Genre: Sports
Publisher: EA Sports
Developer: Tiburon
Release Date: July 15, 2008

There's something absolutely magical about college football season. Every Saturday afternoon during the fall months, dorms empty, alumni load into their cars, and the marching band struts its stuff to bring the whole campus together in a celebration of one of America's most beloved sports. While great professional football teams can pull in 60,000 to 80,000 fans on a given week, the elite teams of college football routinely seat over 100,000 partisans, making the big rivalry game an event that every fan should experience at least once in his or her life. This year, NCAA Football 09 is more about the emotion and pageantry than ever, and the result is one terrific game.

Over the years, the NCAA Football and Madden franchises have had their ups and downs when it comes to gameplay, and thankfully this year, at least the collegiate version has done things right. Perhaps the biggest improvement is in your attempts to elude defenders, which is now much easier than in years past. Most actions are now mapped to the right thumbstick (though some staples, like spins and dives, are still comfortably ensconced on the face buttons), allowing you to quickly and easily juke and shuck defenders and leave them in your wake. Furthermore, moves can be strung together now, so you can juke into a spin with ease and further befuddle would-be tacklers.

Another great improvement is the role of composure of players, particularly the quarterback. Fans of the game know that college football is all about emotion, and the rowdy crowds that populate most stadiums are enough to wear on nearly any young man's nerves. Quarterbacks in the game are especially rattled by the crowd, as can be seen before the snap. If you pull up the play chart when a QB has lost his composure, the receiver's routes will appear as wavy lines, if they even show the correct routes at all. A solid performance will calm the gunslinger, and once he's calmed down, everything shows up as it normally would, and his performance steadies. However, if the quarterback is struggling and his composure continues to plummet, he will continually make bad passes and poor judgments, possibly even to the point that you have to bench him and let someone else give it a try.

Complementing this renewed emphasis on composure is the Quarterback Quiz, which comes up anytime your QB tosses an interception. You are given a series of photos and then a list of three potential defensive plays, and asked which scheme was employed when you threw the ill-fated pass. Guess correctly, and your starter regains his cool and simply shrugs off the pick; guess incorrectly, and he'll become even more frazzled. The mechanic is a great way to teach you new things about football while emphasizing another aspect of the game few people know about. In pretty much all collegiate and professional games, quarterbacks study pictures of the defense between every series to get a feel for what the other team is doing, and this feature just really brings home that small, yet critical, piece of the game.

Composure doesn't just affect quarterbacks, though, as kickers can feel the pinch as well. At the end of the each half, the defense may choose to call a timeout as the clock is set to expire and your team lines up to try for a kick that will either put you ahead or win the game. This timeout effectively "ices" the kicker, making him stew over the impending boot and causing it to become harder to actually make the kick. In this scenario, the kicking meter is covered in blue "ice," making it much more difficult to gauge power, and the camera angle shifts to a position that makes it tough to line up your boot. It's yet another piece of the real game of football that NCAA 09 brings home, and it's the little touches like these that really shine.

The NCAA Football franchise has always prided itself on offering deep and varied modes of play, and that's not any different now. This year, the focus has shifted from the Campus Legend mode back to Dynasty, where you try and lead your selected squad through multiple seasons, racking up big-name recruits and lots of national championships along the way. This year, the recruiting methods have been expanded, allowing you to make quick calls to student-athletes on whom you want to get more info but don't want to commit to yet, full-blown conversations to get them interested in your program, and campus visits to bring them out and show them why they should sign up to spend their college years under your tutelage. However, if you don't want to deal with any of this and would rather just play football, you can push these responsibilities off onto your assistants. That way, you can focus your energies on what counts: beating the pants off every other team out there.

Further enhancing the flair of Dynasty mode is the fact that this year, for the first time, you can take your game online and compete with friends. In fact, up to 12 competitors can join up in one conference and duke it out for pigskin supremacy. Taking your dynasty online means not only will you be competing with friends to try and win the conference (and ultimately the national championship), but also jockeying for position over the same pool of recruits. Oh sure, you can focus recruiting on getting the athletes your team needs, but why not take a peek at who your opponent is courting and try and steal away his top two or three recruits? Truly, the online aspect adds a welcome touch to the NCAA Football franchise, and once you've had a taste of coaching against other people, it's hard to go back to playing alone.

While the Dynasty mode has taken a dramatic step forward this year, Campus Legend has taken an equally large step back. This mode has been pared down significantly and is clearly meant to play second fiddle to the game's focus on building up a collegiate powerhouse program. In years past, you could guide your created player through a plethora of activities in order to improve his performance, popularity, and grades, but this year, you are presented with a measly four options for any given day (hit the books, go to the gym, study your playbooks or visit the trainer). Previous games in the series allowed you to experience the struggle of creating a well-rounded student-athlete, but this year, almost all of that is stripped away, and you're left with a hollow shell of a Legend mode. If only both Dynasty and Campus Legend could have been full-featured affairs, then we may have had a football game for the ages.

Outside of the meaty Dynasty and Campus Legend modes are other, shorter affairs that make for amusing diversions. Mascot Mash Up lets you send the players to the locker room and bring the mascots onto the field for their own brand of fun. These guys all feature amped-up moves designed to amuse and entertain, and watching their shenanigans makes for a more lighthearted and laid-back affair. In addition to this mode, there are multiple minigames, including field goal HORSE, bowling, and tug-of-war. All make for amusing distractions when you don't have the time for a full game and just want to take a few moments to hit the field and get a quick fix.

Regardless of what mode you play, you'll be accompanied by terrific presentation values throughout. Player models look great, and animations have been thoroughly improved to fix the series' rampant issues in regards to collision detection and clipping. Players no longer miss each other when going for high fives, and gone are the days when you would see a hand go right through a leg or back when a tackle is being made. Now every tackle, catch, interception and tackle is crisp and clean, with nearly all of the issues of years past being put to rest. Sure, the crowd animations and players on the sideline could do with more personality, but who's even really noticing that stuff? The only graphical imperfection that bugged me was when a mascot would be celebrating on the sidelines; any time he touched the ground, his arms would appear to break, but then be fine as soon as he stood up once more. I don't know what causes this, but it looks rather silly and can be quite an eyesore, but thankfully, you'll only see it once or twice a game, if that.

The three-man commentary booth of Lee Corso, Kirk Herbstreet and Brad Nessler is back in full effect, and they seem to have recorded significant amounts of new dialogue for this year's version. While the trio is bound to repeat themselves in an annual franchise such as this, a lot of new material seems to come out of their mouths, so they're much more enjoyable than in prior years, when you felt you had heard it all before. On top of that, audio touches — like fan chants, school fight songs and a customizable soundtrack — make the experience quite pleasing for the ears. For the true college football experience, hook up the game to a surround sound system, go into a big rivalry game like Michigan/Ohio State or Georgia/Florida, turn up the volume, and just take a moment to try and soak in what it would be like to play in the deafening roar now assaulting your ears. The experience has never been this real before.

When it comes right down to it, NCAA Football 09 is the series' best effort in years, and any college football fan should be happy to own it. The only glaring flaw in the game is the severely stripped-down Campus Legend mode, but most of what is lost there is made up for with online dynasties. If your heart starts pumping every time you hear a particular fight song or whenever the Ohio State marching band dots the "I," then you're going to be very happy with this game. Once you're finished basking in nostalgia, strap on your helmet and get to work.

Your team needs you to "Play Like a Champion Today."

Score: 9.3/10