Jan 23, 2012; State College, PA, USA; A halo has been added to the mural of former Penn State Nittany Lions head coach Joe Paterno after his passing. Mandatory Credit: Andrew Weber-US PRESSWIRE

In 267 damning pages, former FBI Director Louis Freeh leads an investigation that outlines Paterno’s knowledge of at least one serious incident between Sandusky and a child on the Penn State campus, and was later complicit in a 13 year cover-up of the events to protect the reputation of the football program and the university.

With those findings in mind even to the most sentimental of hearts it’s tough to see Joe Pa as coming from any better cut of clothe than an Urban Meyer or a Nick Saban. Was Joe Paterno the highly virtued man we thought, or was that all a facade, the virtue little more than ornamentation on an elaborate costume designed to make us see exactly what he wanted us to?

That’s frankly another discussion entirely, but one of the many new wounds that the Penn State community must try to heal from. But that’s fairly superficial compared to the deeper issue, the one that will undoubtedly come to light in the next few days.

Penn State football deserves the death penalty.

This isn’t SMU, this isn’t pay-for-play, this is so much worse it’s unimaginable. This a university willfully putting its own reputation over the well-being of innocent children, hell practically sacrificing the innocence of children to protect their own self interest. This is a group of men who decided that the image of the football program, those iconic plain white helmets and navy jerseys, was above the welfare of children, when they had repeated indications there was a serious problem.

To be blunt, this was a group of men who knew an employee was raping children in their facilities but didn’t want to rock the boat.

To me, and I’m sure to a great many others, there could be no better indication that you no longer have a firm grasp on any sort of moral compass. Even the roughest prisons have unwritten codes the punish child rape, yet for 13 years at Penn State nobody said anything despite knowledge a highly celebrated former coach with full access to their facilities was carrying on inappropriately with children on school grounds?

That’s not lack of institutional control, that’s lack of institutional values. That’s worse.

The problem is, the NCAA shares those same values (or lack thereof) and that’s why Penn State will get to keep playing football.

The values we’re referring to, or really value (singular) is money. Profitability. It’s why nobody wanted to make too big a fuss about Sandusky at Penn State. Sure there were issues with old friendships and loyalties, but the bottom line was that when this all came to light Penn State was on the decline and with Joe Pa pushing 70, a scandal likely could have been enough to start unseating him.

It would have killed the University too.

The men at the top got together and decided that was a worse possibility than continuing to let Sandusky operate…

Think about it, from 1998-2004 Joe Pa and Penn State were 45-39. News that Paterno’s lifelong coaching assistant was a child molester would do little to engender support from a fanbase that was beginning to grow impatient, in addition to hurting what were already diminishing football revenues as the team struggled.

Bottom-line, things were tough, money was down, it was not a good time for a scandal so profit dictated that nothing be said. 13 years later, it was too late to get out in front of the story…

January 22, 2012; State College, PA, USA; Candles lie at the statue of Joe Paterno former head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions outside Beaver Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Rob Christy-US PRESSWIRE

Here’s where we’re about to see the stunning lack of values from the NCAA too, Penn State should see its proverbial head roll for this one, but they’ll keep playing football in Happy Valley because it’s too profitable not to shut down the Nittany Lions.

The NCAA doesn’t go after profit, they go after threats to their profits.

When the NCAA goes after student-athletes, the infractions they’re the most serious about are the ones where the athlete profits “unfairly.” Honestly, Terrelle Prior is not a bad person for trading some Ohio State swag for a tattoo, but they made it seem like he was all that was wrong with college football at Ohio State last summer.

AJ Green didn’t deserve a four game suspension for selling his own jersey, especially when UGA’s bookstore sold over 6 different replica varieties. USC didn’t win more games because Reggie Bush’s parents had a big house.

And seriously, aside from the benefits associated with recruiting (of which many players don’t even sign with the violating schools, see Miami) do house rentals, boat trips or VIP passes help anyone gain a competitive advantage? Maybe marginally… Maybe.

