The Blog for the Sports Gamer

The Curse of the Bambino was limited strictly to the Red Sox. Boston fans had years and years of Celtics glory during the ‘curse’. I think even the Bruins won a cup or two in the early 70s.

The Cleveland Curse is more like a spreading plague. The Indians, the Cavs, and my beloved Browns. No titles of any sort since 1964. The Browns have had to suffer through the Drive, the Fumble, the Abandonment and flight to Baltimore, and the Return which has produced a pretty disgusting brand of football since 1999. One Pro Bowl player in that time, OLB Jamir Miller, who subsequently tore his Achilles the next preseason and had to retire.

Today the tradition continued. LeCharles Bentley, one of the biggest acquisitions in the off season by any team was carted off the field this morning on the FIRST play of full contact drills of training camp. Here’s the AP blurb:

Pro Bowl center LeCharles Bentley sustained an injury to his left knee during the Browns’ first 11-on-11 drill of training camp on Thursday.

Bentley got tangled in a pile of players as he was blocking on a running play for Reuben Droughns.

Bentley screamed, “No,” before remaining on his knees as the Browns moved their scrimmage up the field so trainers could attend to the 6-foot-2, 309-pound player.

He stayed on the ground in a seated position for several minutes before Cleveland’s medical staff immobilized his left knee and carted him to the locker room.

Bentley covered his face with a towel on the short drive to the field house as Browns players and fans looked on in shock.

The extent of Bentley’s injury is not yet known.

Well that sure sounds encouraging, doesn’t it?

Pittsburgh’s QB does a swan dive from a motorcycle without a helmet, loses some teeth and then says he almost died…but will not miss a beat in terms of playing time, and the Browns All Pro center goes down on the first play without being touched and is carted off the field with what sounds like a serious knee injury. I swear I think Cleveland was founded on some Indian burial ground or something.

For those just looking for a way to ignite a $20 bill. Wow.

Well, I had lunch today with Mary to discuss the TV situation. First off, thanks for the emails and comments about this entire ordeal. I appreciate you guys taking the time to give me your thoughts.

Mary is 100% against getting a small (26″) LCD HDTV for my office. Her stance is that she’d never see me (prolly true) and that she wouldn’t get much out of the deal (kinda true too). She did, however, greenlight the purchase of a new monitor for use with my PC and the Xbox 360. My buddy and evil twin Bill Harris sent me a link to a review by another buddy of mine, Jason Cross, of this lovely Dell 24″ LCD monitor. The Dell site is here. This retails for around $750 but Mary, being the Director of Tech Support of a large ad agency, can get the monitor through work, shipped, for around $635 - $640. This is an extremely tough deal to pass up. As luck would have it, there is a Dell store at the mall we had lunch at and they had this model on the floor. Freaking gorgeous.

Mary’s other concern has to do with the whole DirecTV/TiVO contract thing. As many of you know, DTV is coming out with their own HD DVRs (well it keeps getting delayed, but it’ll come out eventually.) When it does, the HD TiVO boxes will not work due to new MPEG-4 encryption (they say it’s due to bandwidth issues). I have been told this directly from DTV reps. Are they lying? I guess it’s possible but I have read this on more than one forum so I take it as true. There is also the notion that DTV will swap out HD TiVO boxes for the DTV HD DVRs, but until I see that in writing I’m not jumping in with both feet. I will not get an expensive HDTV without the ability to use TiVO on it (and pay $300 for a new HD TiVO) and with the fear that the box will be useless in 3 months. I’ll just wait. I doubt DTV would totally screw its customers like that, but assuming a company will do the right thing — well..

So, I think in the long run we’re going to get both: the Dell monitor for the office PC and the 360 (this is on order now actually) and then this winter (assuming the house sells) we finally invest in the 56″ Samsung DLP that I wanted to buy 6 months ago.

Okay, so I just came out of the coma from last week’s five season sim. It wasn’t the sim that was exhausting. That was pretty simple. It was the ass-backwards way I chose to go about transcribing it (don’t ask). Anyway, I’ve finally been able to play a few more games and in terms of the big picture, I’m getting a much better handle on how things are playing out:

- Momentum is just a god-awful feature. Not just within NCAA, but as an idea. Momentum is not something that I think should be modeled in a game. It’s like modeling a clutch rating for individual players. The concept may exist, by no matter how complex the code you can’t model and replicate it in a way that doesn’t imbalance the gameplay. NCAA 2007’s model I think is much less severe than in 2006, but I still think it’s at the root of some truly whacky turnover behavior (fumbles in particular), amongst other things. I’d be much happier if it could be turned off.

