College Football 26: The Game We Should Have Gotten Last Year?

Higher expectations come along with success, and for yearly sports games, it’s usually harder to meet those expectations because when a sports game surpasses expectations, it’s likely due to something uniquely special about the year prior. It’s the Jordan Mode in NBA 2K11 where everything aligns and a great new idea matches up with great gameplay. How do you follow up that idea just one year later? The answer is that you usually don’t — and with yearly sports games it might be that you simply can’t.

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I would classify College Football 25 as one of those unique situations. It’s not at all like the NBA 2K11 example, but CFB 25 was a game that came back after 10+ years, and it delivered an experience many felt they hadn’t had in a football game for a bunch of years. Those elements mixed together with the nostalgia of the older games and the appeal of being the first college game of any sort in a long time to create a brew that made it a top seller and critical darling (at least by sports game standards).

This sequence of events ultimately creates an unfair situation for ‘26 in the sense that no one is going to feel bad for your success, and everyone is going to expect to have those same good feelings all over again when they boot up College Football 26.

With that in mind, we got a ton of dynasty mode and presentation details for College Football 26 this week. In fact, I would say the dynasty mode video EA put out is one of the better jobs they’ve done of selling the upgrades in a nice understandable format.

We’re also going to get another video on Friday that showcases Road to Glory and Superstar mode. Like last week, the video might “premiere” by the time you read this newsletter, so here’s where you’ll be able to find that video:

As I’ve always said, I truly don’t care about Road to Glory or Superstar mode because it’s not how I play the game, but I do care a lot about presentation and dynasty mode. CFB’s dynasty mode was easily my most played mode of that sort in any sports game last year, and it’s because it was a good time, and college football is essentially my ideal franchise/dynasty mode in terms of what I get out of it — lots of turnover, seasons aren’t too long, every game matters, and it’s got a good online component if I do want to play with friends.

But as I read through the thousands of words in both deep dives, it’s funny to say it really was the “quality of life” improvements that got me the most excited. I wonder if I feel that way because I’m so used to the yearly cycle at this point that my expectations get set a certain way, or if it’s just because I did think the bones of ‘25 were already so solid that I didn’t really need something all-new to get me hyped. I can’t say for sure or speak for anyone but myself, but basically if what I’m reading about ends up being all there is to the game, I’m going to be perfectly okay with that. I don’t think I’ll have any issue with the idea of this just being “the game we should have gotten last year,” according to some folks.

I Have More Questions About Presentation Than Dynasty Mode

That said, even though presentation is ultimately more straight forward than the balance or depth of a dynasty mode, I have more questions about presentation than the other way around. And, honestly, it is more about the quality-of-life stuff than the big new stuff. We’re getting dynamic lighting, and that’s great, but we know how that should work. It’s not going to be every play that the lighting changes, it’s going to be every quarter. This is fine, it’s how this stuff works:

But a lot of us are probably more curious about whether the game will actually be in native 4K, and whether or not the lighting will be enough to make the game look more impressive. CFB is not getting the new dynamic weather that Madden is getting. And even though CFB feels better in motion than Madden (at least last year), there’s no question Madden’s top-end graphics looked better than CFB’s. Regardless, lighting can do a ton for any game, but especially sports games, so if we do just get a better overall resolution and the lighting pops, that could be enough to hold folks over.

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As a commentary guy, my brain also does start there because “200+ hours and 15,000 new lines” is always nice to see but doesn’t mean much on its own. I brought up my concerns about Chris Fowler specifically in a newsletter not too long ago, and those concerns remain.

But even beyond Fowler, it sounds like we’re getting some very “traditional” upgrades.

They’re going to be talking about head coaches during games — since there are now a ton of real ones in the game — and the banter sounds a lot like what most sports games do in some form or fashion. The way it’s framed, it sounds like the banter about replacing production or making a push towards the playoffs will also be centered around the “real” players, and so I’m not sure how flexible that will be when it comes to Year 2 and beyond in your dynasty mode. In other words, the banter might sound great, but it’s more Play Now talk than dynasty mode talk.

