EA Sports' sophomore return to the college gridiron is here, and after a week with College Football 26, the verdict is clear: it's fine. Not great. Not terrible. Just... fine. A perfectly okay follow-up to last year’s triumphant yet turbulent reboot.
When CFB 25 dropped, the fanfare was massive. After a decade-long hiatus and a legal gauntlet, the franchise came roaring back, only to immediately trip over its own cleats. Missing features, buggy simulations, anemic commentary, and undercooked game modes quickly cooled the hype.
I was one of the many caught in the hype. I reviewed CFB 25 last year and confidently claimed it was "better than Madden." And hey, I stand by that — but let’s not pretend that’s a high bar to clear. Road to Glory mode felt like a placeholder, and Dynasty lacked even basic quality-of-life tools. Sim stats broke immersion. Chris Fowler’s voiceover — despite his public excitement — sounded like it was phoned in from a bunker. The hype of a franchise revival couldn’t mask the cracks in its foundation.
College Football 26 is a better game than its predecessor, but it's also still deeply flawed. The core experience has potential, and the fun is real, but EA continues to treat the franchise like an annual obligation rather than a flagship opportunity.
With that in mind, here are three things I love — and three things I can’t stand — about CFB 26.
Love: High school in RTG is back
A long-requested feature from NCAA Football 14 finally makes its return in College Football 26: high school football in Road to Glory. The concept remains straightforward — players begin their career under the Friday night lights, where their performance earns them recruiting stars and scholarship offers. Rack up enough stars, and top-tier programs will come calling, with a starting job likely waiting. Fall short, and you can still walk on at your dream school — but you'll have to grind your way up the depth chart through practices and position battles.
It’s a solid foundation, and seeing high school return to the mode is genuinely exciting. But even this addition comes with a catch.
Hate: High school RTG is half-baked
For all the praise I just gave about high school finally making its way back into Road to Glory, what we actually got is a massive downgrade compared to what we used to have.
In earlier entries — especially NCAA Football 12 — players could play through a full high school season before committing to a college. It started small in NCAA 08 with just the state championship playoffs, but quickly evolved into something much more immersive. Now, in CFB 26, it's been reduced to just four games—and not even full ones. You’re only playing isolated “highlight moments.”
Before each game, you pick from a handful of pre-set scenarios — things like a "2-Minute Drill" or "Red Zone Threat" — with specific objectives tied to them. Succeed, and you earn points toward your recruiting star rating. Fail, and your stock drops. As you gain interest from colleges, some scenarios become school-specific, giving you extra chances to impress a program with a highlight tailor-made for their scouts.
It’s a decent concept in theory, but in execution, it’s clunky and needlessly restrictive. Some of the objectives are outright broken—like a "scramble for 50+ yards" challenge that doesn’t register if you also score a touchdown on the play.
This stripped-down, gamified version of high school feels arbitrary and disconnected. Nobody asked for this chopped-up approach. Players just wanted the full high school season back. What we got instead feels like a rushed compromise.
Love: Historical data/Trophy Room
One of my nerdiest gaming obsessions is the Football Manager series. I’ve sunk thousands of hours into its glorified spreadsheets, poring over data, charts, and graphs as I guide some no-name Scottish club to Champions League glory. There’s something deeply satisfying about tracking every milestone, every stat, every tiny piece of history your team creates.
That’s exactly what was missing from CFB 25. For all the time I spent in Road to Glory or Dynasty, there was no way to look back on the legacy I was building. No archive of past champions, no record of bowl game winners, no hall-of-fame moment to revisit the legendary 2027 National Championship between Clemson and North Texas. I couldn’t even mournfully revisit the Independence Bowl trophy I fought tooth and nail to win.
Thankfully, CFB 26 fixes this. EA brought back historical records and made a point to highlight it—and for good reason. Immersion has always been one of the defining strengths of this series, and features like these matter. These little details aren’t just fluff; they’re how players connect with the stories they create.
Hate: RTG's running back AI still sucks
This might be a niche gripe, but it drove me crazy in CFB 25 and it’s still a problem in CFB 26: the pathfinding logic for AI running backs in Road to Glory is genuinely migraine-inducing.
Take a simple inside handoff out of a pistol formation. The offensive line opens up a clean gap up the middle—but instead of hitting the hole, the running back bounces the play wide, drifting toward the sideline like he’s allergic to positive yardage. It’s not a ratings issue, either. This happens whether you’re playing for a bottom-tier school or a Power Four powerhouse.
It’s a consistent, frustrating quirk that turns basic running plays into unpredictable messes, and after two straight years of it, it's wearing thin.
Love: Dynamic subs
A lot of this quasi-review has focused on the features around CFB 26 rather than the gameplay itself — and that’s mostly because the gameplay is still rock solid, just like it was last year. EA has finally nailed down a foundation that’s genuinely fun, so the year-to-year improvements are going to be marginal at best. When the foundation is strong, you don’t need to tear the whole thing down just to make progress. (That said, I’ll probably never own a house on my salary, so what do I know about foundations anyway?)
I call this a “quasi-review” because most of what I said about CFB 25 still applies here. Doing a full, traditional review again would feel redundant. That said, one gameplay feature did stand out enough to improve the experience meaningfully: dynamic subs.
Substitutions have always been a clunky afterthought in sports games — either buried in menus or too slow to matter mid-drive. But CFB 26 streamlines it completely. With a quick press of the D-pad, you can instantly view who’s on the field, cycle players in and out by tapping left or right, and your changes stick without needing to dig back into the depth chart. It’s quick, it’s intuitive, and most importantly, it’s deliberate — your decisions now matter in the moment.
It goes a step further with tailored sub-filters, letting you manage your entire defense or offense in logical groups. Want to swap just your linebackers or skill players? Easy. Want to reset everything back to your starters after giving backups some reps? One button press (Square on PlayStation, X on Xbox) and you’re good. It’s small on paper but makes in-game strategy smoother and more responsive, especially in Dynasty or Road to Glory when fatigue and matchup management actually matter.
Dynamic subs don’t reinvent the wheel — but they don’t need to. They finally make roster management feel like part of the on-field action instead of a separate chore, and that’s a big win for gameplay flow.
Hate: Ultimate Team
The inclusion of Ultimate Team in any sports game is already a blight—but what really grinds me down in CFB 26 is its creep into the training mode.
One of the biggest hurdles in modern sports games is how complex they’ve become. Ten years ago, passing was straightforward. Now there’s “placement + accuracy” mechanics, or weird finger-twister combos like holding L1 while flicking the right stick to properly execute a high lob fade. I’m only 26, but sometimes it really does feel like I’m yelling at clouds. Sports games used to be accessible. Now they demand some understanding of systems layered on top of systems.
Which would be fine — if learning those systems didn’t funnel you into EA’s glorified slot machine. If you want to learn how to pass, read coverage, or execute an RPO properly, you’re doing it inside Ultimate Team under the mode's Challenges section. That’s the only place where the tutorials and skill challenges live. So if you're a parent with a full-time job and barely an hour of free time to learn a game like this, you're forced to do it inside a digital casino filled with microtransactions, fake currency, and card packs.
There is nothing redeemable about Ultimate Team. Not here, not in Madden, not in FIFA, not anywhere. It’s a hollow, predatory mode — and the fact that CFB 26 ties its basic training tools to it is a perfect example of how cynical modern sports gaming can be.
And if I’m doing a love/hate list for CFB 27 next year? Spoiler alert: this section’s coming back.