- EA will never implement a balanced penalty system.

- The gameplay is prone to some bizarre happenings. I’ve seen a receiver watch an incoming pass fly straight into his helmet without attempting to catch it. I’ve seen the QB throw a pitch off a fullback’s back and stand their with the ball at his feet while the defense comes in to scoop it up. Etc. It doesn’t happen a lot, but it happens.

- The ebb and flow of the game (momentum excepted), is phenomenal. I don’t feel like there’s anything scripted about the games I’m playing, in terms of playcalling or results. Momentum I think makes some things too predictable (maybe it’s my imagination?), but I don’t feel like the end result of a game is pre-determined and I had that feeling a lot in NCAA 2006. It’s really a tremendous amount of fun.

- The sliders appear to work very well. I’m playing All-American and have tweaked up the run block and RB ability sliders and noticed an immediate payoff for both the human and AI in terms of being able to generate four to six yard runs up the middle. I do think the outside run game is a little too prone to tackles for large losses (both human and AI), but it’s not egregious.

- The playbooks and playcalling, I think, really work well. EA needs to fix how the offense gets to the line (cutting right to it when you press A), but I haven’t found a play yet that I simply can’t run and get a fair result. (I love how screens work and draws are very usable in moderation. Playaction, when used appropriately, can be absolutely lethal.)

- I’ve even grown to like the jump snap feature just a little, since it was explained to me how you can use it to draw the AI offsides and keep their D honest. (You have to fake the snap with some regularity the keep the AI from jumping on you every other play.)

- It just plain feels like football. I love that. The presentation needs work, to be sure. But in the in-play action just feels like football to me and that’s been missing for a long, long time. I love how you can slide your QB around in the pocket to help your lineman pick up blocks and buy yourself time. I love how your QB is not guaranteed to throw an on-target laser. I’ve seen overthrows, underthrows, and everything in between. It’s completely revolutionized the deep passing game, as compared to previous versions. Airing one out to an open receiver only to see it land five yards ahead of him is finally a part of the game. (This is one place where it sounds like the 360 version has it all over the Xbox version.)

Overall, I’m really quite pleased with NCAA 2007. It should be taken to task for the feature drops, but since half of the missing features aren’t done that well on the Xbox, it’s almost a blessing in disguise. I’m actually more worried about what happens when EA starts adding these features back into the game, for the 360 because I absolutely don’t want to be fretting over junk like NCAA punishment for not suspending my kicker for being late to a team meeting. Know what I mean? I’ve still got to play the game a lot more, to be sure, but for the first time since NCAA 2004, I’m really enjoying the on-field gameplay instead of fighting against it for the sake of having a college football game to play.

Uh oh. I probably shouldn’t have done that. I got a night’s dose of NCAA on the 360, played on a 50″ Samsung on Sunday. I started a two-player Dynasty with my buddy Dave. I was really anxious to finally see how the game differed from the Xbox version aside from the obvious difference in graphics.

Well, to say that there is a difference between the graphics in the Xbox and 360 versions is like saying there is a difference between The Beatles and Abba. Holy shit. Now, I saw the 360 version at E3 but to play it in a living room rather than in a small cramped area with noise blaring and 20 onlookers standing over your shoulder telling you to, “Throw it deep, dude!” is a tad different.

What a pretty game.

So we started our Dynasty (he took Syracuse and I took Pitt; we always have a rule that we can’t play in the Big10 or take a team rated higher than a B OVR…hey they’re our rules…we make ‘em up. This is how we took teams like TCU, UTEP and Tulane to the promised land back with NCAA 03 and 04.) Anyway, the interface for me, coming from the Xbox took a long time to get used to. It’s very different. I like the nifty 3D map of the States the first time I saw it, but then it just got annoying to use it to change recruitiung target states. I actually like the Xbox’s 2D map a lot better in terms of functionality. Moving around New England is a bitch. Maryland! I want Maryland!

We only got one game (I whipped Dave 24-7 with Wake Forest in a rainstorm) in but it is clear to me that I may have to buy an Xbox 360 sooner than later. The reason isn’t that I was totally blown away by vast gameplay differences. I only played one game and the biggest game difference was art, graphics, and animation. But it’s such a huge difference that not only is it hard to play the Xbox version now (there is apparantly a graphics whore inside me of which I was not aware) but the idea of playing NBA 2K, College Hoops, NHL 2K, and even Madden (a game I am universally lukewarm on) on the XBox seems like an impossibility at this point. I should go back here a bit. There are a few gamneplay devices that are not in the 360 version that I REALLY miss: the match-up stick being the biggie. I used that thing all the time. Wonder why that didn’t make the 360 cut?

