The date is Monday, July 23rd, 2007. For one week, every true college football fan that owns a console has had their copy of NCAA Football 08 in their XBox 360, Playstation 3, XBox or PS2. Many of them have just loaded their favorite rosters onto their console and are in the first stages of their dynasty. Others began their journey to triumph when they placed the disc in their console tray. Others still have bypassed the adventure of a dynasty and are knee-deep in a career of exclusively online play, determined to make it to the ranks of the EA ladder. Be it the high school kid that is pouring his every vacant moment into playing the game as much as possible before yet another year of classes rolls around, or the college student who is agonizing over the fact that his roommate is determined to never let the game be fired up without it being a two-player venture and thus washing away his dreams of a dynasty, or the family man with a full-time job and a mortgage who tries in desperation to juggle the responsibility of work, his wife and his children and still manage time to play his next home game in attempt to sway that four-star recruit from his cross-state rival - they have all had their patience rewarded with yet another year of obsession with the only combination of their two passions - video games and college football.

For many in this community, our love has arrived. We began critiquing the game from the first splash screen that faded in on our television when we started up the game and got goosebumps hearing Chris Fowler's introductory speech. Due to all of the build-up that comes before the release of the game and literal months of anticipation, a fair amount of emotion is put into this game before we ever actually get our hands on it. Because of that, it's easy for small flaws or initial gameplay issues to be the source of larger amounts of disappointment and discouragement. If such despair has befallen any of you, then I offer you the following in hopes of enabling you to turn a more optimistic eye to the game that we all pine for year in and year out.

It is integral for us to keep in mind that no NCAA has been made perfect. Save the years that we were younger and detail didn't matter nearly as much, we have never wrapped up a week of playing the latest NCAA for the first time and been convinced that it was EA's best offering to date. NCAA Football 2004 is widely regarded to have been the best NCAA game created, and is viewed by a fair following as being perhaps the best football game ever crafted. But its beginnings were the same as any other NCAA game. Complaints abounded concerning the running game, a seeming lack in atmosphere, the oddly high number of interceptions, the small roster size and a few pausing/sound glitches that centered around the XBox version. Oddly enough, the biggest complaints for NCAA Football 08 so far this summer have been a lessened sense of atmosphere, an excess of interceptions and sacks, too much difficulty in the passing game and the small pauses before playcall menu screens appear on the XBox 360 version.

But my advice to you is that rather than becoming jaded and slumping out of the game, try correct the issues you can control and do not sweat the small stuff. The quick implementation of well-regarded sliders such as the Playmakers Sliders can resolve many of the gameplay problems being tossed about as gamebreakers. Rather than expecting a quaking controller, shaking screen and a meter gauging "crowd intensity" to let you know how insane a stadium is at that moment, try paying attention to the fact that much of the noise that was made in previous years is still there and it is simply not amped up the point that every third down brings in the sounds of a microphone into Hell and not every 2nd and 7 sounds like you are playing to an empty house.

NCAA Football 08 is not perfect out of the box. No NCAA Football game has been and none ever will be. We will always sit down and spend time adjusting sliders to correct various shortages and over-abundances. At it's base, NCAA 08 has been crafted into one of the best football games that has been made and to those who will look past the small flaws and correct those they are in control of, it will bring a year of as much fun as we've ever had leading our favorite school to glory - or more.

The date is Monday, July 23rd, 2007 and today is the first day I'll be accompanying you through NCAA Football 08's lifespan in our gaming consoles. Just as every year before it, the next one will have as many ups, downs, complaints and epic tales of joystick success on the gridiron - be it in the depths of your dynasty or your quest to be ranked among the elite online thumb-jockeys. I can see already that my time spent with NCAA Football 08 will be some of the most fun I've had on an NCAA game, and I hope to, in some way, help you enjoy the same.

THWG,
The Jacket