The real reason those are considered capital offenses though is that it puts the profitability of the NCAA’s entire system at risk. Face it, the NCAA is running a racket where they make millions and millions of dollars with very little overhead in regards to their athletes. Anything that compensates a player, or threatens to modify the current system hurts their bottom line and the system’s long-term viability and just like any two-bit gangsters or crooks, they protect their interests forcefully.

But shutting down a program? Why would you do that?

The NCAA won’t kill Penn State because they won’t kill the cash cow the program has become. It’s too profitable. The Nittany Lions just raised more money through donations this past off-season than at any point in their history. The cash is still flowing.

SMU was a different animal, they were in such violation of NCAA rules they could have completely ruined the entire system by (gasp) paying athletes. That’s an affront to the college game.

This at Penn State? This is a travesty. But there’s too much money to be made once it passes, so justice be damned, save the brand.

Patrik Nohe is the Florida State University beat writer for the Miami Herald, follow him on Twitter!

These things get dropped all the time... (Derick E. Hingle-US PRESSWIRE)

College football is about to change forever, but maybe not in the way you’re anticipating. Sure the college presidents seem to finally have a solution for a playoff and will do away with the highly controversial BCS formula, but things aren’t so clear-cut as to just how beneficial this will all end up being in the long run.

That’s because this was a decision born out of profitability, not necessarily what was in the best interests of college football.

For years, college football has clung to its bowl system and for good reason, bowl games are highly incentivized. But they’re also not ideal for determining championships either.

The Bowl system harkens back to another era before the college game had gone truly national, back when teams played for conference titles and Bowl games were largely intended to pit the best of the best together in match-ups that were closer to exhibitions than true title clashes.

Remember, until the advent of the BCS, the top two teams oftentimes didn’t play each other in their bowl match-ups. It wasn’t uncommon to see the top-ranked team play in one bowl game like the Rose Bowl while the number two team played in another like the Sugar, sometimes not even against top ten teams.

National Championships were awarded by the polls back then, not by some all-determining national title game. You had split decisions like Miami and Washington in 1991, there was a ton of controversy.

The Flaw in Logic

The point where some of the logic for the national championship comes off the tracks is on the insistence that Bowls continue to be a part of the equation. Even back in the 90′s it was obvious that the Bowl system likely wasn’t the best way to determine a national champion.

For better or worse, the BCS has been an improvement over the old system. (Marvin Gentry-US PRESSWIRE)

In fact, that’s really a microcosm of the entire reason it took so long to ever even get to a college playoff. Bowls aren’t around today because they’re good for the game of college football, they’re around because they make money and athletic programs like making money.

The BCS modified the Bowl system so it could name a champion, and more importantly the system could continue being profitable.

And here’s what’s funny, the BCS did work, it may be controversial but the only schools that were really clamoring for change were the ones outside the big six conferences that had a hard time profiting off of it regularly. Sure every few years there was a big to-do about who got into the BCS title game, but even the method for picking teams took the blame away from the writers and coaches and placed it squarely on the shoulders of a formula that was easy to deride.

It was blameless and profitable as hell. Are we really surprised they dragged their feet on a replacement? And now we have one, but look out, because things just got infinitely more complicated than they were before.

All the worst elements of the college game, the sniping between conferences, the overtures about financial viability and the open campaigning for playoff spots are coming, and they are going to do little to enrich this sport. This new method just lets other factors besides won-loss records and who a team is on the field come into consideration during the selection process…

Say Hello to College Elitism

Beforehand college elite was just something republicans used to yell at ivy-grad liberals, now elitism in the college ranks will mean something much different.

The criterion and formula have yet to be established, but a committee will pick four teams for the playoff. That sounds really clear cut, but without automatic qualifiers be ready for conference-based classism to ruin the debate. It’s only a matter of time before we start to have the discussion about whether being a one-loss SEC runner up is more impressive than winning the Big East or ACC undefeated. Be prepared to listen to the Big 10 have to answer for its lousy BCS record every time they get a shot at putting a team in.

Just expect to listen to a lot of BS.

