NCAA Football 10: Now the Season Showdown Counts

I'm addicted to this.

Boycot this game! I can't believe that EA still won't make a region free version for us european xbox360 owners. Baaaad decision.

It still intrigues me, but I don't expect many upsets to occur during the Season Showdown. Those schools with the biggest fan bases will continue to and win with ease. Will they do this throughout the bowl season and the National Championship game?

Looks like the same old front running crap as the BCS standings to me..? People get with it and cross over to the BLUE!!! We R!!! PENN STATE!!!

Personally I will not buy an EA football game for reasons that people are all too familiar with, crap unrealistic gameplay and non physics based player interactions that make rocket catching, trucking D-linemen and morphing all too present. This is a really cool mode, too bad EA didn't take more time to actually make the game better; instead they continue to slap a coat of paint on the same out of date engine that still does not use physics to dictate simple things so we still have balls that morph through players bodies and collisions that look unrealistic. Sorry to rant guys but this is unacceptable in the supposed "next gen" videogame market to be left without a simulation football experience.

I've been waiting for long, long months to say this: It's college football game week!

Whew. Let that soak in for a while. Feels good, doesn't it?

The persistent problem with the traditional July launch of EA Sports' NCAA Football series has been that a good chunk of the audience has abandoned the game by the time the real college football season rolls around. Whether it's moving on to other games (like Madden) or simply having already wrung the fun out of the game, there's a chunk of fans out there for whom NCAA Football's cycle has already run out.

That thinking is at least part of thinking behind the Season Showdown mode, introduced in this year's NCAA Football 10. The mode, which essentially tracks and scores the activity of users and assigns them to each player's team of choice, will officially kick off once head-to-head match-ups begin in college football starting this Thursday. EA Sports has kept track of all the user credits accumulated by NCAA Football players and released a top ten Season Showdown list heading into the regular season.

1. Ohio State (more than 100 million credits earned during the preseason) 2. Florida 3. Texas 4. Michigan 5. Miami 6. Florida State 7. USC 8. LSU 9. Alabama 10. Notre Dame

An interesting list and one Michigan fans should savor, as this might be the closest the Wolverines get to the Top 10 all season long. I kid, I kid.

I wasn't the biggest fan of Season Showdown when it first was introduced--it looked like little more than an excuse to show Coke Zero ads. That said, it will be interesting to see how the NCAA Football fanbase takes to the feature now that the regular season has just about kicked off. Fans will be able to earn credits for their team by playing online versus their school's weekly opponent, taking part in some specialized Facebook games, or simply playing the game offline.

Are you still playing NCAA Football? What do you think of the Season Showdown mode?