Hey EA Sports! This isn't in the game!

My generation has grown up with video games, started with Mario jumping around on an 8 bit Nintendo, to what we have now in Call of Duty:Black Ops and playing games online vs. someone across the world.  And the classics we have grown up on aren’t just one timers, they are franchises.  Mario, Call of Duty, and Madden.  And with each installment you get something new, new storylines, maps, villains, weapons, rosters and add-ons and graphic up grades. 

Mario's Evolution



Super Mario Brothers on NES




Super Mario Galaxy 2 on Wii



And football games have evolved too.

Ten Yard Fight on NES



NCAA Football '10 on Xbox 360





I’ve owned every version of EA Sports College Football, but 1, on many platforms, and also about 70% of the Madden’s.  Most of them include little upgrades year and year that add on to what it previously had.  Plus little graphic upgrades.  Along the way we got the dynasty, the online dynasty, and Superstar modes.  Now a few years ago on I think MySpace or some blog I had I posted how I would improve NCAA Football, we’ll I’m going try to recreate it here….and it will go for Madden also.

First off, on NCAA, get rid of the all mascot teams and the historical teams.  No one plays with a team full of Cy’s vs. a team full of Bevo’s.  It’s stupid.  Waste of memory.  The historical teams are cool but really, takes up space.  Madden has the historical teams, and yea keep it there, it’s cool to be the 85 Bears and roll everyone.

So EA added the super star mode where you get to go from HS player to being recruited and then work your way up the depth chart.  It’s a little too easy but hey, it works.  Now why not do that with coaching your dynasty? 

After your superstar you can either export to go to the NFL/Madden, or why not sign on with the school you just were at (or somewhere else) as a grad asst or a positions coach?  In the dynasty feature you jump right in and are a head coach, don’t have to work your way up.  Is that in the game?  No.  I would think it would be easy to code and create too. 

So your dynasty is over.  You go into coaching instead of the NFL.  You take over a position such as DL coach.  You control just your DL during the game play.  You schedule them game planning, practicing, film watching or so forth during the week.  When it comes to game time the D-Coordinator calls the plays, and like super star mode where you only control 1 player, you control that set of players, so typically like 4 DL. 

For recruiting purposes, a recruiting coordinator would need to be created that would help the complex and time consuming task that is recruiting, but when it would come to a position such as DL that is being recruited, you could decide what area’s to emphasize. 

Throughout the year, how your position performs, you would then get points(to be determined).  One would be for performance to move up to other coordinator positions, the other to buy roles similar to what were used in the brief NFL Coach game.  Help you at what you can coach up the most.  Strength, speed, and so forth.

To move up to the coordinator spot you would need to reach certain levels.  At the school your currently at would be the easiest to move up to.  Schools with a lesser star rating would have a slightly higher threshold and then schools with higher star rankings would require a higher point total.  The only way to move from position coach to head coach is to amass an extremely high amount of performance points and then move down to a lower ranked school.  For example, no being the DL coach at Arkansas State and then moving to the Head Coach at Alabama.  Not gonna happen.

Once you get the coordinator gig, you control that whole side of the ball.  You game plan during the week (or skip – but earn less points).  Help the recruiting coordinator out on all position players on your side of the ball.  You role has expanded, like it happens “IN THE GAME.” 

Again to move up to a head coach you need to amass a certain number of points, and to move up to a head coach to a big time BCS school ala what happens, IN THE GAME.  Urban Meyer just didn’t show up at Florida.  He had to work to get there from Bowling Green to Utah and then Florida. 

A 2K basketball game had a similar feel to it, I believe ESPN NCAA Hoops 2K5, when you had to coach at small schools and get offered jobs to move up.  Why hasn’t EA thought of this yet?  And if anyone from EA reads this, I can help with development of this!  (Shameless plug.)  I think this feature in the EA Sports games would be a great addition and it would tie in what they had in the short lived NFL Coach series that wasn’t given much of a chance.  And would breathe some fresh life into the football games at EA that have had little by little feature upgrades and graphic upgrades over the past decade.