NCAA Football 13 Out Now: Reviews, Videos, Rankings, Ratings, And More

There’s a fair bit of Internet panic about the idea that EA Sports’ parent company’s settlement of a class-action lawsuit about price fixing related to its NCAA Football and Madden NFL franchises, which was enabled by exclusive licenses with the NCAA and the Collegiate Licensing Company and the and NFL and NFL Players’ Association. Here’s what’s really going to change: not much.

[Disclosure: EA Sports has partnered with SB Nation.]

The popular topic among SB Nation’s many college blogs this week: Heisman Trophy snubs, as inspired by NCAA Football 13’s Heisman mode. Top-five Heisman snubs lists have been debated, cases were made for specific players like Pat White in 2007, and our mid-major sites pondered what the Heisman means for smaller schools. My personal favorite might also be the most Texas document we’ve yet produced: reassigning the past decade of Heismans to nothing but Longhorns.

Also, Allen Iverson got a vote.

Among the topics of the week for SB Nation’s many fine college football blogs: Which former Heisman Trophy winner would you put on your team? Here are some of those discussions, all of which were interesting and illuminating.

Maybe you went to a FCS school. Maybe you went to a Division II school. Maybe you went to an ACC school. Maybe your school doesn’t even have football yet, as is the case with my alma mater. This calls for a combination of features, and what follows is a recommended list of pairings of Heisman winners and create-a-team schools.

NCAA Football 13 is out, which means a person like me gets to simulate a season, transcribe the results from my screen to your computer, and call it a really, really easy day of work. There could not possibly be anything that would ever require less sweat investment than doing this. So here we go.

Unfortunately, that’s about as realistic as it got.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably the sort of sports fan who waits to start up a NCAA Football dynasty until somebody’s gone and given all the players names correlating with individuals who happen to suit up for actual college football teams. You probably are, because I have no idea why you’re reading this otherwise.

There are some named rosters already out there for the XBox 360 and PlayStation 3, but I can’t comment on any of them, as I’m waiting on Operation Sports to finish up their free (though donations are welcome) rosters, which will also include other crowd-sourced edits like added players, slightly altered ratings, and so forth. I’ve used theirs before, and they’ve been mighty nice.

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With the highly anticipated release of NCAA Football 13 from EA Sports, SB Nation’s Dan Rubenstein and Spencer Hall take this year’s model out for a test drive.

Along the way, they play with their alma maters (Oregon and Florida) to see how close EA got to capturing the myriad of uniform combinations and in-game traditions of the schools, the improved gameplay details, the addition of USC’s song girls and Texas’s pom squad, the much-advertised new Heisman option of placing a select group of Heisman winners on ANY team you’d like (dangerous, especially when you force RGIII to make his way to Bloomington, IN to become a Hoosier), and finally, revel in the absolute madness that is the NCAA Football mascot game.

The marketing campaign for NCAA Football 13 centers around its Heisman mode, which allows you to pick from a number of former trophy winners and turn them loose on the 2012 field while looking to top their achievements. SB Nation’s many fine college football blogs got involved, writing up scenarios about which former winners they’d like to see on their own teams.

My favorite ideas have been Doug Flutie to Alabama, because Nick Saban hates short people, and Herschel Walker to Kennesaw State, because surely Vince Dooley can do it again.

Oh, hey you guys, there’s a new college football game out now. EA Sports’ NCAA Football 13 has hit the streets, which means it’s time to take a look at whether you should go get it or not. You probably already have, and there’s little that’s going to happen here that will change that. Maybe you’ll go get it like a week earlier than you would’ve otherwise. Does anybody read sports video game reviews?

My review so far: it seems better. Passing works more like actual passing. Movements look more natural. The super linebacker is either dead or in hiding. Defensive backs no longer Willie Mays themselves some interceptions, yet deep passing is more challenging. There are also other new tricks, like an improved option game and the ability to cancel play action mid-dropback. These are all good things, and they’re also the extent of my concerns.

EA Sports’ NCAA Football 13 comes out this week, making for a holiday on the college football calendar and a landmark that means the real-life season is near.

Team and player ratings have already leaked, raising an eyebrow or two along the way. They’re fine for the most part, and aren’t really going to stop anybody from dumping the regular annual allotment of hours into this game.

That “I feel gross” represents the sort of semi-revolted, semi-intrigued attitude most Florida — and Georgia fans — will take toward this ad.

For more on how Florida fans feel about seeing Tebow in red and black, head to Alligator Army. For more on Georgia and Dawgs fans, head to Dawg Sports.

↵“You were like a son to me. A tiger son.” I’m guessing Les just ad-libbed that part of this NCAA Football 13 commercial. Or maybe this is just found footage of Mike the Tiger playing the game and Miles seeing him? Or Jordan Jefferson is in the Mike suit?

