Hey College Football Fans, EA SPORTS Game Changer SG Dirtyburt here to discuss the latest NCAA Football 14 Playbook reveal, Ultimate Team. You may ask, what is Ultimate Team? The Ultimate Team mode has been in other EA Sports titles (Madden NFL Football, FIFA, and NHL) for several years now. Ultimate Team is a combination of Fantasy Football and Card Collecting allowing you to put together a “Dream Team” of players from different teams by opening card packs. You will start this journey by choosing your favorite team and opening their Starter Pack to fill the positions on your team. One thing you will notice about the players in the Starter Pack, they are all former College Football players. The Starter Pack also gives you the Stadium, Jersey, and Playbook of the team you choose as your favorite. Now you are ready to begin building the next Dynasty in College Football. ...

As more information about NCAA Football Ultimate Team is released, we'll continue to update this post with more information.

Continue on to read Ultimate Team previews from Operation Sports, Game Informer, Kotaku, and ESPN Playbook. ...

EA SPORTS has posted a new blog detailing some of the improvements coming to the "sights and sounds" of NCAA Football 14.

The blog notes the team's focus on getting accurate uniforms into the game (including getting them into the game as soon as possible), the addition of Seven Nation Army & Kernkraft 400, and also includes screenshots from some of the new playable camera angles coming to the game.

Click here or continue on to read the entire blog. ...

In this episode of the TGT Podcast, cdj & gschwendt interview NCAA Football 14 designer Christian McLeod to discuss the new & improved presentation elements coming to the game. The podcast discusses a lot of details about not only items you've heard about but also items that you haven't to this point. A lot of inside information in 60 minutes.


Continue on to listen to the show, then share your thoughts with community below. ...

EA SPORTS and the University of Michigan have officially revealed the cover of EA SPORTS NCAA Football 14 featuring former Wolverine QB Denard Robinson.


Starting at 10:30 a.m. ET, Denard Robinson will start his ESPN "Car Wash" on First Take where the cover will likely get significant airtime and exposure throughout the day.

According to Jordan Maleh, the Director of Digital Marketing for the University of Michigan, the production run for EA Sports NCAA Football 14 will be close to two million copies. ...

GameZone has confirmed that the Big East name and logo will no longer be utilized in NCAA Football 14 and replaced with the American Athletic Conference. While this is not a surprise, the relatively late name announcement had some wondering how it would be handled in-game.

EA's Brad Hilderbrand confirmed to me that the Big East name has been replaced with American, "their preferred shorthand name rather than AAC." Since the conference has yet to finalize their logo, EA is using the NCAA pennant as a placeholder; it will be updated once the official American conference logo is decided. ...

EA SPORTS has posted a video trailer showcasing some of the improvements coming to presentation in NCAA Football 14.

Among the items highlighted: several of the 500+ new vignettes, updated/new uniforms, new banners, halftime show commentary, dynamic loading screens, neutral site games, updated field art & stadiums, and a vignette featuring team specific gloves.

If you catch any other improvements or details in the video, share them in the comments. ...

EA SPORTS has posted the second NCAA Football Playbook and it focuses on improvements & changes to presentation.

Among the improvements coming to presentation: A halftime show featuring Rece Davis & David Pollack, neutral site games, school specific base-layers & gloves, and more.

This blog is a quick look at some of the presentation changes coming to the game with additional deep-dives to come. Continue on to read the Presentation Playbook. ...

Polygon's Samit Sarkar interviewed NCAA Football producer Ben Haumiller to learn more about the presentation changes coming to NCAA Football 14.

Haumiller then listed tired, long-in-the-tooth pieces of previous NCAA Football titles' presentation packages, and explained that Tiburon is either modifying them or stripping them out altogether. At the top of the list is a major interface redesign. The chunky, ESPN-inspired 3D elements that sat behind the main menu are gone, because they caused sluggish performance in menu navigation — a significant problem for any game, but particularly for this series, which Haumiller described as "menu-intensive." The goal this year, he said, is to "keep things fast, keep things moving."

Authenticity is a major focus for the NCAA Football team, as it is with any company making a simulation sports title, and a studio's job only gets tougher in that respect every year.

Haumiller took us through changes in field art (teams recently began painting their Twitter handles on the turf), uniforms (Tiburon had to develop new technology to properly render base layers) and fight songs (University of Texas, Texas A&M University, Baylor University, University of Arkansas and Texas Christian University are all back in). And we found ourselves amazed at the staggering number of organizations that Tiburon and parent company Electronic Arts have to negotiate or interact with in order to get all the minor details right. ...

ESPN Video Games' Jon Robinson covers some of the presentation changes coming to NCAA Football 14.

Among the highlights of his preview:

• 'Zombie Nation' & 'Seven Nation Army' crowd chants will be in the game
• Main focus of presentation: Make it clean and 'get you moving'
• Dynamic loading screens
• Quicker pre-game intro with music video
• Commentary focus on drive summaries
• New stadiums for ODU, GA State, South Alabama plus 'every neutral site game'
• Team specific gloves plus hand poses

Continue on to read an excerpt of the preview from ESPN Video Games and then share your thoughts with the community. ...