The more interesting part relates to the talking points about your ongoing season, and especially around the transfer portal and recruiting results. There’s a lot of meat on the bones in these areas, and it would be stuff EA’s college football games have never really talked about, so I hope it’s not just concentrated around speaking to a couple in-game graphics. I really want the commentators to get more into stuff like what recruits might be at the game today, or how many players a school lost in the portal the year prior, or even mentioning how losing today’s game would put someone out of contention for a College Football Playoff spot (even if I expect the College Football Playoff system in the game to be outdated within months). This sort of “branching paths” commentary is what EA has struggled to do in its prior games — perhaps due to hours constraints — but would add as much as just being more aware of time and situation, which is another area every sports game can always improve upon.

In general, I like how OS user canes21 summed up the presentation deep dive because I think it’s how a lot of us would like to see things go with commentary and presentation once we get past everyone wanting the halftime show/weekly recap show/in-game updates showpieces.

Dynasty Mode Is The Epicenter Of College Football 25.5

I make no excuses for saying perhaps the thing that made me most excited while reading the dynasty mode deep dive was the fact that I wouldn’t just have to dress my coach in either a shirt or athletic jacket like this bozo ever again:

Surely EA could have patched in at least a couple more clothing options, but either way, now there’s going to be a lot of options:

Even if some of them end up being absurd, I don’t care. Thank god we don’t just have two friggin’ options anymore. And, yes, I know I’m only so excited about this because EA came up short in this area a year ago, but, again, the rational part of my brain has been overruled. I’m fired up about wearing shorts and a cut-off shirt.

As for the thousands of other words in the dynasty mode deep dive, I think you’ve already done enough reading this week since EA has been hard at work trying to overwhelm us with deep dives after starving us for so long, so instead I want to hit on two overarching topics that cover a lot of ground.

Throughout the deep dive, the thing I noticed the most — and what gets me very excited — is that EA seems to understand both identity and consequences and why they’re so important to the replay value of a dynasty/franchise mode. Here is the section I want to highlight to make my point about consequences:

This all sounds great to me because it’s basically doing what Madden has failed to do forever and that is give you an actual good and believable reason to play certain ways (and this is even without mentioning what I think seem like terrific additions to the Wear & Tear system). Now, if you want to be a hater, you could say this isn’t so much EA figuring this out, it’s just how college football works now. It’s not incorrect framing to go that route, but my point is that for as long as I can remember, I’ve stated how contrived most of the ways Madden tries to make you care about pleasing and progressing your players. The press conferences have poorly framed questions, but even beyond the presentation and writing aspects, it’s never felt like any of that stuff really mattered or felt real in Madden. Why again do I need to get six touchdowns with this running back this season? Why do I need to score on this drive to meet some goal? I’m not given proper motivation because the consequences aren’t steep enough, and the rewards aren’t big enough. You need to drive people to play in unique ways by selling them on the idea of consequences, and Madden has not understood that for a long time.

The very nature of contracts probably makes it harder to get the “consequences” part right in a pro sports game versus a college game (every player under contract can’t demand a trade), but there is such a divide between needing to score on this drive for an extra 200 XP for my QB versus needing to score on a drive because I have 8 recruits in attendance and want to impress them with a big win. (The ironic thing is we might be getting some sort of “salary cap” in college sports now, so it might end up more like a pro game anyway.)

And, for me, the system being setup here feels way better not just because the rewards are way more tangible, but also because the consequences are more immediate and brutal. It would not be easy for Madden to find the same “realistic” way to do this like in College Football, but it really did strike me when reading about these dynasty mode changes how much I miss failure and hardship in Madden’s franchise mode.

