(Courtesy EA Sports)
If you’ve read my blog over the last couple of years or follow me on Twitter, you’ve noticed that I play an unhealthy amount of NCAA Football in my spare time. As I’ve gotten older that spare time has gotten more and more precious as the responsibilities of real life begin tearing me away from the objects I called dear in college, like my Xbox 360. Still, the one game that I find myself buying (almost) every year are those in the NCAA Football series.
Generally I’ll start a dynasty with Cincinnati. No surprise there. As such I’m always curious to see the initial ratings of teams and players when they are revealed about a month before the game is released in early July. I wrote an extended post last Summer for NCAA Football ’13 and everything looked alright in that game, at least for UC. But this year EA Sports is really sticking it to the Bearcats. Take a look:
- Overall: 81
- Offense: 81
- Defense: 83
Yikes. Compare that to Cincinnati’s ratings in NCAA ’13:
- Overall: 89
- Offense: 84
- Defense: 87
Yea, computer nerds should never design sports games ever again.
Despite returning 2/3 of their starters from the 2012 season, EA Sports docked Cincinnati 8 points overall, 3 points on offense, and 4 points on defense. What’s even worse, 63 teams, or half of the teams in the game, are rated higher overall than Cincinnati (h/t to C.Fant for the stat).
Here’s some more stats that are going to make you throw up if you’re a hardcore fan of these games:
– Teams with a higher overall rating in NCAA ’14 than Cincinnati include:
- Purdue: 84 – 6-7 in 2012, brand new coach
- Illinois: 83 – 2-10 in 2012, 0-8 in the Big Ten, brand new coach
- Kentucky: 84 – Kentucky
- Central Florida: 83 – Good team but come on
- South Florida: 84 – 3-9 in 2012, brand new coach, and South Florida
- Wake Forest: 83 – 5-7 in 2012
- Boston College: 86 – 2-10 in 2012, 1-7 in the ACC
– UConn’s offense, a unit that ranked 120th in scoring last year putting up just 17 points per game, is ranked higher than Cincinnati’s at 84 (h/t to Ryan for the stat).
– Ohio University – Not Ohio State – also has an offense rated higher than Cincinnati’s at 84.
– Houston’s defense, who allowed over 5 touchdowns per game, is rated the same as Cincinnati’s even though the Bearcats allowed just 18 points per game against tougher competition.
– Kansas, Indiana, SMU, and Syracuse, teams that posted a combined 20-30 record in 2012 all have the same overall rating as Cincinnati, that of course went 10-3.
Die, EA Sports. Die.