↵Video via fine LSU blog And The Valley Shook.

↵From the latest NCAA Football 13 video, which shows off the streamlined (you can pick your own pitches) and deepened (there’s a scouting component) recruiting process, we see Lane Kiffin (alias “CoachHodges”) picking up “Coach Integrity” bonus points, as determined by his track record of keeping promises.

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EA Sports messed up by not including new FBS team South Alabama in NCAA Football 13. The Jaguars didn’t appear in videos taken from demo versions of the game, but this year’s three other new teams did. The company chalked up the omission as being due to a miscommunication, but is going out of its way to make sure the school’s appearance in next year’s game is something special.

Via USA site Thunderjags:

South Alabama is among the four teams making the leap to FBS football this year, along with UMass, Texas State and UT-San Antonio. The other three are included in NCAA Football 13, but not the Jaguars. Why not?

“South Alabama was a provisional member of FBS last year and did not play a full FBS schedule,” EA Sports communication manager Julie Foster told SB Nation. “We did not receive confirmation that they were changing to a full FBS schedule this year until it was too late for inclusion in NCAA Football 13. South Alabama will be included in NCAA Football 14.”

The highest level of college football is getting four new teams this year: South Alabama, Texas State, UMass and UTSA. But, as one USA blog discovered, South Alabama doesn’t appear to be included in NCAA Football 13. A quick check of the actual team ratings video from E3 shows this does seem to be true.

So it looks like we have no Jaguars, unless we make our own.

There’s a fine line between rankings and ratings, and “NCAA Football 13” does better at the former. While many of the team ratings -- which show how well the teams will perform in the game -- are confusing, the top 25 rankings are more reasonable. The game’s top-25 still won’t line up with real-life polls, which are almost certain to have either LSU or USC at No. 1 (as BlogPoll’s done already).

Notre Dame and Texas, which have really, really high ratings in the game, show up in the 20s in the actual rankings. This could mean that a lot of simulated seasons will see the two shoot up the ranks. In general, though, this offers a better stab at the nation’s best teams than the ratings list does.

Tradition Sports Online has a nice collection of player rating screens from NCAA Football 13, with players like Not Matt Barkley, Not Montee Ball, Not Landry Jones and Not Manti Te’o among the highest-rated so far. None are rated 99, presumably leaving room for this year’s Heisman unlockables like Barry Sanders, Robert Griffin III and such to take the highest ratings. All of this makes sense.

It’s when we get into the reported team ratings that things start to puzzle.

EA Sports’ NCAA Football 13 has a new feature that allows you to plunk certain Heisman Trophy winners onto your dynasty team, meaning you can reunite Barry Sanders with former quarterback Mike Gundy on Oklahoma State’s 2012 roster! Or bring Robert Griffin III back for another year at Baylor!

Or do some entirely unholy things like Herschel Walker at Auburn, as seen above, or Desmond Howard at Ohio State, which is among the many rivalry-crossing horrors contained below:

Two plays that work so well in real football they’ve made their way into just about any college football offense: the read option and the bubble screen. But up through last year’s NCAA 12, neither play worked in the vidya games. The bubble would far too often result in the receiver doing a pirouette while catching the ball, and very few option plays of any sort could be used effectively, even by the computer -- games against even good option teams usually mean easy wins.

But, based on this week’s gameplay video, both of those issues are being addressed:

So! Seems like a cool new feature, though whether linebackers are still psychic will still matter more for the game itself.

EA Sports held a webcast on NCAA Football 13 on Monday, overshadowed as it may have been by Mike Leach taking questions at Reddit. While the new trailer teases recruit scouting and other new features, the reveal focused largely on dynasty and online dynasty presentation stuff, including a new ticker that will reveal live scores from other games going on around the “country,” along with previews and break-ins from a “studio” on upset alerts and games that affect your team, all hosted by the voice of Rece Davis:

The panel talked up how natural it all sounds and how much it adds to the whole deal, all down to the way Davis pronounces “Michigan.” They played a couple clips, with Davis previewing Oklahoma-Oklahoma State and reporting an upset score. It’s pretty cool, but it was wise of the gents in charge to note that Davis won’t just repeat the same lines every time OU and OSU play.

The other listed tweaks below:

Not Jordan Jefferson is excited about the new shovel pass option, which appears to be something quarterbacks can do on the fly while scrambling.

Via EA Sports’ Facebook page:

College football really may be the only sport capable of making orange and green look just fine in tandem. If our cover stars are any guide, we can expect defense to be a complete side quest this year, especially if linebackers are no longer able to levitate toward passes anywhere near the middle of the field.