Uniqueness and identity are the other part of this, which I’ll highlight with the section on archetypes:

Hell to the yeah. I would so often go looking for 5-foot-9 or even smaller receivers or other sort of weird gadget players in the recruiting pool last year just to try and be different. Not every position likely has the same need for this sort of depth, but if these archetypes get some unique animations on top of having unique ratings, these are more ways to build your team’s position rooms. Plus, the fact that I can now get 600 rows of players rather than just 300 on a page when scouting recruits — and there’s going to be better search options — means I’m about to waste even more time mining for players (I can only imagine how silly my recruiting guide might get this year).

We’re not getting the depth of traits that will be in Madden (kudos to Madden), and I don’t think the archetypes are always going to make a ton of sense in comparison to how they’re used (there’s a Field and Boundary CB archetype now but no place in the depth chart for it, which means defensive schemes will only go so deep), but this is the right approach overall. Fresh ways to build your team means we won’t just target the same one (maybe two) archetypes at every position like we mostly did last year, and this means your teams should hopefully end up feeling way different without needing to put House Rules on yourself that stop you from funneling the same couple archetypes into your squad year after year.

Speaking of defense, that is where my biggest concerns do exist. This is more to do with gameplay than dynasty mode itself, but we’re getting loads of new ways to build our offenses, and we’re being promised the real coaches will inject their teams with unique styles of play, but I do wonder if 90 percent of that will be noticed only on offense. In a year where we’re getting stuff like SAM/WILL/MIKE at long last, I do wonder if a lot of that sort of jargon will still mostly be in name only as most 4-3 defenses still end up playing the same way.

Bottom Line

Wrapping this all up, I want to mention Death Stranding 2 as a way to bring it back to my point about the unfair life of a yearly sports game. I love the original Death Stranding. It came out in 2019. Death Stranding 2 just came out in June 2025. It’s been six years since the first game. Six years and a new generation of hardware have allowed DS2 to blow me away with its graphical upgrades, the quality-of-life improvements, the new weapons, world-building, and new and old faces returning to this truly unique setting. It’s bigger in every sense, and it’s an improvement in most major ways to me, but it’s still just Death Stranding again. And while I’ve been incredibly impressed by the overall package and it’s absolutely in my running for Game of the Year, it is the quality-of-life improvements that have mattered the most for the moment-to-moment gameplay beats. Moving cargo around in my inventory is much easier, there are better ways to look through my orders, and a lot of other stuff dealing with the menus themselves is making it a much more streamlined and enjoyable, well, package delivery game. If they simply put all these quality-of-life improvements into the original Death Stranding, it’s probably a way better game all on its own. In either case, this is probably a good example of what six years and one year get you in the video game development world.

Sports games in a way usually have to settle for those “quality of life” wins. You get to deliver a Jordan Mode every so often, but a Jordan Mode doesn’t happen overnight or usually in one year. I think most of us can accept this if the quality-of-life improvements are tied together with good gameplay and franchise modes. It’s not that Madden or NBA 2K or The Show were delivering jaw-dropping new features every year during their peaks — whenever you want to say those occurred. It’s that they reached a point where quality of a certain degree was a given, and then every couple of years they’d give us something especially impressive to keep the ball rolling.

None of us know yet what College Football 26 is truly going to deliver, but I don’t think it’s “negative” to say this year’s game might just be what ‘25 “should have been” as long as we also acknowledge the fact that it’s okay to be in that space some years as long as you think ‘25 was a good enough baseline. Now, of course, if you just didn’t think last year’s game was good enough, then fair enough because we’re having an entirely different conversation at that point, but I don’t think fans of the series should take it as some major slight if the culmination of this whole discussion around ‘26 is that people call it the Director’s Cut of College Football 25. It’s all about perspective if that’s where we end up, and it wouldn’t be hard to spin it as a positive or negative depending on where you stood in the first place.

Until next time y’all. And, as always, thanks for reading.

-Chase