The NCAA Football 07 Alternate History Saga Part 1: Framework and Pre-Pre History
A walk down memory lane in a world that doesn't exist
I wrote something about a month ago about NCAA Football and my longstanding relationship to it and I never published it because it came off too desperate and sad. Games are art, sports are fun, and it’s more interesting to talk about the in-game and metanarrative aspects of my long-term relationship with NCAA Football than to try to prove its worthiness while pathetically expressing that I feel bad for spending my time doing that than playing narrative games as much as I could have over the last decade. The following is informed in part by the many dynasty reports published on websites like Operation Sports for the past two decades. It is informed in part by the Crusader Kings II “A Song of Ice and Fire” mod playthroughs at PC Gamer. It is inspired in part by finally reading “Bow Nigger.”
I first got really into NCAA Football around 2006, after NCAA Football ’07 had come out and USC had lost in the National Championship to Texas at the Rose Bowl. By 2015, winter break of my senior year of undergrad, I knew that there were ways to get a real life roster (the games start with unnamed rosters because they can’t use player’s likenesses without paying them and the NCAA’s amateurism rules precluded the players being paid) but hadn’t purchased a Max Drive to transfer saves from GameFAQs to my PlayStation. I’ve since corrected that error. What I decided to do, as the 2015 bowl season was nearing commencement, was to take a roster tile that I had manually edited by adding a lot of prominent players names to, simulate through the 2015 season, and jump in from there. I would take somewhat meticulous records which included conference champions, Heisman winners, national champions, BCS bowls, and other prominent bowls (usually the Cotton Bowl or Capital One (Peach) Bowl would include at least one Top 10 team, and sometimes a lower-level bowl would feature an undefeated team from a low level conference). Then, I would take over a mid-major school, build them up, and leave for greener pastures. By that point in my NCAA-playing career, I had won national championships at USC, Alabama, and Temple; had built programs at San Diego State, Mississippi State, FIU, and other smaller schools. A long time fan of Pac-12 football because of USC and SEC football (because of LSU and their general prominence) with some familiarity with the Big XII and Mountain West (because of places I’d lived to that point) I was curious if I could get my coach to the Big Ten, and see what that was like. It ended up a long and winding road with several prominent forks.
But, first, we must deal with prehistory.
In 2006, the national champion was still decided in one postseason game between the teams ranked #1 and #2 in the BCS at the end of the season. In real life, the replacement of that system by a playoff (of 4-teams) was hastened by the depressed television ratings of a national championship game after 2011 between LSU and Alabama. It’s the only national championship game of my life I can remember not watching until the end.
If the history of this dynasty had taken place, the mot to a playoff (or other meddling) would have come much more quickly. 2007 was the first of several years where we would have multiple national title game participants from the same conference (I mean, there have been conference rematches in the playoff in real life, but I’ve complained enough about that lately). Another difference – the SEC never became, in this dynasty, the dominant conference it was (is?) in real life. None of the conferences really do, with a rotating cast of top competitors in most leagues.
A note on objectivity and neutrality – I’ve never engineered another team into the title game, but I have messed with coaching settings to make teams more competitive, in part because there’s no coaching carousel in the 2006 version of the game (something added later in the PS3 generation as well as the NCAA Next mod for NCAA 06). One interesting side-effect of this is that the service academies (Navy especially, Army secondarily) become dominant forces (I think the fact they don’t have conference schedules helps them stack wins, which in turn helps stack recruiting; Air Force stays good but almost never 12-0). The ACC’s top tier include Clemson (after my coaching there) and Georgia Tech (a perpetual top four school since I switched them to an option playbook for 2007).
I switched Michigan to WVU’s playbook to simulate the arrival of Rich Rodriguez (I wish he hadn’t been undercut by alleged lack of institutional support in real life). I switched Ohio State to Florida’s playbook to simulate the arrival of Urban Meyer once they got stale. If a team in general goes 1-11 to 3-9 too many times in a row, I try to switch things up, but there’s only so much one can do if I’m not going to play the games for them. (Another interesting side note, unlike in the PlayStation 3 generation, the game simulations happen after you advance to a given week, not before, so there’s considerable more opportunity for randomness)
Anyway, my moves weren’t perfect, but I’m fine with my motives.
I only very recently (like a week or so ago) conspired to make all the teams that would be playing FCS schools in week one play one another instead. It took a little doing (you pick one of the FBS teams, then switch to another team’s FCS opponent, which matches up the FBS team you first selected with the FBS team whose opponent you just stole) but led to a lot of very cool matchups, If I had started doing that in 2017 or 2023 instead of 2039, I’d probably have had less national title disputes.
A note on split championships: Firstly, the game notes in the polls if a team that’s not the consensus number 1 in the coaches’ or media poll gets first place votes, but I’ve never seen a full split title. I think 39-21 is the closest vote split I’ve seen. Nonetheless, I’ve recorded any time a team has finished undefeated that wasn’t number 1, as well as other interesting controversies.[1] Secondly, the game does not record split conference titles, which sometimes happens in round-robin conference play schedules which do not include a title game. I think every FBS conference has a championship game in real life now. Regardless, I do include those titles as split titles, as they have sometimes been recorded in real life.
One final note: these records are incomplete in a few minor ways. I’m missing the Heisman winners from 2028 and 2029 and the C-USA and MAC champions from 2026. Otherwise, we’re close to golden. I’ll share my notes on the process, the game’s simulation logic, and more as we move through the years. If this isn’t your cup of tea, don’t worry, I’ll be talking about movies and non-sports games soon.
[1] Aside: also, the Coaches poll matters more in the game than in real life, where the media poll is the big thing.