. That was the correct decision, as it’s the mode people play the most and is what made the original game so popular. While there are things to improve there (as discussed), it has the strongest foundation for them to build on. Road To Glory, on the other hand, was a swing and a miss.
The stated goal for RTG was to have it be a shorter playthrough option (10-20 hours) but the truth is, it was just a very shallow career mode experience. They attempted to make it realistic by making you balance your time across different areas, but there wasn’t anything really to do other than practice or push a button to study/get treatment/etc. I don’t know what exactly the formula should be, but they either need to go all-in on making that part of the game more interactive (which, to be clear, could lead to backlash) or scrap it all together and just really lean on the football part of things. I know they want to replicate the “student athlete” experience, but what they did in ’25 just didn’t work.
Even the on-field portion of the game left something to be desired. At the non-QB positions, rotations made little sense and you could be a star at running back who would go long stretches without playing or touching the ball because you had no influence on play-calling or who was in the game. Coach Trust was vital (it literally determined if you’d play), but even as a veteran star QB, your ability to influence play-calling was extremely limited. All of that is perhaps realistic to being a college football player, but it’s also a miserable experience for a video game mode.
There has to be a better middle ground between creating a simulation of the authentic college athlete experience and making a video game mode that is fun to play for more than a season. I tried a few different times at a few different positions and never got more than a year and a half into a RTG career before I just stopped playing and went back to Dynasty. There was little depth, very little that changed from year-to-year, and even playing the games could be wildly frustrating. If that’s going to change for ’26, they need to go back to the drawing board and figure out where to really add depth to the mode, where to possibly scale back (or eliminate all together), and be more cognizant that the entertainment and fun factor should matter more than creating the most realistic mode.
Some combination of the following players on the cover
Jeremiah Smith and Caleb Downs, Ohio State
Garrett Nussmeier and Harold Perkins, LSU
Arch Manning, Texas
Ryan Williams, Alabama
Cade Klubnik, Clemson
Drew Allar, Penn State
Dylan Stewart and LaNorris Sellers, South Carolina
DJ Lagway, Florida
