EA Sports College Football 26 - Review
College Football in America is more than a sport, it is an institution, and it is not just the sport itself, it is the pageantry and tradition that surrounds the event itself. With school traditions and celebrations that date back more than a hundred years, pregame ceremonies such as tailgating, massive stadiums packed with screaming fans all while school bands blast out fight songs hoping to spur their school on to glory, going to a college football game is not just watching a sport, it is an experience.
As an Australian and a massive NFL fan since the late eighties, I was always aware of college football due to it being where the NFL recruited its players from, however I never had much exposure to college football due to living across the other side of the globe. That was until a game called NCAA Football 10 came into my possession, a game that changed my life as far as sports games were concerned, a game that taught me more about the intricacies of college football than anything else up to that point. Unfortunately, I only got to spend a short few years with the NCAA Football series as EA Sports discontinued the game in 2013. I always felt that EA Sports series of college football games were superior to their Madden counterparts especially when it came to features and gameplay mechanics and it appears I am not the only one as there were whole communities of gamers and content creators who held on to playing NCAA Football 14 whether it be on their aging PS3 consoles or via emulation.
All of this changed with the release of College Football 25 last year, and fans rejoiced as college football was finally back on their consoles, sure the game was not perfect but it was a great reboot to the franchise and most people were happy to look past some of the more serious issues and bugs as they were just happy to be playing college football again, I spent over 500 hours playing the game myself despite all of its issues. The last few weeks have seen an overload of hype for College Football 26 with EA releasing several deep dive videos and documents showcasing all of the new additions to the game as well as all of the issues they have addressed from last year’s release, and I must say myself, that seeing the list of new features and fixes and watching some of my favourite content creators play around with early versions of the game had my own excitement meter going off the charts. Thanks to EA Sports the wait is finally over, and we got our hands on College Football 26, does it deliver a touchdown, or will it get sacked behind the line of scrimmage?
One of the biggest gripes with College Football 25 was its road to glory mode, for those unaware this is basically a mode where you create your own player and then guide them through their college career completing off field activities such as studying, increasing your personal brand, doing things to impress your coach or even heading out to wild college frat parties, of course you have to balance all of this with being able to actually being able to keep your GPA at a level where you are eligible to play and keep your skills sharp enough so that you are effective once you actually hit the field. The mode was fun for a few hours but once you started to peel back the layers it became an empty and overall shallow experience. EA Sports have addressed a lot of the communities concerns in the new edition of the game, which is great, unfortunately though, the mode is still far from a deep experience.
One of the biggest features added back into the game from the old NCAA Football days is the ability to play through your high school career and complete goals to increase your potential to be drafted by a big time college, you get to actively pick up to 10 colleges you want to be recruited by and then increase your chances of receiving a scholarship from them by playing well in your high school games. This adds a lot of depth to the road to glory experience, especially since you can even use the games team builder website to create your own high school to play for. The big issue with playing through high school, for me at least, is that you don’t actually play through your full high school season, in fact you don’t even get to play though any of your full high school games, you basically get to pick from a handful of goals before the game and then you only get to play through those moments, if you perform well enough in those moments then your star rating will increase and you will be offered more scholarships, winning or losing the actual game doesn’t seem to matter which is a big miss for me, I want to be able to play the full games and lead my QB to win a state championship.
Being given a scholarship by a college doesn’t necessarily mean you will be the starting player at that position once you arrive on campus, so you will need to choose from your list of schools wisely. If you aren’t starting at your position then you must battle against the players above you to obtain the starting position, you do this via outperforming them in training drills, be ready for a challenge though as these can be quite difficult to complete depending on what settings you are playing on. Road to glory mode has taken some steps forward this year but I feel it is still not engaging as it was in the older college football games and it also has some frustrating issues, the biggest one being that you need to spend the majority of your weekly activity points on maintaining your GPA and this excludes you from engaging with most of the other content in the mode such as attending events on campus or even healing the wear and tear that your player has accumulated from their last game, there needs to be some balancing done in this area for it to avoid becoming EA Sports Study Simulator 2026.
Dynasty mode has always been the premier mode in the franchise, so it is no surprise that this mode got the most updates in this year’s version. For those unaware in dynasty mode, you create your own head coach, or offensive or defensive coordinator and then choose a team to take over and shape for the next 30 years, or swap teams every year, the choice is yours. Not only do you coach the team and call the plays, but you are also responsible for controlling the players during games as well as recruiting high school prospects and accruing and spending XP points in the various coaching trees to bolster your players performance or recruiting abilities. Dynasty mode is the meat and bones of College Football 26 and let’s just say EA Sports have added a whole lot of meat to the bone this year as evidenced by the massive franchise deep dive document they released, the updates are honestly so substantial that there are too many to even cover in this review.
