Y11 Notes: 11 Years Later, It's Finally Here

Y11 Notes: July 15, 2024

It’s been so long since the last time any of us could buy a brand-spanking new college football video game. I still have my PS3 copy of the game in a safe spot, but I’m sad to say that I haven’t been able to make any progress playing the game in years. I have one friend who I’ve been playing NCAA 14 with on and off since that game came out, and we’ve done dynasties and whatnot on previous versions of the game too. Our last dynasty in particular happened began before or during the Covid lockdowns; I was UCLA and my pal was USC.

The dynasties and games we had were fun, but we didn’t even make a half-decade into the sim before we had to call it quits. Eventually, the game would let us play four quarters of football only to freeze up on each of us before we had a chance to save our 52-7 wins over Arizona State or 38-36 losses at Oregon. Our respective PS3s worked overtime to put each of us through college and have a start in life once we entered the real-world workforce.

I haven’t been able to Mesh since.

And having to hear and read different podcasters and writers of the college football variety come out and say that they’ve been fortunate enough to keep playing their games, keep running Mesh, and keep turning heads from their podunk football conferences that have no right cosplaying as a quintessential big-major program, honestly, has been pretty annoying for me. For every “I still have a working Xbox 360 for one game and one game only” I’ve heard over the past 4-5 years, I would tune them out by putting a finger in each of my ears and keep saying “ALALALALA - ALALALALA.”

(No, I didn’t want to put in the work to have the Revamped mod version on my computer. I’m not that much of a video game sicko.)

I’m happy for their happiness, and anybody else that’s been able to keep playing over the years. I’m happy for anybody who's kept up with the game so well that today, July 15, 2024, will finally be their final time playing NCAA 14. There’s a special place in heaven for people that fall into that category.

But I’m not one of those people, sadly, but I’ll be just like everybody else at 4 p.m. today once the gates open up to those who bought the Deluxe Edition, which includes this early release date.

Once it’s 4 p.m., those old PS3s will be worth nickels.

Once it’s 4 p.m., it might not cost you $170 to get a “new” version of NCAA 14 off Ebay.

Once it’s 4 p.m., I can finally run Mesh again.

Once it’s 4 p.m., my wife will have a lot of free time on her hands.

ON DYNASTY MODE

Like a completely normal person would playing this game, I plan on having multiple dynasties.

One, with my longtime pal, I plan on starting as a coordinator at South Alabama (/ducks away from trash thrown at me by readers of this newsletter) while he starts with Western Kentucky. This wasn’t a pick as much as we let The Wheel decide our fates. Just like any good respecter of the randomizer gods, I can’t go against my first three spins (Kansas State, Duke, South Alabama), and just like any good college football video game nerd, I can’t start a longterm dynasty like this at a Power-level institution. I’m already kicking myself for not picking K-State, one of my personal favorite college football programs both real and fake, but I think that spot can be a destination goal for me. (Also, what if I end up building USA into a winner and I end up liking it there?)

For content, I’m going to do an EMU dynasty. I’m not going to make writing about the EMU dynasty a big priority for me because I assume that most of you reading this site are here for stuff that actually happens in the real world. I will, however, start to lean into YouTube a little bit more because of this game.

Now, do I want my first EMU dynasty to be completely fresh where I’m the new hotshot coach that’s starting over from scratch? Or do I want to pick up where Chris Creighton last left off?

ON ROAD TO GLORY

There’s a really good chance that I won’t miss playing as a high school senior for one year before I go to college.

To create content for Ypsi 11, yes, I’ll have a character that comes to EMU that tries to work his way up on the depth chart and try and help bring a MAC title, nay, a National Championship to Ypsilanti. Eventually, we’ll get to multiple characters across other positions other than quarterback (or whatever I choose to start out as, but probably QB first), but there are only so many hours in a day and I still have a day job to get to.

I’m also considering going in the opposite direction on this game mode. Let me posit this question: wouldn’t it be so much fun to sabotage a team I don’t like and don’t want to see be happy? Wouldn’t it also be fun to create a CMU recruit who ends up playing like complete doo-doo and try to graduate with a 0-48 record in college?

ON ULTIMATE TEAM

Will Dynasty be the overwhelming favorite mode to play on? By me and pretty much all of the OG players of this series, 100% yes, obviously.

Will Ultimate Team be a threat to any other game modes? I honestly think UT will comfortably be the second-most played mode on CFB25. I’m not a big Madden guy, but my guess, considering how many people had to buy a new console for this game (raises hand), is that more than 50% of the people buying this game have also not been religiously playing Madden and trying to grind with their Ultimate Teams online. This is a game mode that will probably force a user to be up-to-speed with the game from a technical standpoint and force people to make time to build up their rosters and stock up on as many player cards as humanly possible before the actual season kicks off.

I’ll be honest, I’m really looking forward to playing (and instantly regret playing) online. For those of you also playing this game mode, this is a good time to go into your game console settings and mute the game chat before you get clowned by a middle schooler with slang you’re not hip with.

THE UNIFORMS LOOK DAMN GOOD

EMU’s uniforms in the game, so far, look super good.

The above video goes through all 134 teams’ uniform sets, but the user didn’t go through all of the nooks and crannies of all options available outside of the presets.

EMU’s preset uniform options for the game:

• Home: Green helmet / Green jersey / Green pants

• Away: Gray / White / Gray

• Alternate: Gray / Gray / Gray

• Away Option 1: Gray / White / White

• Away Option 2: Green / White / Green

Considering EMU hasn’t worn white helmets since its 43-14 home loss to Buffalo in 2019, I doubt that EMU will have white helmets in its uniform set this year for the video game (or in real life for that matter).

Still, as much as I personally would love the white helmet option in the game (or IRL), the game’s choices for uniform options are, as they say, *chef’s kiss*.