Summer is upon us, and that means EA Sports College Football (CFB) is right around the corner. The EA Sports College Football series is returning for its third iteration after a long ten-year hiatus. This third edition of the new series also looks to be a giant jump in the franchise, with the largest dynasty overhaul in 20 years.
The Dynasty mode of CFB has been a pillar of the franchise, and while strides have been made to improve the mode over the last two years, the mode itself has started to show some of its age. This has really become apparent in the new NIL age of college football, which has drastically changed the landscape.
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EA Sports College Football 27 hopes to finally catch up with the sport, with many major changes coming to the game mode. During the CFB 27 preview, we got a chance to see some of these changes that are coming to the new game. One of the main focal points for the CFB team was “Do it for you,” and they even said to them that with these changes, there are around 138 ways to build your team. Now, whether that is true is still to be seen, but overall, this is clearly not the same mode as CFB 26.
Dynasty mode in EA Sports College Football 27 is different from the very beginning with team selection. There are two big overview additions players will now see when selecting a team, and those are AD Expectations and Dynasty Blueprint. These will be vital to players throughout their coaching careers within their dynasty.
AD Expectations is a new way players will be interacting with their schools, particularly their university’s athletic director. In years past, players would just get a basic contract with a win total goal, and that was really it. It didn’t really change throughout your coach’s contract, and so long as you just won some games, there really weren’t any benefits other than you would have no threat to your job security.
CFB 27 is bringing more system depth to the franchise.
Now players will be getting expectation goals and priorities from your AD that you will need to complete. These can range from win totals, finishing a season ranked, or even beating a specific rival. This is really all dependent on where your AD feels your university is at and what they are expecting from the football program. Schools will also have their own demeanor when it comes to these expectations, such as some schools will have more patience when it comes to meeting these expectation goals than others.
These goals will also be more than just winning a National Championship or a winning season. The team talked about the Ryan Day situation from a few years ago, where, despite being very successful and producing NFL prospects, he just could not beat Ohio State’s hated rival, Michigan, and thus was on the hot seat, and some can argue very close to getting fired, as an inspiration for these expectations.
This means players now can’t just win games and ignore these goals; they need to actually complete these goals to keep their AD happy. So you can finish in the Top 5 or be a CFP team each year, but if you can’t beat your rival, then there is still a good possibility of being fired.
Each expectation will have a varying effect on whether you complete or fail them, so some will matter more than others. These expectation goals are also dynamic, as they will change in difficulty as you build your school. The other component is that these expectations and goals are worth more than just job security, as players will receive various rewards depending on the goal.
Just like Ryan Day, if you don’t meet your school’s expectations, you will be in the hot seat.
Dynasty Blueprint is the other large overview to help players build their school. This is where players will be able to see and manage everything about their program. These things include their coaching staff, NIL, Facilities, and overall football budget. Dynasty Points (DP) are a new currency being introduced into EA Sports College Football 27.
Dynasty Points will represent your school’s football program “money” that will need to be allocated to various parts of your program. Much like the familiar recruiting points, each school will have its own varying budget. A school’s Dynasty Point budget will come from their My School grades and then completing AD Expectations and/or seasonal goals, such as winning your conference.
Players will be responsible for allocating and investing these Dynasty Points into three major categories of Coaching Staff, Facilities, and NIL. How players choose to invest these Dynasty Points will be totally up to them. This gives players more control and agency over their programs, which you could argue was lacking in previous games. This really goes back to that focal point the CFB team had talked about of building your team and program your way.
The decision-making for allocating these Dynasty Points will come in stages of Preseason, In-Season, Bowl Season, and Offseason. Each stage has its own set of items that can be looked at. Once you set your allocation budgets, they are set for an entire year, so if you don’t allocate enough to NIL, then there is no going back to dip into coaching staff for more Dynasty Points to be able to afford that 5-star recruit.
NIL is finally in EA Sports College Football 27.
You have allocated your DP budget, so what exactly are you allocating for? There are three main uses for Dynasty Points, and those are Coaching Staff, Facilities, and NIL. These are the main pillars of your program, and where your decision-making will be vital to off-field success.
Coaching Staff involves your own coaching career and managing your coordinators. The coaching carousel has been a pain point for many players over the last few years, whether because it’s too random, leaves them with no control, or is overall lacking. In EA Sports College Football 27, the coaching carousel has been completely overhauled both in terms of the coordinator hiring process and how players are offered coaching jobs.
Players will now be able to offer and hire any coordinator, not just the limited options from previous iterations. Offering coordinators a job and even retaining them year after year will cost and be based on Dynasty Points. The other major change is that players will be able to express interest in any job opening and not just the schools that are interested in them.
