We’re obsessed College Football 25We’ve been hooked. Since the game’s release, we’ve poured dozens of hours into the sport’s glorious return to gaming, and experienced some amazing moments along the way. From incredible in-game heroics to amazing moments in player recruitment and development, we honestly just want to talk about them. College Football 25 more.
Below are some of our best accomplishments (in no particular order).
I defeated the Army
Critics will say it was because of the pouring rain at West Point, but in my opinion, there’s something wrong with being a member of the military and being afraid of a little bit of weather.
I have a dynasty in East Carolina because my wife got her PhD there and we lived in Greenville, N.C. for six years, and also, purple and gold are cool colors and pirates are cool.
Anyway, starting with a 1.5 star school like ECU is a tough one. The roster wasn’t great and they were tough to recruit but I’m going to make them a powerhouse anyway. When they played 2-4 Army this week I thought they had a chance to beat them but instead I demoralized Army.
As soon as the fourth quarter began, I noticed the stands were emptying out. All that remained were a few enthusiastic fans in raincoats. The entire end zone stands were cleared out and the place was silent. No more home field advantage. No more buzzing crowd. My team was just running out the clock and making a fool of the Army.
Signs of personal growth
Unlike my friends James and JP, I haven’t yet immersed myself in other aspects of the game and am solely focused on the world of dynasties.
As I said before, the Navy.
It was a tough start at Navy. Recruiting is hard, there may be user error, and the roster isn’t always packed with talent and depth.
Still, the team started off strong this season, winning its first six games. National attention slowly grew, eventually landing Navy in the “Other Teams Received Votes” category in various Top 25 polls.
This was just before their annual showdown with Notre Dame at MetLife Stadium.
The Irish came into the game as the No. 2 team in the country, but we put them in a tight spot: With time running out in the fourth quarter, we split off the safety with a double-post concept against Cover 2 and passed over the middle to the inside receiver for the game-winning touchdown to take a 24-20 lead.
One more stoppage and the players would have been faced with a major upset.
Notre Dame made it to midfield but faced a third down long with under 30 seconds left. We were out of timeouts so it was enough to not allow a big play. I called for two-deep coverage and tried to keep everything in front of me but also sent one of the linebackers to blitz to try and get the QB out of position. I switched to that linebacker before the snap because honestly, the less I have to do in that moment the better.
Imagine my surprise when one of the half-field safeties started sprinting downhill on his own blitz and I realized: A: I’d switched to safety, and B: Riley Leonard was throwing a seam route to the spot I’d left vacant.
Touchdown, Notre Dame. Final score 27-24, Irish.
For me, bouncing back from this defeat is a big step forward. NCAA 14? I would have done things a lot differently back then.
Recruitment War
I’m completely obsessed with recruiting. In fact, it might be my favorite part of running a dynasty. Scouting players to unearth the talent, exposing the duds, managing recruiting time, and solving the puzzle of making it all fit together is so rewarding when things work out.
But sometimes things can go in the wrong direction.
I put a ton of energy into an elusive three-star running back I had my eye on, Armond Battle, and his acceleration and speed stats were enough to convince me I could turn him into a powerhouse. The only problem was Virginia Tech, a school with a bigger name than me and who was really selling my player hard.
Each week I watched the Hokies rise up the list of schools for him, but my influence waned. I was eventually forced to admit that they had a different influence than I did, and then I realized…
Virginia Tech spent so much time trying to recruit Battle that they barely even tried to recruit 3-star talent and dual-threat quarterback Eric Folkerts. My school had many of the traits Folkerts was looking for, so I pursued him. Week by week, I watched Tech’s influence wane while I took over, and finally last night, after Folkerts won a game on his visit as a recruit, it was announced that he had signed a verbal agreement with my school.
We may have literally lost the battle, but we won the war.
Signing our first new employee
One of the most satisfying parts of Dynasty mode is signing rookie players, especially in previous versions of the game when you identified a few top prospects for your team at top schools during preseason, then quickly signed them after receiving scholarship offers.
Well, that doesn’t work well in a 1.5 star Navy.
Still, there were several prospects who had Navy as their first choice heading into the season, including a 3-star LT, a position in high demand. He’s from Virginia, so Virginia and Virginia Tech were also on his list. At one point, Virginia slid into his top spot, dropping Navy to second.
But a home win over Memphis with LT accompanying him on a recruiting trip sealed the deal.
He may not be a five-star running back, but it’s a start.
Troy wins the Heisman Award
So, I was mostly into Road to Glory. It was my favorite part of NCAA 14 and that hasn’t changed much. I made a 3-star QB and ended up signing with Troy but things were awful during my freshman season. I only played the final 3 games and, to put it simply, I was terrible. The Trojans didn’t make it to a bowl game and I had to take my job back from a transfer student from Emory Williams.
That motivated me and I lost the spot to a transfer student. I got the starter spot again in week 2 and never let it go, leading Troy to a huge win at home against Clemson (that game was a mess) and winning the Sun Belt. My player won the Heisman and undefeated Troy entered the CFP as the #12 and final seed, on the road to face…Arkansas. It was a back and forth game with the Hogs, but a 2 minute drive at the end of the game put us up. Honestly, that was one of the most rewarding moments of the game. We lost to Oregon the next week, but that moment will forever live in CFB 25 lore.
Establishing a run in South Alabama
So I set my sights on my dynasty. I don’t want to throw the ball. Ever. When I throw it, three things happen, and two of them are bad. So I’m going to use the Liberty playbook to bring back the sexy and throw triples directly down my opponents’ throats. I chose South Alabama to start my dynasty, but first as an offensive coordinator.
Attrition makes it very difficult to run the way we really want to, but we get around that by rotating five running backs during the game. We use my favorite offense in football, the pistol triple option, to have guys run for 300 yards and not throw the ball at all on offense. The beating will continue until morale improves.
