EA SPORTS College Football Utilizes CFB Expert Ari Wasserman to Improve Recruiting
On the May 18, 2023 edition of The Andy Staples Show, co-host Ari Wasserman (national college football reporter for The Athletic) shared that he had been contacted by EA SPORTS to view Dynasty Mode and the recruiting aspect of EA SPORTS College Football to share his thoughts and opinions.
While under a strict NDA, Wasserman was unable to share any game details or specifics. However, he did seem very optimistic and pleased with what he had seen.
"I don't know if either of you had the opportunity to do this, but EA SPORTS contacted me during the development of this game and I'm not allowed to give any details because I had to sign an NDA. They took me through the recruiting interface and were using my coverage and resources of [inaudible]. ... They were asking like 'how often do you see this happen?' or 'how should we do this? or that?' And I will tell you because I've seen some of the back of the interfaces of what they're working on and stuff. It is going to be awesome. And they are doing it in a way where you're just not going to get a Madden engine with the college uniforms. They are really trying and I think the reason why they delayed it a year was so that they wanted to make sure that when that game finally made its return that it wasn't just some crappy knock-off of Madden and that it was its own thing and like the Dynasty mode and recruiting and rankings and territories and all the things that we talk about on this show is going to be represented to some extent in the video game. ...
"I don't know if that's [NIL collectives, player/portal tampering, et al.] going to be represented yet, but I do feel like as the years go on, it's going to be a priority for EA SPORTS to make sure that whatever's going on in the recruiting dynasty interface to actually mirror what we're talking about because people want a college football or the creators of the game want a college football fanatic like the people who listen to the show and the people who have dedicated their lives professionally to covering it to feel connected to the actual sport. ... "It's like really, really, really cool."
(Listen to the full episode of The Andy Staples Show here. The quotes mentioned begin just after the 5:00 mark.)
This is not the first time EA SPORTS utilized experts in the sport to improve recruiting. In 2013, West Virginia director of football operations Alex Hammond and recruiting coordinator Ryan Dorchester shared their thoughts on in-game recruiting and how to make it more like real-life.
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