Get ready for plenty of self-aggrandizing SEC word vomit. (Paul Abell-US PRESSWIRE)

Since the start of the BCS there’s always been a sentiment that the SEC is the best conference in the country, even coaches in other conferences admit as much. But I have a very good feeling they’re also about to become the whiniest conference in the country because I promise you unless there are two SEC teams in that playoff every year the entire Southeast will explode over how their conference got disrespected and screwed.

That ought to engender plenty of pandering and insolent behavior from Big 12 commissioners who have begun to get an inferiority complex in the shadow of the SEC.

And then there’s Notre Dame, who hasn’t deserved a BCS bid it’s gotten since the system’s inception, but travels well and makes whatever bowl they go to enough money that it makes the most financial sense to include them, no matter what.

Notre Dame is the argument on the other end of the spectrum from the power conferences, whereas the SEC and the Big 12 will have complaints based on merit, Notre Dame will represent what is really at the root of every college football decision, the desire to make money. Anytime its even close, you can expect Notre Dame to be in full-on campaign mode and you can expect the committee to listen because the Irish bring the dollars.

Are you seeing the issue?

Before with the BCS formula, flawed though it was, you had an ironclad way to determine rankings and match-ups. You may not have liked it, but there wasn’t a ton of subjectivity at the end of the day, it all came down to the computers in that formula. And no, it didn’t always nail the top two but I don’t ever remember thinking 1-4 were wrong…

This new way is akin to opening Pandora’s box if you don’t find the right merit-based criterion for determining who goes.

And they won’t.

This is Still About Money

Like I said earlier, the BCS stuck because it was profitable, even now the playoff decision wasn’t unanimous because at least one chancellor said publicly he preferred the status quo. The status quo is profitable.

The college playoff won because the financial incentive was finally too good to pass up. Now they get to promote two more bowls to BCS status and the two national semifinals will cycle between the six, with the other four sites also getting big games. This new approach won where others had failed in that it appealed in a very real way to the bottom line.

The Sugar Bowl will now be one of six BCS Bowls. (Derick E. Hingle-US PRESSWIRE)

You notice they could have easily fixed all of this a couple of years ago when they just randomly decided to invent a fifth BCS game a week after all the others to serve as a championship.

Right then, pragmatism should have taken over in a room full of university presidents and a plus one could have been born. You have the semi-finals the week before and the new-fangled BCS National Title game should have been the plus one.

That actually makes sense more than this playoff does.

But then you lose a whole bowl game that way. That’s two more fanbases you can’t sell the bowl experience to and milk for millions at the end of the season. Instead you have to rely on two already depleted fan-bases in the hopes they’ll travel well two weeks in a row.

Ewww, that’s not as profitable, so common sense be damned.

In this new plan we have a playoff where they also get to add two more BCS bowls (technically one game, since the BCS national title game ceases to exist in its current iteration) PLUS you get a Super Bowl style one-off as a national title game that will move around the country each year and really rake it in.

Now we’re talking big money, whereas just three years ago Ohio State’s president Gordon Gee said over his dead body a playoff would happen in this era, suddenly there’s interest in the room.

But it’s definitely not a new era…

Everybody wins this way, at least at first blush. The public gets what they want and things just got even more profitable for the schools. Even the selection process becomes more profitable because lord knows a formula cannot give preferential value to profit like a group of people can.

Among the factors the committee will consider are won-loss record, strength of schedule, head-to-head results and whether a team is a conference champion. The selection committee will also play a part in creating matchups for the games at the four sites that do not hold a semifinal in a given year.

Let’s read between the lines here. First of all, harkening back to the point about college football classism, winning your conference is a criteria but not a prerequisite, but more disturbing is that last sentence:

Not having a matchup between the Pac 10/12 and the Big 10 makes the Rose Bowl committee cry. (Kirby Lee-Image of Sport-US PRESSWIRE)

“The selection committee will also play a part in creating matchups for games at the other four sites…”

They shouldn’t.

That influences the process, they should have no say over who plays where if they aren’t in the playoff. Why? Because money influences decisions more that way. How many times during the current BCS have you heard grousing from one of the big four about getting a lousy matchup.

When they say lousy they don’t mean a bad game from a competitive standpoint, they mean that it isn’t as profitable as it could have been.