Here’s the problem, though. I am still without the needed TV to fully enjoy the 360. This has been the main reason I have remained 360-less all this time. I’m not buying one (even if it is a tax write off) until I can really see it how it was meant to be seen. That is NOT on a 36″ old school Magnavox. I had planned on buying my 61″ Sammy two months ago but the old house is still on the market because this is the worst house market…ever.

I can get the TV I want online for $2000 shipped. I have the funds in savings to buy the 360, a TV stand, and the Samsung. I also have a 2nd round of tard grading, gras sseed to buy and plat for 2 acres of land, and a new house that still needs to be filled with ‘house stuff’. A very tricky situation.

Still. Wow.

Every game, even the best ones, have issues. NCAA 07 is no different. One of my beefs with the game is that seemingly every year you’ll get at least three undefeated teams with a lot of 1-loss teams making up the top 20. If you lose 2 games in NCAA 07, you can pretty much kiss your top 10 chances good-bye. I once had 6 teams finish 12-0. I really was perplexed as to how that was happening until I started to look at the schedules once you get past the initial season.

Oklahoma Vs. Cornell
Ohio State Vs. Elon
USC one year had Dartmouth, Fla Atlantic, and Wyoming as their OOC games.

This seems to be the culprit. There are quite a few top 20 teams with C+/B- rated schedules which obviously makes it very easy to waltz through the season with 0 or 1 loss.

The high number of cupcake games also has an impact on stats, which may be why we see so many 7+ YPC backs as well as QBs with 47 TDs.

There is a workaround for this, though. I guess it all depends on how much you care about it. It bugs me personally just enough to do this at the start of each season, though.

I add a human coach for the top 11 programs in the nation (you can have 12 human controlled teams in the game). At the start of the year, manually make sure that each of these teams play at least an A- rated schedule. While you can only control these 12 schedules, (including your own) by forcing more top 25 or 30 programs to play each other you are altering the landscape of a lot more than just those 12 teams. Make sure you don’t let a top 25 team slip under the radar with a C rated schedule, though. This takes all of about 10 extra minutes at the start of each season, so it’s not a big time killer and it can go a long way to making the top 25 at season’s end look more like real college football.

After I started doing this, I simmed a season and had two undefeated teams, four 1-loss teams, three 2-loss teams, and then the rest of the top 25 was peppered with 3 and 4-loss teams with a small school like Rice finishing 10-2 and ranked around #25.

Works for me.

Yesterday, I received a 2nd copy of NCAA 07 in the mail, so I did what anyone would do — went to return it and exchanged it for the 360 version. (STILL waiting for Gamefly. SLOW doesn’t begin to describe it…and that’s FASTReturn!)

Anyway, I played it a little. In 2 games, I got 8 of 50 achievements (total of 105 points..damn where did EA’s old “run 5 yards, get 300 points” system go)…so far I really am enjoying the 360 version.

The big question that keeps coming up among elite gamers is should I get the 360 or the regular version, and I hope to answer that soon.

Here are some pluses for the 360 version:
You can use the ‘gamebreaker’ stick (or whatever TF it’s called) to change a running play before the snap (ie run left instead of run right).
You can ask Corso on offense as well as defense.
The horrid camera views on kickoffs and punts is gone (I’ll take this one camera angle any day over that).
I prefer the playcalling screen on the 360 version.
It looks better.

I haven’t played the 360 online yet, I will tell you I was SHOCKED to read that NCAA’s 06 stats carry over to this year, so that 1-23 record comes with you. Last I checked, even in real football, the season resets your record…but I digress.

The regular Xbox online play I did find to be laggy.

In my mere 2 games with it, I’ve played as BC vs #3 (!) Notre Dame and rolled over them both times. I’m guessing the default level is “lame”.

Anyway, so far I don’t think you can go wrong with either version, but I’m VERY early into it. At this early point, if you put a gun to my head, I’d say go ahead with the 360 version. If you haven’t played NCAA before, what you don’t know won’t kill you, so you won’t be as anal about not having certain things that are on the regular Xbox that aren’t on the 360.

