Over the decades that I’ve watched football over my dad’s shoulder, I can’t say I was very faithful to the sport when it came to games, let alone its NCAA iteration, where college teams face off against one another resulting in a literal ton of bowls at year’s end.
My only real experience with that happened to be on one of my favorite videogame systems ever, the Dreamcast, with the excellent NCAA College Football 2K: Road to the Rose Bowl, developed by Visual Creations, which basically played just like its NFL counterparts. I loved my time with it, but since then, for as much as I’ve come to appreciate college football substantially more than the professional league, I failed to keep up with releases.
Knowing that EA has been the dominant force in producing sports games for just about as long as I’ve watched them, I’m not surprised that they eventually took over the mantle in producing NCAA football games, some of which are now surprisingly expensive to buy, like the ones on PS3 that fetch triple-digit prices on the used game market. So when it finally came time to review the newest entry in what I hope will be a series, considering all the negotiations that EA has gone through with NCAA for a variety of reasons over the years, I jumped at the opportunity, much like a wide receiver!
EA Sports College Football 26 is the followup to last year’s inaugural entry to the new franchise, and for all the negativity that surrounds Electronic Arts’ monopoly of sport game licenses, I have to say that I really liked what’s at play in it. The game does a fantastic job at capturing the energy of the collegial atmosphere that the NFL lacks, one where the crowd is much more involved with, as the bands’ compositions blare off the speakers and the teams are ready to pop off at just about every play.
Now, it’s hard for me to provide a direct comparison to 2025’s game, so I’ll solely focus on the experience of someone coming in with little to no idea what was ahead of them when they started. Safe to say, there’s a lot to chew in this one. There are a handful of ways to play, and you’ll get to pick the one you prefer right at the start, where Ultimate Team is signaled as the closest analog to a more traditional football game, with the option to simply play a game against the CPU, or take it online against other people, as well as taking one of College Football 26’s many, many challenges that help you get acquainted to its complex mechanics.
There’s also paths where you can play as either a coach or a player. The latter is close to what’s in your usual Madden release: as a high school graduate, it’s now time to pick which college you’ll be signing up to become a freshman at, as the mode takes you through a number of objectives that you’ll be able to tackle as your fame rises and more opportunities start popping up. It’s the sort of thing you could easily waste dozens of hours playing alone, but not nearly as many as the coaching one, where you get into the thick of it right away, picking plays, the folks who will occupy the bench or filling in jerseys.
Gameplay-wise, EA Sports College Football 26 follows a similar track to Madden’s that I found to be relatively easy to pick up and follow with plenty to learn and master along the way. This is the sort of game that you’ll want to start out picking a simpler scheme and gradually move up the ladder. Playing offense is simpler than defense, where choosing who to pass the ball to is a matter of pressing one of the face buttons, but how about how fast, or how high you’ll do so? These are elements that come as you grasp the earlier intricacies, and in that, College Football 26 is really good at easing you in, not overburdening you with details that would fly over your head like the football you’re attempting to pass.
Everything about this game screams enthusiasm, the ambiance of an actual college football match. In the 1990s, while living in the US, I had the opportunity to attend a friendly game between Florida State and Wake Forest, and I have vivid memories of the sheer energy that was at play during that game. It’s pretty much the same here, which is extremely fresh to me, especially so after playing some of the more recent Madden entries where everything certainly feels more artificial and just there to look fresh. Here, it’s more down and dirty, with the music provided by the in-game bands blaring, as you are trying to score a much needed touchdown to win. It’s a vibrant affair in presentation, one that stayed with me long enough to sit down and write this review.
EA Sports College Football 26 plays incredibly well and provides lots of options for those either wanting to start fresh and slowly progress up the ladder or anyone who’s a little tired of the vanilla-flavored NFL games that the company has been exclusively putting out for years and years and are looking for something new. This is it, and hopefully it’ll retain this spirit as new entries continue to come out in yearly fashion. As it stands, there’s no better football game out there as College Football 26 delivers a very complete and thorough experience that’s well worth picking up and adding to your game library.