But those were the breaks with the old system. Now that a human committee is picking games you don’t think making sure all the Bowls are happy will be a consideration? Could you not envision a scenario where the fact the Rose Bowl wants a historic Pac 12-Big 10 matchup influences that fourth playoff spot?

Here’s a better question, should the potential for that conflict of interest even exist?

Small Schools Are in Trouble

The real reason the BCS doesn’t like a team like Boise State is not their conference ties, that wouldn’t matter if the Broncos travelled well. As we already mentioned, Notre Dame plays the back end of the Big 10 and all three of the service academies every year in lieu of a conference schedule and they get in with two losses.

But even at full force Boise State can’t crack the numbers a school like Texas or Michigan can bring to a bowl game. That matters. That’s why they’re really second class to the BCS.

The people at Tostitos still get nightmares about this... (Brian Losness-US PRESSWIRE)

And now without automatic qualifiers, even schools from big conferences that travel poorly are in trouble. Take Wake Forest, a school that has won the ACC before but with an enrollment of under 5,000 is never going to bring a lot of money with it to a bowl game. A few years ago, when Wake was in the Orange Bowl that was the real reason they were so upset in South Florida, they had Wake against Louisville, a basketball school, and they knew their bottom line would be way down.

Now, realistically (not thinking in this altruistic bubble we sometimes like to live in) do you think the Boises and Wakes of the world, even in traditionally respectable conferences, will get the same kind of shot as a historic program like a Notre Dame or USC?

No.

If that fourth spot in the playoff is close, you really think the school that travels better doesn’t have the advantage?

At least under the BCS a small school had some protection from that sort of scrutiny, not a lot, there was still some wheeling and dealing to get the bowls more profitable games, but if the formula called a school’s number, they got to go. If they won an AQ conference, they got to go.

Nowadays?

It helps if they travel well.

Disclaimer: This isn't a review of the upcoming NCAA Football 13 and Madden 13 games. It's a comparative look at the two EA franchises. If someone wants to send us a copy of Madden or NCAA a few weeks early to review though, we'd happily oblige...

Kicking off our offseason Bang the Doldrums series, we have the age old debate between EA Sports’ two annual football offerings, Madden for the NFL and NCAA Football for the college game.

And really, you’re splitting hairs when you debate one over the other, because they are more or less the same game repackaged to fit the needs of the demographics they’re being marketed to. But fans of both games are passionate, and based on what you’re looking for in a game, each has its advantages over the other.

Opening Salvo

For better or worse, NCAA typically runs on the last year’s Madden engine. That’s why you see a gameplay change hit Madden and based largely on its success it may or may not be implemented the following year in their NCAA franchise.

That right there is all the argument a lot of pro-Madden gamers need for why one series is the better of the two.

And on some levels, they’re right. Madden is a hallmark franchise for EA, it gets the preferential treatment, more of a marketing push, a bigger budget and a lot more clout. That’s all true. In terms of what the most polished gameplay experience is, it’s typically going to be Madden (we’ll get into that more later, beyond just the money).

Apr 25, 2012; New York, NY, USA; Detroit Lions receiver Calvin Johnson holds up a poster after being named the cover athlete during the Madden 13 cover unveiling on the set of SportsNation at Times Square. Mandatory Credit: Jerry Lai-US PRESSWIRE

The flipside of that though, is that you really have to take some liberties with the truth if you actually want to argue that EA sports has dramatically changed anything about the gameplay in either series since they got exclusive rights back in 2006, hell earlier.

Truth be told, no game sells more and gets more credit for changing less each year than Madden football. While other sports franchises at least keep it fresh and overhaul things every few years (the NBA 2k series and MLB: The Show both come to mind as great examples), you’re still essentially playing the exact same Madden game you pulled out of the PS2 box in 2002. That’s a decade’s worth of games where little outside of the rosters and graphics have updated.

Case in point, remember the first time you saw a linebacker drop into a flat, jump 50 inches and high point an interception on an intermediate route with one hand? No, not in real life, that’s still never occurred but it’s been happening once per game in Madden (and by extension NCAA) for the last decade. All that’s changed is the linebacker’s uniform looks more authentic and the lighting’s better.

