College Football: 5 must-have features in a new NCAA football game

4. Recruiting Adjustments

Recruiting has always been a bit fumbling in college football video games. At times, there were allotments of phone calls and official visits, and in EA’s 2014 version it was just an overall point allotment. In real life, there are dead periods, phone call logs, and a lot of other boring and arduous aspects that would make the game too real and less fun to play. However, there are a few adjustments that could make the recruiting process a little easier and make more sense.

First, the quarterbacks should be separated between “pro style,” “dual threat,” and “triple option” and a 5-foot-11, 190-pound quarterback with limited passing ability should lean towards the service academies and Georgia Tech (or whoever runs the Flexbone at that point) rather than trying to convince them to Navy while they have USC or Notre Dame in their top three.

In the same vein, players should be logged by academics as well. A high academic player will lean towards Stanford or Michigan while a lower academic player wouldn’t be able to be recruited by those institutions anyway. That will add to the reality of the recruiting issues at Duke or Georgia Tech.

This could be too far but the powerhouse schools like Alabama and Ohio State should have a higher recruiting budget that affects recruiting ability and not just the coaching skills tree. Even if Nick Saban arrives at Tulane, he won’t have the immediate full access to his recruiting points because Tulane doesn’t have the same recruiting budget or history of success as Alabama.