From Easy to Never Happening, a College Football 26 Wishlist

The CFB Playoffs have been boom or bust, but when the games have been good, they’ve been GOOD. So as I was watching last night, I realized I could not hold off any longer before sharing a College Football 26 wishlist I have been compiling since the launch of ‘25. However, my list won’t be every single thing I’d love to see in the game, rather it’s going to be a list of items that I believe are likely to happen all the way down to things that are less likely to happen than Ricky Bobby saying “I love crepes.”

One other note is there are not going to be items that would be considered bug fixes (i.e. have the Team Builder website work a launch) on my wishlist, and I’m mostly going to stay away from gameplay improvements as well. Yes, I’d love to see stuff like split-field match coverages in the game or pursuit angles that are not ass, but I’m not going to worry about that for this sort of broad wishlist — I don’t want this sort of thing be 5,000-plus words.

College Football 26 Wishlist

Betting On It Happening

Dynamic Weather/Dynamic Lighting

While I’m not sure we’ll get actual Weather Channel branding, I do think EA will take better advantage of only being on current-gen consoles in some respects here in year two. This includes having more varied weather conditions, or at the very least wind conditions that will change throughout a game.

As for dynamic lighting, yes, it’s silly that we get these extended sunsets and all that. The odd thing is I’m pretty sure dynamic lighting has been a thing in EA football games before, so either this was a bug or EA had to allocate memory resources to other aspects of the game and just didn’t want to give away those finite system resources to stuff like lighting. I think enough people raised a stink that they’ll reconsider how the lighting works for ‘26.

Protected Rivals/Custom Schedule Tweaks

This is at least a partial bug so I’m breaking my own rules a little bit, but this is one of those important to fix things for the sanctity of our dynasties. EA needs to make sure to institute some sort of protected rivals system that we can more easily control (let teams choose like 2-4 teams that are “protected” no matter how we realign conferences).

The home/away bug is also worth noting (too many home or away games), but we just need to be able to have better controls on home/away games and then the time of day as well. Bonus points if we can set neutral site games, but I would put that in the “less likely to happen” group.

Coach Apparel/Coach Customization Options

First off, let my guy be old. If I want to be an old, confused man then let me cook!

Whatever system of semi auto-generated coaches that EA used was fine for spitting out a bunch of coach models that looked different enough, but presumably this was close to the same system that was used for the auto-generated recruits. This is a problem since obviously coaches do not all look like they’re in their 20s or 30s.

I’m not sure if we’ll get fully customizable sliders for our coaches (or players), but even if EA uses the same system, we need to get auto-generated coaches into this creator that are older gents.

High School Option For Road To Glory

EA can’t ignore this one. I don’t enjoy the HS mode stuff a ton so I still hope it’s brief, but we do need some semblance of high school gameplay for our Road to Glory players.

Trophy Room

This feels like another one where so many people asked for it we’ll get some version of a trophy room in ‘26. I could be assuming too much, but I think some of the time with the trophy room requests, it’s really more about just making sure the “history” within our dynasties is better managed.

Right now, we don’t have easy ways to track things like Heisman winners, coach records, our best dynasty games, and so on. We need better historical stat tracking, and part of that need is fulfilled by stuff like a trophy room. If we get stuff back like a “greatest games score” or the game just saving some of our sickest highlights within the trophy room that would be rad as well, but we’ll see how in-depth it gets.

PC Version

I already planted my flag and predicted this will be a thing for ‘26, so I will put it here as well. Again, CFB ‘25 made a ton of money, and EA has been trying to put their biggest sports games on PC. It also doesn’t hurt that CFB is only on current-gen consoles.

Increasing The Number Of Players In The Portal

This feels like another easy one EA could target. The portal is not insane enough right now and there are not enough players in it. Over 1,900 players entered the portal before we hit 2025 — we never hit that sort of number in CFB 25. The quality of players entering the portal also dips once we get deeper into dynasty mode.

I will give EA some benefit of the doubt here in that they may not have realized how wild the portal would get when they initially started putting together dynasty mode, but now they should know what’s up.

I don’t think you can force more players into the portal in a natural way unless you change some other stuff about recruiting, which leads me to another wishlist item.

Add Promises To Recruiting

We had some form of promises before, and I think they’ll return in some form for ‘26. Well, it might not be promises — it could be more stringent dealbreakers or something along those lines — but the point is players need more reasons to leave a school.

We should not have situations where teams are carrying 5 QBs who are 80-plus overall and all that other silliness.

More Fight Songs, More Chants, More Mascots

Yes, this is very generic and EA will obviously do this one, but I still need to put it here because these are the sweeteners that make all the difference.

Don’t Reset The Records Screen Every Time We Change The Category

This is a pet peeve, but man is it annoying that every time you swap between game/season/all-time on the Records screen that you go back to the initial screen again. It takes like two full minutes just to check what all the records are for an individual team.

Spring Game

I debated whether to put this in the 50/50 category or not, but I really won’t be shocked if EA adds a Spring Game for next year. We need a way to test our fresh recruits, and while we can technically do that in practice mode or by using the Redshirt games in the regular season, a Spring Game just fits into things quite nicely.

The reason it might not happen is just not wanting to do extra presentation to fulfill the requirements for this game — and I suspect a healthy amount of people would skip it after trying it out once or twice.

Being Able To Re-Spec The Coaching Tree

I will go against the grain and say I like topping out at level 50 for the coaching tree, but we definitely need to be able to re-spec the tree. This is especially true when you’re unfamiliar with the game at the start and realize a couple years into a dynasty you’d prefer to be a different sort of coach. That said, I would only let you re-spec the tree before a new season starts.