But you can still go on to YouTube and search and find hundreds, even thousands, of angry videos highlighting that glitch/physics-miracle every single release and yet after a decade EA has still not addressed one of their fans’ biggest complaints about their most popular game.

Only the immense popularity of the NFL and people’s desire to play a football game, period, can sustain that model. Because outside of the vacuum of sports, EA would either have a dead franchise on its hands or be reviled for watering down the industry based on their lack of innovation with Madden the past decade.

Frankly it shouldn’t be close between the two franchises given the disproportionate resources handed to Madden each year.

The mere fact NCAA Football is in the same conversation as a game that it is literally a watered down version of is more than enough evidence that EA views Madden as little more than a cash cow, and it’s not the sprawling accomplishment its made out to be anymore.

It was in 2002, now we’re just revisiting Rome each year.

Edge: Draw, Madden should be the clear cut favorite but manages to do less with more. We should all expect so much more out of EA Sports each year when they release their flagship franchise.

The Gameplay

Madden is still a phenomenal football game, don’t get me wrong. It may not have changed much (or at all) in the previous decade but it’s still one the best sports games ever made. And one of the strengths of the two series is that despite running on very similar engines, they don’t play much alike at all.

You have to admit, this looks phenomenal.

The NFL game feels like a pro game should, it’s fast, there’s little margin for error and if you have the difficulty correct it shouldn’t be that high scoring. I legitimately enjoy the simulation aspect of Madden because you can’t just blow out another team easily, much like in the NFL even the differences between the best and worst teams can make for a competitive matchup regardless of records.

I like the college feel more though, as polished as the NFL experience is, there’s something about the wide-open feel of the NCAA game that appeals to me more. It feels more… human. In NCAA there is a disparity, a massive one, that serves as both a detriment and a strength (I’ll get into that later). You don’t want to run Florida Atlantic up against USC, that’s never going to end well even if you’re an exceptional player. A lot of people don’t like that, they don’t like that a freshman corner is going to get embarrassed if you leave him locked up on a senior receiver. I happen to love it. The little imperfections that make up so much of the college game are all present in NCAA, but from a video game standpoint, it’s also ammo for the detractors.

Before you can really determine whether one franchise is better than the other you need to establish what you want. Madden is the better choice for online gaming because of the balance. With just 32 teams (I don’t get into historical or all-star teams) there is considerably more time to spend on each player, on each roster and on making sure that balance and parity prevail.

That makes for a fantastic online experience, if you want to play with other people or online then Madden is the way to go. You plug it in, you get roster updates and you can play anyone with that week’s NFL teams. From a purely video-game standpoint, Madden wins in a one-off every time because its single game experience is better than NCAA. It’s more balanced and more polished.

You’re going see a better product if you play just one single game of Madden as opposed to a single game of NCAA.

That’s because NCAA is not balanced, it can’t be. You couldn’t build a game where a team like Utah State had a realistic chance to knock off teams like Oklahoma and Texas in a one-off, it’s inauthentic, even if it makes the online and exhibitional aspects of the game lack a little.

In NCAA each year there are maybe ten power schools, teams that could legitimately win it all, then there are other, lower tiers of schools that are in over their head if you ask them to play above what they’re rated.

I can understand how casual gamers prefer Madden.

Edge: In terms of pure gameplay, Madden wins.

Game Modes

No where is EA’s failure to improve these series more obvious than in both NCAA and Madden’s failed career modes. They were promising, if broken, when introduced and they’re just as broken now, years later, even as they change around the presentation every year.

Horribly flawed...

For those unfamiliar, both games let you assume control of a player and guide them through a career. You play exclusively as that player in career mode (so if you’re a WR, you only control that one WR), you don’t have say over play-calls (most of the time) and the AI in the mode is crap-tastic. I used to hit this mode first every year, now I don’t even waste my time. The menu screen may look different in each new version, but the monotonous game-mode continues to feel tossed in at the last moment, under-developed and lacks any payoff whatsoever.

