Operation Sports Newsletter #2 - Not Just Another Roster Update

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This newsletter will be about catching you up on any sports gaming news you missed from the past week and letting you know about hot topics on the OS forums. We’ll also be listening to your feedback to shape this newsletter even further from there. 

With that out of the way, let’s get to it.

Launch Day

It’s showtime. Launch day is here, and while many of us have been playing early access for a couple days, everyone else can now join the party. This also means we’re about to get even more “takes” about EA Sports College Football 25. And, to be clear, a lot of people are going to have takes because a lot of people are playing this game.

On the first night of early access, there were well over 600,000 thousand people online at the same time, which means there were even more offline. There’s no question this game is going to move some consoles and be a huge hit.

So I think that’s where we should start. Tons of people have been hungry for this game and this moment. There will be some people saying it wasn’t worth the hype or various other forms of negativity sprinkled in with the many positive takes, and it will be up to you to decide where you end up.

For me, I do think EA Sports College Football 25 will end up being that promising rookie QB.

(If you don’t want to read about the pros and cons of the game right off rip, I would skip ahead a couple paragraphs, but understand I’m not going to be saying anything too combustible one way or another.)

Now, if I drafted a QB in the first round, I’d like to see him pull off at least one fourth-quarter comeback highlighted by a game-winning drive. I’d want to see him be able to diagnose various defenses and problem solve. I’d like him to return the next week after a bad outing and show the ability to turn things around. But I’m not expecting peak Brady or Mahomes the first year. For some, I think they’ll end up thinking “well, it’s been 11 years, this thing should be perfect because they’ve been working on it forever,” and thus expect franchise QB play from moment one. If you’re expecting that as well, this game might end up bumming you out.

But it’s why I think I’ll ultimately slap the “promising rookie QB” label on EA Sports College Football 25 and the series as a whole. I already think the gameplay here is the best football gameplay we’ve gotten in any EA football game this generation, and that’s where I would start with any discussion about the game.

The variety that has emerged with having 134+ playbooks, multiple styles of offense, the AI now doing more on the field, and then it just feeling so smooth and responsive really makes me appreciate how much the college game has been missed. In a general sense, Madden has emerged from the fog and started to do some good things on the gridiron these past couple years, but the leap just from last year’s Madden to this game is not something we get very often. Sure, they are not the same series so maybe it’s not fair to do that comparison, but it’s the same engine.

At the same time, I think how far along the offense is now makes the lack of defensive formation additions and things like defensive line stunts stick out more than ever. Coverage shells and what they’re doing with match coverage and disguising coverages will be a net-positive for the series, but much like real college football, you will be trying to hang on for dear life on defense a lot of the time. We still need more optionality on defense to fight back.

Still, the highest highs this game can reach when the crowds, presentation, and gameplay are all mixing together are the selling point for me. And just like a promising rookie QB, it’s clear where the weaknesses are and how they can be game planned against if you want to tear them down. Things like simulated stats, top 25 rankings being wonky, and player editing are all areas that have clear issues. This game will need to improve “off the field” to match up to its on-the-field highs.

EA does seem open to patching some of these issues, but we’re just going to have to wait and see how that all progresses because we’ve seen things like simulated stats be wacky in Madden over the years.

We’re Entering The Suck Zone

Twisters is out this week, so it feels right to highlight the original movie and the legend himself, Philip Seymour Hoffman, in order to remind everyone sports gaming news is going to be unrelenting these next couple months.

Between EA Sports FC, NBA 2K, Madden, and NHL, it’s now the busy season because all of these games are coming out before the end of October. EA Sports FC 25 was unveiled this week, and our writer Kevin Groves detailed some of the features after sitting in on various presentations from the EA FC team. I think the hope with that game is that the “simulation mode” that’s being touted, together with the promised changes to make passing more realistic, give people enough of a base to have a more “realistic” footy experience.

I think the EA FC team is approaching the point the Madden team was at 4-5 years ago where they just need to figure things out again. The series has been in a sort of weird slide, and it lacks a proper gameplay identity because “sim” players, “comp” players, and “arcade” players all have reasonable gripes about the game’s direction. It’s nearly impossible to cater to every portion of the audience, but you need to be making some portion of it happy or at least making it crystal clear where the gameplay is headed. Instead, it’s been more about tons of patches and trying to appeal to various portions of the base depending on the day of the month.

The Open Championship is also upon us, and if you have still not played PGA Tour 2K23, it’s an Xbox Free Play weekend for that title. UFC 5 also received a new gameplay patch, and TopSpin 2K25got a patch as well.

This Community Do Be Crazy

Returning to EA Sports College Football 25, it’s been insane on the forums all week. This is easily the most people we’ve had around for the launch of a game in many years, and like I said in the first newsletter, it’s been really cool seeing both old and new faces pop up and interact.

As is the case with the forums after any big game, the hype will slowly die down now and we’ll get back to “normal” to some extent, but there’s lots of things happening right now if you want to be involved, get answers to questions, or just scope out some dope community content.

Some might be waiting to see what happens with patches, but many of us will start getting into dynasty mode now. The big thing here is Team Builder did launch last night, and I think like the game itself, it’s promising but has obvious blemishes that will need to be corrected. It’s also probably going to be very buggy because it’s launching at the absolute busiest time for the game.

Regardless, we also launched our Team Builder sub-forum, and that’s where you’ll go to talk about that mode. We already have the request thread up as well, which is where you can ask other amazing community members to help you create your ideal university. Even if Team Builder ends up being buggy this year, I’m sure community members are still going to do some amazing things.

If you want to have as much info as possible about possible dynasty mode teams, we also have some members doing great work. OS user Solidice continues to edit a Google Sheet updating the info about all 134 teams. This includes things like team ratings, impact players, dynasty recruiting pitch ranks, pipelines, stadium names, and so on. I have also pointed out a site where you can see every playbook in the game and see everything available to you there.

Once you start a dynasty, you might notice that some of the things outside of recruiting and playing games are a little bare compared to NCAA Football 14, and OS user bangthetrashcan has put together an awesome Google Sheet to help out there. You can input things like your recruiting results, coordinator history, depth charts, and so on. It’s a great organizer and also a nice time capsule once you start getting through some years of a playthrough.

For those who are just getting into the game today, you might not be aware of some of the jokes popping up around the menu music in College Football 25. The drums are great, don’t get me wrong, but they are also starting to drive some of us insane. There’s no “chill” to the menu music, and it can make recruiting feel even more stressful than it already is on its own. OS user dahlzy19 shared this great image from Reddit to sum things up

The community is pushing EA to hopefully add the fight songs to the menus to break things up, but OS user Watson has also put together playlists on Apple Music and Spotify that include things like some fight songs and other college football-adjacent jams.

Wrapping things up, wishlist threads are something that are synonymous with OS, so of course they’ve already begun for College Football 2026. I think the best thing I’ve seen so far comes from OS user TarHeelPhenom as he’s cut together Enter The Sandman with the Virginia Tech intro to remind us how dope it would be if we get even more signature music next year.

Yeah, that’s hype. Pay up EA and stop playing hard to get Metallica! Until next week y’all.

-Chase