College Football 27, the good, bad and ugly. Plus: World Cup lessons

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“This is a women’s soccer school,” UNC hoops coach Dean Smith once said. Based on World Cup histories, he was also referring to the United States as a whole.

The Video Game: Is NIL fun? Sort of, in a way

After five years of hearing coaches bemoan the difficulties of keeping teams together in the NIL era, EA Sports’ new College Football 27 is giving the rest of us our first go at it.

Having spent a dozen hours on roster management over the holiday weekend (it was for work), I can confirm NIL is a handful (all five of my running backs want raises, so best wishes to four of them), though the game’s depiction only somewhat reflects reality.

First, the good news:

• Each team’s payroll — which comes from the same pool of funds that go toward assistants, staffers and weirdly temporary facility upgrades — feels realistic. Ohio State could spend Kent State’s entire budget on a single player. It’s in the game.
• If you enjoy strategy games, including sports sims like Out of the Park Baseball, then Dynasty Mode is now more your thing. Rebuilds of UMass-type teams are even more challenging now — at least at the outset, when you might not be able to afford a single three-star receiver’s money asks. Winning eventually loosens more cash.
• Of course, anyone who doesn’t want to worry about this could avoid Dynasty Mode. (The gameplay itself, the actual football, is the best it’s ever been. Offensive linemen nail assignments instead of floating toward unseen apple pies. Defensive backs seek nearby work, rather than being traffic cones who develop sonar once the ball is thrown. Pre-snap adjustments are both deeper and streamlined. Playing football rocks.)

And … the not so good:

• Computer-controlled teams seem awful at handling NIL. (Insert jokes about Brian Kelly’s 2025 LSU. No, way worse than that.) Every recruiting cycle in CFB 27, lots of four-stars wind up with zero scholarship offers due to AI GMs apparently being horrific at math, meaning patient human GMs can scoop up blue-chips for the same salary as walk-ons.
  
• After a few simulated seasons, CPU teams are ending up with their best players being their punters and kickers, perhaps because those positions are simple to budget. All of FBS is now Iowa. EA’s seemingly understaffed dev team could fix things in an upcoming patch, though some underlying issues have been around since before the game attempted NIL.
• A larger concern: EA’s monetization creep. Unlike previous years, buying a more expensive version of the game is all but required in order to fully upgrade your Dynasty coach. If EA grows greedier, the long-beloved experience of building a school across virtual decades would only lose charm and joy.

Will I keep playing this year’s game? I’ve been playing it since Bill Walsh was on the cover in 1995, so yeah. My create-a-team, the Alaska Seawolves, has gained promotion into the Pac-12 by winning the Mountain West. Wake Forest’s punter-centric worldview will not pull me away from what I’m assembling beneath Anchorage’s mountainous skyline.

Create-a-team is great now, actually, with rivalry histories you can invent beforehand (Alaska-Hawaii, the Volcano Cup) and stadiums you can evolve over time. Gonna need to expand Scott Summers Stadium soon, since alumni are impressed by the four-stars I’ve somehow yoinked out of Seattle for free.

Recommendation: Before buying CFB 27, Dynasty Mode devotees might as well wait a week or two to see what EA might tweak. The on-field gameplay will likely be altered soon as well, but at the moment, that part is unequivocally better than CFB 26.

Quick Snaps

🎂 As referenced, last week was the fifth birthday of NIL. Pinpoint the moment when the whole thing (somewhat inevitably) pivoted from Instagram ads for car dealers to boosters passing hats.

📰 News:

• After Wednesday’s newsletter, Ohio State got a commitment from yet another blue-chip son of Marvin Harrison: 2028’s No. 2 receiver, five-star Jett Harrison.
• A fellow five-star, OT Ismael Camara, committed to Texas’ top-five 2027 class, though four-star safety Karnell James flipped to LSU.
• Decommit: “Just over a month after Michigan State University President Kevin Guskiewicz announced he was leaving the university to become Clemson University’s president, Guskiewicz has chosen to remain at MSU.” (Due to contractual whatnot, MSU athletic director J Batt’s exit for Kentucky thus involves a full $5 million buyout.)
• The Pac-12‘s commissioner said it would be “incredibly inappropriate” to reveal the payouts of its media deals. This is also the only FBS league without a media day. Maneuvering in the shadows.
• “The Big 12 football and men’s and women’s basketball regular seasons will also be dubbed ‘Monster Energy Big 12 Football’ and ‘Monster Energy Big 12 Basketball.’” Remember that new sponsorship detail, any time you’re tempted to merely call it the Big 12.
• “Former Bucknell strength and conditioning coach Mark Kulbis has been charged with criminal hazing and manslaughter over the 2024 death of a freshman football player.” Details here.

❤️‍🩹 Are Notre Dame and the ACC still buddies, despite December’s Playoff dustup? Really thorough story: “Of the ACC’s 50 most-viewed regular-season games since their football scheduling agreement took the field in 2014, only Florida State played in more than Notre Dame.”

🤠 How a Deion Sanders-sized roster flip works these days, as demonstrated by Oklahoma State. Eighty-seven new guys, one big frenzy.

🏆 Some non-football stuff:

Fútbol Americano: Access is awesome

The single best story of what has been the best World Cup in a while (at least until last night, for my fellow Americans): the round-of-32 run by Cape Verde, an Atlantic island nation with fewer people than metro Wilmington, N.C.

The Blue Sharks, playing in their first World Cup, went undefeated in regulation (to use a Les Miles term) against powers Spain and Uruguay before nearly pulling off one of the greatest upsets in sports history, going the distance against defending champ Argentina before falling 3-2.

Not to hand it to FIFA, because no one ever has to hand it to FIFA, but this team goes down as the biggest validation of the tournament’s expansion from 32 teams to 48. (Plus: nine of 10 African nations reached the knockout round.) Bracket expansion: actually good, sometimes!

But if college football’s suits had been in charge of the World Cup, Cape Verde’s spot would’ve gone to an underachieving brand name like Italy. Blue Sharks in the ChatGPT Bowl at 3 a.m. on Christmas Eve. College football, more cynical than freaking FIFA.

(I know I frequently reiterate this point about G6 teams lacking championship paths, but it’s been one of college football’s most constant issues for over a quarter century now, and in the NIL era, it only shoves these teams further down the food chain. Thank you for reading periodic emails about it.)

It wasn’t the idea of tournament expansion that grossed out so many college football fans, back when the Big Ten and company began floating a 24-team Playoff. (Even the far majority of Big Ten fans disliked it.)

Instead, the off-putting part was how the whole thing was openly being designed to prop up underachieving brand names. Instead of looking for college football’s next Cape Verde, let’s give a mulligan to USC, the sport’s Italy. Oh, but if the underdogs play, they probably wouldn’t win. Yeah, that’s why they’re called underdogs!

On the site, Chris Vannini has much more on what college football should learn from World Cup expansion. A key point:

“The addition of 16 teams didn’t mean 16 more European teams. The new spots were shared across each continent. Europe got three more, but Africa got four more.”

And it turned out great. Load the bracket with as much TV inventory as the suits want, as long as the whole thing is designed to cook up new stories, rather than reheat expensive leftovers.

Another World Cup thing: I loved this NYT collection on the United States’ diversity, meaning every World Cup team is a home team in one community or another. Gift link.

Before I let you go: Did anyone confirm whether 2010-2012 Cincinnati Bearcats head coach Butch Jones attended Taylor Swift’s wedding?

Last week’s most-clicked: It was always going to be this exploration of the 1990s’ ugliest college football uniforms.

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