Of course, my playtest isn’t over yet, so stay tuned…

Played another game in my CSU Dynasty today, this time against Air Force. I rarely post about individual games here but this one deserves mentioning.

I’ll make it brief because I’m in a hurry today, but here’s a synopsis:

-I take a 28-0 lead in the first quarter after 2 nice drives, a 66 yd bomb, and a 55 yd fumble recovery for a TD.
-Air Force rattles off 35 unanswered points as I sat there in a stunned silence. They ran the Air Force ground attack beautifully — wingbacks, cross bucks, QB keepers, it was gorgeous to watch and I had no answer at all.
-I tie the game finally at 35-35 late in the 3rd.
-AF goes back up 38-35 with 4:00 to play (8 min quarters)
-3rd and 4 for me at my own 30. I call one of my bread and butter plays — the shotgun speed option. AF snufs it out and my QB is hammered…I make a desperation pitch to my 3rd string HB (in due to injury). The option never looked right and the pitch took the HB back an additional 5 yards. Two Falcons are right on the guy — I had to stop completely in my tracks in order to turn the runner around (the pitch truly sucked). I made the first guy miss, the second guy missed a tackle, and I took it 70 yards to take a 42-38 lead. It was the kind of play that elicited a “Holy Shit!” as I saw daylight down the sideline. A totally busted play that ends up being the 70 yard game winner.

Needless to say, it earned the #1 Instant Classic rating. It’s re-airing at 8 PM tonight.

Got a call from a buddy of mine last night and the discussion rolled around to NCAA 07. He made an observation that I hadn’t noticed. He’s already into year 3 of his dynasty (that’s some serious playing) and he said to look at the OVR player ratings. I still have my 5 year sim saved so I fired it up and I saw the same thing he did after year 3.

There are a lot of 96-99 rated players in the game after you play a few seasons. In fact, after the 5th season there were no less than 80 players rated at least a 96 (and 20 were 99). That’s an awful lot of stand-out players, isn’t it? (Many are Srs so maybe more should leave early?) If you start up a new dynasty and check the ratings there are around 20 players rated 96+ (give or take). That’s a huge difference. I always was curious as to why every player improves, at least a little bit, every off season. Shouldn’t some players nose dive in ratings? Every college player does not improve from his Sophomore to Senior year. Some do, in fact, tail off.

Not sure what you take away from this but I just found it interesting and it sort of goes back to the fact that now that the gameplay is back on track, a tightening of the screws needs to be done because I think this is a reason why after you play a few seasons that a lot of the teams start to look the same talent wise. If by year 3, if a guy is starting and he’s rated in the low to mid 80’s he is a certifiable weak link.

The FK Rosters are now available for download for the Xbox 360 ONLY. Please note you will need a memory card and some sort of transfer program. OR you can use the XSATA system if you have your 360 near a PC.

Just a quick note that I can confirm Joel’s statement about teams with losing records making Bowl games. Alabama just made the Car Tire Bowl (or whatever that thing is called) with a 4-8 record. This is the first time I have seen this happen and in Todd’s five year 360 test it never came up but it happened tonight on the Xbox. A lot of 6-6 teams didn’t make the Bowl while Bama got to play Cincinnati…and lose 34-10. I also noticed at the end of the year a QB from Iowa (not Tate, this was in like 2009) tossed 47 TDs and 17 Ints. Yow! That is one wild season.

I think Todd’s test showed a few things:

-The polls stayed pretty much the same as far as power teams staying in power with the occassional mid major poking its head out of the sand.

-On the whole there are too many undefeated teams and way too many 10-2 teams. I dunno how or why the game would do that (we’d need to look at the schedules) but to see that many 12-0, 11-1, and 10-2 teams is just odd. This one is a head scratcher.

-Recruiting in the game is decent enough but also a bit odd. Michigan wins the title and doesn’t pull in a top 20 recruitng class back to back years following a 13-0 season? Ouch. Go Lloyd go!

-There are not enough 5-Star Blue Chip recruits. 4-Star recruits go to mid level teams far too often. When you look at Scout or Rivals.com you’ll notice that a lot of teams like your Fresnos, Nevadas, and Colorado States rarely pull in a 4-star recuit and when they do it’s a real coup. Usually teams like this only pull in 3 or 4 3-star recruits out of a 20 player class. The rest are 1 and 2 star kids, some of whom blossom into very good players but they simply were not that highly regarded coming out of HS for whatever reason. But to see a year where Florida State and Tennessee pull in ZERO 5 star kids and USC pulls in only one…no way.