A running back at Wisconsin for instance will be amazed at how much the Badgers suddenly throw, in spite of traditionally being a ground-first offense, for instance. And don’t even try to play defense because the controls are so inept you’ll find you’re better off not touching the controller and letting the auto-assist set up your tackles.

A year into the gameplay mode, those are understandable issues, half a decade into it and you’re wondering what they’re paying the programmers to do… It’s like the one-handed LB picks, the fact this has never been improved is almost insulting. EA knows they don’t have to do anything to their football games outside of make sure they update the rosters because people will still buy them, no matter how little effort they actually put in.

Especially when you’re the only show in town.

That leaves exhibitions and the Franchise/Dynasty modes that are the real gems of the two games and that’s its own category in and of itself.

Edge: Draw, actually NCAA. They’re both basically the same flawed game mode, but I’d rather listen to college fight songs play on the menu screen than hear the Madden soundtrack for the 1,000th time.

Dynasty vs Franchise, the Battle of Longevity

This is where NCAA Football blows Madden right out of the water. I can’t play Madden past the season it was created for. The off-season AI and the way that franchise mode turns itself over is awful and creates a pseudo-fantasy league for the following season that I do not enjoy at all. Something about computer-automated free agent acquisition still hasn’t been mastered yet and it really takes me out of the simulation.

That’s an issue for me, because dynasty and franchise modes are my favorite thing in sports games. I love building a team from the ground up and having to make moves and transactions like a GM. Other games have mastered this at the pro level, NBA 2k for instance features a really solid franchise mode where you can play several seasons without things starting to feel hokey.

Compared to NCAA Football, Madden's franchise mode is painfully shallow.

Madden just cannot make that happen though, at least not for me. After your first season in Madden, franchise mode jumps the shark and you end up with a Bizarro-world NFL that isn’t what you paid for.

NCAA has no such problem, and part of that is just the set up. While the NFL is player-driven, college is run by coaches.  And while college recruiting has gotten bigger, most people still don’t follow it. That added anonymity, the ability to keep the game fresh with a constant influx of players, is something Madden can’t do.

In the NFL the new talent comes from college and a lot of the prospects come pre-billed. That means unless you can import a good draft class with accurate ratings each year, your game may as well not be NFL-branded anymore by year four because you won’t know any of the players.

That really takes you out of it.

In the NCAA that problem is moot because rarely do you ever know a player’s name before you see him play in college (only in the cases of sons of famous players, and really high profile recruits). Because of this, NCAA Football’s recruiting (which actually does get a facelift every year) is highly nuanced and fun in a way that the NFL game can’t compete with.

When you play the two modes side-by-side it just makes Madden feel empty by comparison. Everything is compartmentalized in Madden, the season is just the season, the scouting component doesn’t connect you with the players, roster moves you make are typically bottom of the roster free agency moves and you address team needs at the end of the year. It makes Madden’s franchise-mode NFL draft seem anti-climactic and it turns free agency into your only sure shot way to improve.

In NCAA, you’re not just coaching your team and managing your team for the season you’re playing. You spend ten hours each week calling recruits, and trying to build your roster for next year. You’re signing up to 25 high school players, making them promises, scheduling visits and also worrying about winning your conference and getting to the BCS. You are literally running the whole program, and it feels fully fleshed out and authentic.

Madden doesn’t even come close.

You may be able to squeeze two good years out of Madden’s franchise mode, but eventually all the players will retire and you will be left playing with computer-generated players. NCAA dynasties can go on for literally decades and it stays fresh year to year, perhaps even more so as you have to learn to adapt your coaching style to the changing personnel you have on your roster year in and year out.

Not to mention NCAA has put their dynasty mode online, and I speak from experience when I say it’s the single greatest online game-mode I’ve ever played. I’m not exaggerating. It’s a small miracle I graduated college on time given how into our online dynasty my college buddies and I got. Not all of us did.

But if ever there was a sports gaming mecca, we found it. All of us were and still are die-hard sports fans, myself and Tom went on to the sports media industry (I write for the Miami Herald, he produces a sports-talk radio show) while the other three guys have all gone on to their own careers…. That’s only relevant because we’re not deadbeats, we were normal guys.

