Underdog Dynasty Roundtable: What’s your favorite NCAA Football game?

It’s been four years since EA Sports released a college football game. The mothership ran a fun article on what the ratings might be like for teams this year if NCAA Football was real.

This inspired us to take a trip down memory lane to give our favorite version of the NCAA Football video game.

Cyrus Smith, Managing Editor

I know many are going to say NCAA Football 14 due to it being the last game. Some are going to say NCAA Football 11 due to the game introducing the online dynasty feature, which took the game’s popularity to a whole new level.

Those two editions of NCAA Football are up there for me but my favorite NCAA Football game is NCAA Football 2005. At the time this game came out my love for the sport was in its beginning stages. I loved watching college football because of the passion and this video game really brought that home for me.

The “Top 25 Toughest Places to Play" feature was fantastic. Normally homefield advantage in video games is irrelevant. Not in this game. The screen shook, your controller vibrated uncontrollably, and calling audibles was a pain in the ass. Another cool feature was that you could play with FCS/1-AA teams. Occasionally me and my uncle would play the Florida Classic (Cookman vs FAMU).

My family members played with Miami, Florida State, and Florida. I was weird. I liked playing with Oregon, Missouri (Brad Smith was incredible in that game), and Army (only Dynasty mode though). The games against my dad, uncles, and brothers were heated and extremely fun. This was my first ever college football game so for me it’ll always be my favorite.

Aikman Chambers, App State Contributor

It came down to either NCAA 14 or 06 for me because 06 was the first game i played and obviously 14 being the last. NCAA 06 is my winner, now the reviews may not be as good as 05 but I never played 05 and I’m running on personal experience. My dad was the one who got me playing NCAA 06 on PS2, as he had built a dynasty with North Carolina on the game.

My favorite memory from playing the game was the time my dad and I played against each other. I was Texas Tech and my dad was Alabama and we were back and forth the whole game. Dad scored with like 20 some seconds to go and took a 51-45 lead. On the ensuing kickoff I take it back down to about the 35 yard line to try and start a game winning drive. After I completed a third down pass with about 7 or 8 seconds left I drop back and throw a 60 yard bomb and score with 1 second left and I kick the PAT and win 52-51. Needless to say dad cut off the PS2 after that.

My favorite mode was obviously dynasty mode. I replaced all the FBS teams with the FCS (Known as 1-AA in 06) teams. Appalachian State was my obvious team of choice and I led them to a National Title in my 2nd year of the dynasty. Much like Cyrus said above, this was my first NCAA game so it holds the spot as my favorite.

Vidal Espinoza, Texas State Contributor

Throughout my college career my best friend and I used to go head to head on any football video game from Super Tecmo Bowl on the NES to the latest Madden on such a consistent basis we kept a log book of our games. But of all the games we played NCAA Football 2005 was by far my favorite.

Our battles consisted of even match-ups: Ohio State vs. Notre Dame, Bethune-Cookman vs. Florida A&M, etc. But besides our epic battles against each other we liked to be a little sadistic and we’d team up and play as USC or Alabama or a powerful team and go up against Youngstown State, Elon, Grambling or any of the other I-AA teams and take turns at the controller passing it back and forth every time we’d score. If we didn’t break 100 points or the opposing team scored we considered it a failure.

But my favorite highlight was in year two of my dynasty as Texas State. I kicked New Mexico State out of the WAC and replaced them with the Bobcats. Year one I went 7-5 with a bowl berth but the next year we went 14-0 highlighted by a Fiesta Bowl win over Ohio State and Texas State wide receiver Cameron Luke winning the Heisman.