Of course this isn’t reality, it’s EA’s gameworld so we simply have to adapt to it. Personally, as long as the power teams stay strong (with the usual flucuations) I’m cool with all of this. I am curious as to why EA limited the number of 5-star prospects, though. There needs to be more than 30. It should be closer to 60.

I think the Dynasty mode, now that the gameplay is back on course from the past two years, I think the recruiting model could use a new fresh coat of paint and some needed fine-tuning. And yeah…fix that 4-8 Bowl team bug.

REPOSTED RANKING: I forgot to type in the right teams for final records.

Rankings:
…2010 Start…..2010 End………….Conference Champs
1. Florida St…..Notre Dame….12-0…ACC - Florida St.
2. USC…………Louisville….12-0…Big 10 - Ohio St.
3. Texas……….Florida…….12-1…Big 12 - Oklahoma
4. Penn St……..Florida St….12-1…Big East - Louisville
5. Notre Dame…..Ohio St…….11-1…ConfUSA - Houston
6. Iowa………..USC………..10-2…MAC - N. Illinois
7. W. Virginia….Iowa……….11-1…MntnWest - TCU
8. Okla St……..Fresno St…..12-0…PAC 10 - Cal
9. LSU…………Michigan……10-2…SEC - Florida
10. Florida…….Cal………..11-1…Sun Belt - Middle Tenn St.
11. Virginia……Texas………11-2…WAC - Fresno St.
12. Michigan……TCU………..11-1
13. Virg. Tech….Oklahoma……10-2
14. Oklahoma……Auburn……..11-2
15. Ohio St…….LSU………..10-2
16. Ole Miss……Ole Miss……10-2
17. Colorado……Texas A&M…..10-2
18. Auburn……..Colorado……10-2
19. Maryland……Oregon……..10-2
20. N. Carolina…Okla St……..9-3

Awards:
Heisman: Auburn HB #44

Top Bowl Games:
BCS Title Game: Florida vs. Notre Dame
Fiesta: Colorado vs. Fresno St.
Orange: Florida St. vs. Louisville
Rose: Ohio St. vs. Cal
Sugar: Michigan vs. USC

2010 Post-Season Recruiting Classes:
1. Michigan
2. Notre Dame
3. Ohio St.
4. Texas
5. Auburn
6. Oregon
7. Florida St.
8. USC
9. LSU
10. Oklahoma St.
11. Oklahoma
12. Texas A&M
13. Virginia
14. Florida
15. Wisconsin
16. Ole Miss
17. Houston
18. Nebraska
19. Louisville
20. Georgia

As you can see, most of the traditional national powers remained as such throughout the sim. I think, looking at the recruiting class results, that there are some things not to like. Michigan wins a national title and then goes 11-1 and both seasons failed to crack the top 20 in recruiting. That’s pretty out there. Of course, they made up for it in the final sim.

The overall team records are the most alarming stats, in my opinion. The number of undefeateds is just crazy high. And I think the number of one and two-loss teams is extremely inflated. I doubt much can be done about that, unfortunately.

The string of undefeateds continues…

Rankings:
…2009 Start…..2009 End………….Conference Champs
1. USC…………Florida St….13-0…ACC - Florida St.
2. Michigan…….Texas………13-0…Big 10 - Iowa
3. Florida St…..Iowa……….12-0…Big 12 - Texas
4. Ohio St……..W. Virginia…12-0…BigEast-W. Virginia
5. Oklahoma…….TCU………..12-0…ConfUSA - Houston
6. Texas……….Michigan……11-1…MAC - N. Illinois
7. Notre Dame…..USC………..11-1…MntnWest - TCU
8. Texas A&M……Notre Dame….11-1…PAC 10 - USC
9. Auburn………Okla St…….10-2…SEC - Florida
10. Cal………..Penn St……..9-3…SunBelt-Arkansas St.
11. Penn St…….Maryland……10-2…WAC - Nevada
12. Virginia Tech.Oklahoma…….9-3
13. Georgia…….Virginia……10-2
14. Okla St…….Florida…….11-2
15. W. Virginia…Ole Miss……10-2
16. Nebraska……S. Carolina…10-2
17. Tennessee…..San Diego St..10-2
18. Oregon……..Oregon………9-3
19. Iowa……….Virginia Tech..9-3
20. Colorado……Texas Tech…..9-3

Awards:
Heisman: Florida WR #85