Move “Encourage Transfers” To Before The Transfer Portal

If you want us to cut players, just have us do it before the portal. I know it’s there before the season starts so we can trim the rosters down to the legal limit, but since we need more players in the portal anyway, just have us encourage transfers earlier in the offseason.

50/50 Shot These Things Happen

A More Chaotic Coaching Carousel

I don’t have one set wishlist item for the Coaching Carousel, but the broader point I would make is that winning coaches need to be more desired. If I’m winning national titles with Coastal Carolina, Power 5 conferences should be begging me to come to their schools.

One way to make this more tangible is perhaps put more “goals” in place for our coaches. We just have XP rewards right now, but beyond wins, we don’t have real goals that need to be fulfilled. If we are hitting more of our goals, that’s perhaps another way to trigger your desirability factor going up.

Human/AI Sliders For Everything In Online Dynasty Mode

It is strange we don’t have different slider toggles for stuff like special teams for the AI and humans in dynasty mode. We had no way to make the AI kicking worse without making our own kicking worse even though the AI was the only ones kicking 60-plus yard field goals with ease every game.

It’s such a small update, which is why I could see it getting lost in the cracks.

Difficulty Sliders For Recruiting

Speaking of sliders, I think adding some sort of slider for recruiting difficulty would be a wise investment, but I’m not sure EA will do it because they never have before. I do think EA could make recruiting more challenging through other means, but it almost seems like they’re fine with us creating our own house rules to up the challenge.

More “Clickable” Screens

I hope this one makes sense, but basically if you remember NCAA Football 14, many of the screens within the hub of dynasty mode could be “clicked on” for more information. Whether it was through R3/L3 or just using a face button, we could click on our opponent for the week and see the stats for that team.

The menus need more functionality overall. We should be able to go to the Heisman screen and click on each player to see his stats — it’s silly the season stats aren’t displayed on that screen in the first place.

Mascot Mode

It’s weird how little I care about this sort of “gimmick” in other sports games but how much I want this novelty back in CFB. I just think Mascot Mode is funny as hell and want it to return.

Generic Stadiums For Team Builder

I wouldn’t go as far to say I expect we’ll be able to “update” our generic stadiums by adding more decks or other improvements when our programs earn more prestige. However, I think it’s reasonable to expect EA to add some generic stadiums so we don’t have team-specific stadiums that are retrofitted to house our fake Team Builder squads.

Custom Playbook Quality Of Life Updates

This could be a bunch of things, but please at least put the formations in alphabetical order. Having 22 shotgun formations be a jumbled mess in a custom playbook? That’s not going to be good for anybody.

Probably Not Happening

We Got To Talk About Chris Fowler

Minus the usual bugs with the commentators talking about the wrong stuff, the biggest issue with the commentary to me was that Chris Fowler just wasn’t a very good announcer in ‘25. I wouldn’t replace him yet, but I also don’t think EA can record him enough to fix all the issues he had with his lines in this game. He didn’t sound like he was at the games, and he just doesn’t sound as convincing as the other commentators.

At the end of the day, commentating in a video game is “acting” and sometimes announcers aren’t that good at it. They struggle to find their voice they use during real broadcasts, and eventually you just need to move on to another broadcaster. I don’t think EA will do anything drastic, but I hope Fowler sounds a bit better in ‘26.

Ancient Asks: Custom Camera Angles/Create-A-Play/Easier Way To Watch AI Vs. AI Games/Re-Do Certain Positions/Sort More Than 300 Players On A Screen

I’m grouping these together because while custom camera angles are an easier ask than create-a-play, they both feel like things EA is actively avoiding for whatever reason.

With the AI vs. AI games, I believe this comes down to how we pick our teams in dynasty mode. Since it seems like EA pre-plays the week for the AI teams, it’s not very easy to just go in and watch whatever game we want in dynasty mode without going through the process of creating and firing coaches.

The same goes for creating “edge” positions, weak and strong linebackers, and so on. If EA has not done that sort of thing by now, I can’t predict when they might fix it either.

Madden and College Football have the same issue with not being able to sort through more than 300 players on a given screen, so this is just some limitation I don’t quite understand.

No Chance In Hell

Import Draft Class To Madden

I want it, I need it, it ain’t happening. While I think most of the legal hurdles are non-factors for EA now, I do think this element is still murky. Once these college athletes are in an entirely different game, it seems like a bit of a legal issue.

Custom Stadium Sounds

This seems like a console issue as much as it is a developer issue. If a PC version existed, maybe there could be a way to make it work.

Real Names Of Head Coaches

Never say never since we finally got NHL coaches this year in EA’s game, but I don’t think we’ll get the real head coaches this season.

Web Access For Recruiting

I think the days of EA creating websites for online dynasty features are over, but I would love to get web access for recruiting at the very least.

In-Depth Studio Update

I think we’re still at least another year away from something like this returning. In the meantime, as an appetizer to hold us over I’d love for them to target something like the College Football Playoff selections like College Hoops 2K did with the March Madness selection show.

An NIL Budget

I’ll end on a more pie-in-the-sky feature of making NIL budgets an inherent part of dynasty mode. How many games do we have on national TV? How much money will we get for scheduling certain games against certain teams? The monetary value of things should be a bigger deal in the mode because it would impact how we recruit players and retain players as well.

I don’t think EA wants to explicitly get into talking about money or NIL budgets in such a matter-of-fact way, but it does seem like a really good way to make the recruiting and team building more cohesive.

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

-Chase