Some of the more eye-catching updates are that more than 300 actual real-life coaches were added to dynasty mode and that the coaching skill level cap has now been increased to level 100, the transfer portal has been greatly improved as has been recruiting with the addition of “dynamic deal breakers”, one of the most polarising features from last years version “wear and tear” has also been improved and players now not only have game based wear and tear but also an overall wear and tear mode for the whole season which can affect their recovery in between games. The addition of mass subs and the ability to check on players energy levels and wear and tear status and sub them out or in without having to pause the game and go through the menus is one of my favourite new features. The developers have managed to make dynasty mode deeper than ever and have made it much more difficult to take over a one star school and transform it into a powerhouse, especially since keeping players happy and not wanting to transfer is not an easy task with the new “dynamic deal breaker” feature, which in the current days of NIL and brand deals and endorsements makes the mode feel true to life, as players become better and more popular they expect more in return from you, whether that be more playing time, a better chance of been drafted into the NFL or national championships. Dynasty mode is great this year and I am really happy with almost all the additions to the mode.
The presentation has also received a load of updates this year, gone is the tedious, repetitive, and headache inducing drumline from last year’s menus, the soundtrack this year consists of college marching band renditions of pop songs along with different school fight songs. There are loads of new team specific entrances based on their real-life schools, honestly watching Virginia Tech run out with Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’ blaring over the stadiums PA system with the crowd singing along was enough to give me goosebumps, the atmosphere in the bigger stadiums is absolutely incredible this year. The commentary hasn’t been given that much attention this year but what has been added adds to the immersion of the game with commentators in dynasty mode talking about some of your players past performances such as touchdowns or interceptions from previous weeks in the season, the commentary still gets repetitive after a while, but it is headed in the right direction.
Dynamic lighting has also been added to the game and in an afternoon game you will see the sun slowly set in the sky and by the last quarter you will be playing under the lights, this is a great addition and adds more graphical fidelity and immersion to the game than you would expect. The score bugs have also been updated, and you will see a lot more graphical overlays with different stats compared to last year’s game, it’s great to see not only how your team is performing but also others from around the nation. The dynasty options have also had a complete overhaul and you can now customise virtually everything about your league from how different tackles add to players wear and tear all the way through to how many players are able to transfer away from your school every year, you can raise or lower the difficulty in so many different ways and make rebuilding a team as hard or easy as you like which gives dynasty mode a much greater amount of replayability than last year’s game.
The on field action is one of the most important parts of any sports game and I am happy to say College Football 26 absolutely shines in this regard, the game feels slightly slowed down and less arcade-like than last year’s version but overall player motion, movement and animations are much more fluid, especially when it comes to quarterbacks and how they throw and how the ball comes out of their hands. Defensive backs will also now no longer able to jump 30 feet into the air and pick off your passes if they are not looking in the direction of the ball, this honestly adds so much to the gameplay alone that the on field play feels so much better this year, blocking and player pursuit angles have also been improved which also removes a lot of the frustrations I experienced with the previous installment in the franchise. The gameplay this year really shines, and I never once felt like I lost a game through bad AI, however I did lose a lot of games due to my stupid mistakes, which I tend to make many of and believe me the game will make you pay for them and the commentators won’t hesitate to rub it in either.
College Football 26 features some massive gameplay, presentation and quality of life improvements over its previous edition, it is a much more engaging and immersive football experience than what I got to play last year and hopefully it keeps improving over the next few years, I have no hesitation in recommending this game to anyone who is a fan of college football or even American football in general.
The Score
8.5
Review code provided by Electronic Arts
The Pros
Whilst the commentary has not been given much attention, other aspects of the presentation such as dynamic lighting, the new stats overlays and school run outs and celebrations make the game absolutely shine this year
On field play feels so much more fluid, smooth and lifelike, especially when it comes to tackling animations and how the quarterback releases the ball out of their hands
The Cons
Road to glory mode whilst updated still doesn’t have enough content to keep me engaged for more than a couple of hours
Some annoying bugs still exist, one of the main ones I encountered being unable to snap the ball during certain situations in the game, this was quite frustrating and I lost a few games because of it, hopefully this will be addressed in a future patch