That being said, over the course of a semester and a half, we played about 15 seasons in a Conference USA online dynasty and to this day (several years later) it’s still one of the first, and funniest, topics we cover when we all meet up.

Madden can’t even compete, despite having a similar online franchise mode, because of just how much competition there was in the Online Dynasty. For starters, C-USA was an odd-choice (most of what was then C-USA is now in the Big East or Big 12) but it was perfect because we all played each other each year and to even have a prayer at a BCS game you had to go undefeated which meant going 4-0 in user games.

Now to give you the full picture, year one was just like a Madden online dynasty would go, for both franchises they’re identical. You’re handed a team, and outside of a few minor adjustments, you have to play with what you’re given.

Year two and beyond is where NCAA makes its name. Suddenly the pre-programmed players are leaving and you begin to have a team that you recruited personally. By year four almost every player on your roster you will have recruited and signed yourself. That means if you are out-matched, you got beat in recruiting. But it was your fault. Not the computer’s, you were accountable.

Recruiting adds a whole new dimension to Dynasty Mode.

Because recruiting is as big a part of the game as the actual games are, and it’s also competition. There’s a pool of players, and not only are you competing with the other four coaches, but you’re competing nationally with every other program. Regional rivalries started up as we got into recruiting battles, for instance at SMU I butted head with Tom (Houston) over many a recruit in Texas.

Suddenly not only are you fighting for these players, but the other guys in the dynasty remember the big fish they lost, and have to play them for the next four years.

That dynamic made every user game, and every progressive season even better. Suddenly there’s five players with teams recruited entirely by them and the season is on the line every single user-game. It’s not just a random online matchup, if you lose to your buddy you have to wait an entire year to have a shot at BCS-busting again, and you may not have a team that stacks up the same way next year.

Essentially, that’s the most authentic representation of being a coach at the helm of a college program you can get. We had epic user vs user games, it became worth watching for the non-players just because each side had so much invested in it, and the outcome affected your team too.

It was actual competition, not in the Madden vein where one player beats another player with the pre-ordained rosters that were on the disc. This was my team, running the offense and defense I envisioned based on personnel I spent hours recruiting, going up against someone else’s team, and they felt the same level of ownership.

Madden can’t even scrape that.

Edge: NCAA

Closing Thoughts

There’s really no right answer between the two EA franchises, both have their faults and their strengths. A lot of it just comes down to preference. For instance, many in the south prefer the college game and love NCAA Football with a passion unequaled. Up north, college football takes a backseat to the pro game so it’s no wonder Madden is king.

But insofar as the games themselves, it really comes down to what kind of gamer you are, on some level what kind of fan.

NCAA wins, sorry.

If you are a casual gamer, an online gamer or somebody who spends most of their time playing socially against others, then Madden is by and far the winner. NCAA is no slouch, but the balance and level of polish inherent in EA’s NFL offering make it the best football game around as far as playing a single game.

But if you want to immerse yourself in a sports experience, or if you aren’t always going to be playing in groups, or if you choose instead to consume your videogames like pornography (alone, in a dark room) then NCAA is so much deeper that it’s hardly even close.

Madden offers you a snapshot of the NFL, year to year, where players are well-rendered and accurately programmed and the game reflects the power and form of the actual product, but that level of authenticity weighs on it and hinders it if you want to extend the simulation beyond its intended season.

NCAA, by sheer virtue of the differences in the college and pro game, has the better longevity though.

Some variation of my online dynasty continues on to this day with every new release. The year after our Conference USA dynasty we created custom teams and played ten years as national powerhouses. Even now we still find time for the occasional all-nighter. In a way, the games keep my friends and I in touch now that we’ve moved and started jobs around the country.

That’s why to me, NCAA Football has the overall edge.

Winner: NCAA Football

Disclaimer: This isn’t a review of the upcoming NCAA Football 13 and Madden 13 games. It’s a comparative look at the two EA franchises. If someone wants to send us a copy of Madden or NCAA a few weeks early to review though, we’d happily oblige…