Expressing interest in coaching jobs will cost Dynasty Points, and users can show interest in up to six jobs at a time. School interest will determine how much expressing interest will cost a player. Expressing interest is a major upgrade that will come with its own risks beyond DP costs. If you express interest in a school and are offered the job, you must take that job, as there is no taking it back. Another risk is that the more job offers you express interest in, the more your coach’s stability grade will decrease.
When looking at your job offers, players will get to see everything about the school, from their school grades to Dynasty Points budget and, of course, their AD expectations. Schools will also now be able to sweeten their offers to players by offering coaching points or dynasty points in the job contracts. In online dynasties, multiple players will be able to express interest for the same schools, and then schools will choose who they feel is the best fit.
The Coaching Carousel is finally getting the attention and changes it needs.
Facilities have been part of the My School grades for years, but how it functions, both in terms of what exactly it does and how you upgrade it, has been very vague, leaving users to just wing it, and hope the grade increases. That all has changed, as players will now have way more control over their facilities, including being able to upgrade them via Dynasty Points. Facilities will help with recruiting and player progression and development, so they will be vital for your off-field and on-field success.
Facilities will be in Tiers that will determine their effect on your players and equipment slots. Facilities will come with an annual cost, so players will be aware that as their facilities are upgraded, it will cost more and more to maintain. While facilities can downgrade from a lack of on-field success, they also can downgrade if you do not allocate enough DP to pay their annual costs.
Facilities will also come with equipment slots that players can utilize boosts to help their facility tiers, such as going from a B- grade to a B+. There can be up to four equipment slots, and the amount is determined by your facility tier. These equipment boosts are more of a short-term boost, meaning they may last only a couple of weeks or the entire season.
Dynasty mode in CFB 27 will bring much more top-level program management, but at the end of the day, games are won on the field, and that requires getting the players your team needs to win games through recruiting and roster management.
EA Sports College Football 27 will introduce a very much-needed NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) system. NIL has dominated for better or worse the college athletic landscape since its inception in 2021. The lack of NIL in College Football 26 really was the elephant in the room, and whether it would finally be addressed in CFB 27.
NIL has arrived in EA Sports College Football 27 and is broken into two parts: recruiting and roster retention. The general recruiting process doesn’t seem to have changed that much from last year’s game; however, NIL player costs have been added. Scholarships will cost Dynasty Points and add another layer to general recruits’ interests in a school. Players will not only have to be able to convince recruits to come to their school, but also be able to afford to have these players come to their school.
Each recruit will have a base NIL demand, and players will have an option of meeting it, undercutting, or offering more. This NIL demand will be based on their prospect rating, ranking, and how much they are interested in your school, so if a recruit isn’t that interested in you, then you will need to pay more for them. NIL offers will play a role in a recruit’s recruiting process, and players will gain interest/progress or lose interest based on your NIL offer, the same way your My School grades affect recruits.
This NIL demand will also go into retaining the player as long as they are with your team. This baseline demand will change based on offers, so if a player only demands 150 Dynasty Points and you offer 200, then the next baseline will be 200 and will stay at a minimum of 200 Dynasty Points throughout their time at your school.
Recruiting has been the cornerstone of college athletics for building a team in real life and in the College Football franchise. However, since the transfer portal was established, real-life roster retention has been almost, if not more, important than recruiting. In last year’s game, we got a more dynamic transfer portal, but the game still lacked tools to retain your players.
CFB 27 is a pivotal turning point for the EA Sports series.
The NIL system has changed that, and players will have the ability to better retain their players. Each player will NIL demand when being recruited, along with being retained. These work basically like a contract using Dynasty Points. These NIL demands, like many other aspects, are dynamic and will change from year to year.
A player has a breakout season, he may want more NIL, or if a player is not happy based on a deal breaker or lack of playing time, then he may also require more Dynasty Points to stay. Just like with recruiting, this new demand, or if you choose to overspend to compensate for a bad deal breaker, will then become the player’s new baseline demand.
There are some other changes coming to the dynasty mode, such as a health management system to better help players manage wear and tear throughout the season, along with more expansion of the team and college football history books. There will be more storytelling and other bells and whistles to really help with immersion and depth of the mode.
The EA Sports CFB team also said this year will be the “largest overhaul in 20 years,” and based on what we have seen and shown, it really is. There are massive upgrades and overhauls to systems and mechanics that are badly needed. NIL is in the game and will affect every part of the mode, whether on the field or off.
Given a good but less innovative sophomore game, this is the year where the series needs some sort of major overhaul in order to keep from being a very big disappointment for Dynasty fans. We still need to see how all of these changes will be executed in EA Sports College Football 27, especially since we saw some transfer portal logic issues last year. That being said, it is very clear that the EA Sports College Football 27 team has been paying attention and is going to go big this year in Dynasty mode.
EA Sports College Football 27 is available now on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