In this episode of the TGT Podcast, cdj & gschwendt break down the announced gameplay features & additions coming to NCAA Football 14.

Continue on to listen to the show and the share your thoughts and comments with the community. ...

Over the past week, EA SPORTS has posted additional NCAA Football 14 screenshots featuring Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Miami, Texas, Texas A&M, Virginia Tech, and West Virginia. Continue on to view the screenshots and share your thoughts in the comments below.

Make sure to keep up with all of the latest game info with our NCAA Football 14 News & Information Central. ...

It’s Episode 19 of the Press Row Podcast, a special Press Row One-on-One with NCAA Football 14 producer Ben Haumiller (@benhaumiller) and host Richard Grisham (@richgrisham). They talk all about the new physics engine in the game, the newest gameplay updates coming this fall, as well as some of the cool things and challenges that come to designing football games for a staggering variety of gamer.

Click here to listen to the show, then share your thoughts with the TGT community. Some notes from the show are available after the jump. ...

EA SPORTS has posted an official blog breaking down the gameplay improvements coming to NCAA Football 14, including the Force Impact System and running game improvements.

Continue on to read the blog and then share your thoughts with the community. ...

Machinima Sports has posted a brief interview with NCAA Football Producer Ben Haumiller in which some new gameplay elements are discussed. Continue on to watch the video and then share your thoughts with the community. ...

EA SPORTS has posted the full list of NCAA Football 14 pre-order offers and all of them tie into the new NCAA Football Ultimate Team feature.

Amazon (PS3|360) - Exclusive NCAA Football Ultimate Team PAC 12 Conference Pack including key PAC 12 players and bonus game extension
GameStop (PS3|360) - Exclusive NCAA Football Ultimate Team SEC Conference Pack including key SEC players and bonus game extension
Best Buy (PS3|360) - Exclusive NCAA Football Ultimate Team Big 10 Conference Pack including key Big 10 players and bonus game extension
Wal-Mart (PS3|360) - Exclusive NCAA Football Ultimate Team Big 12 Conference Pack including key Big 12 players and bonus game extension
Target (PS3|360) - Exclusive NCAA Football Ultimate Team ACC Conference Pack including key ACC players and bonus game extension
Origin (PS3|360) - Exclusive NCAA Football Ultimate Team Big East American Athletic Conference Pack including key Big East American Athletic Conference players and bonus game extension

All offers are good through July 8. Full details on NCAA Football Ultimate Team will be revealed on May 15. ...

You can load all the physics, all the momentum, all the jukes and trucks and fakes you want into running the football in a video game, but it all unravels when the right guard just watches as a free linebacker strolls into the backfield and cleans your transmission. No matter how good the rest of NCAA Football has been, this has always been its worst controller-throwing moment, for years.

Well, yes, this is the time of the year when we talk about what the next edition of the game will deliver, and the time of the year when we get promises that something has been fixed. Last April, it was the end of robo-linebackers and "suction blocking." This year Larry Richart, a producer on EA Sports' football gameplay team, vows they have fixed or at least substantially improved blocking and offensive line play.

How? They put a real-life lineman on the job.

Click here to read the full preview from Kotaku and then come back here to share your thoughts with the TGT community. ...

Every year, the designers of the NCAA Football franchise at EA Tiburon set out to make a game that simulates football — just like its more popular older brother, the Madden NFL series — except they have to differentiate their game by ensuring that it plays like college football instead of pro football.

Part of that differentiation is, in a sense, forced on the NCAA Football developers. These days, publisher Electronic Arts launches Madden seven weeks after it releases NCAA Football — the college football title typically comes out in early July, while Madden launches at the end of August. While the games are developed on an annual cycle that means Madden doesn't get extra development time, per se, innovations often come to Madden first.

We don't know yet what the Madden team has in store for Madden NFL 25, but this year's entry in the NCAA Football series, NCAA Football 14, is catching up in a few key respects when it comes to gameplay.

Follow the link to read Polygon's full preview. ...

Last year, NCAA overhauled its passing game. The gameplay makeover continues in NCAA Football 14, due out in July for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The first reveal for the game details developer EA Tiburon's focus on improving Madden's Infinity Engine, as well as some unique college football additions.

EA Tiburon decided not to integrate the Infinity Engine into NCAA 13. The physics engine used in Madden NFL 13 (which came out months after NCAA 13) aimed to realistically replicate hits to multiple parts of the body, but ended up being inconsistent and unsatisfactory. With the benefit of more time with the engine, EA Tiburon feels the engine has moved forward and is capable of more nuances. Impacts such as stiff arms, hit stick tackles, and dive tackles now jar the ball carrier appropriately. The team says it is also cleaning up the engine's previous failings (such as players flopping around on the ground due to minor contact) and not just heaping on features it can't handle. We'll have to wait until we get our hands on a build of the game before we can get a judge on how the engine is progressing.

Follow the link to read Game Informer's complete preview. ...