NCAA '07 Video Game

[H20]

Official site: http://www.easports.com/ncaa07/

Official Cover:

[PCBoy]

Had my copy reserved since last year, lol!

[flipen]

Our Offense should be an A+.. Hopefully they make Hawaii fans more non-aloha shirt'ish..

[AreaCode808]

Our Offense should be an A+.. Hopefully they make Hawaii fans more non-aloha shirt'ish..

man i can't wait to see how UH's players are rated.

[AreaCode808]

dang they got Wyoming in one of the screen shots. too bad they don't have Hawaii

[wyokie]

dang they got Wyoming in one of the screen shots. too bad they don't have Hawaii

WOW!!! That's a shot of our Bronze Boot rivalry with Colorado State. Plus, that's War Memorial Stadfium in Laramie, not the one on Maui.

HEY, first it's Wyoming bb playing in the '06 Rainbow Classic (I'm stoked for that tournament) and now this....

What's next,....dare I say it the Return of the Paniolo Trophy Rivalry.

[BigWave96744]

HEY, first it's Wyoming bb playing in the '06 Rainbow Classic (I'm stoked for that tournament) and now this....

What's next,....dare I say it the Return of the Paniolo Trophy Rivalry.

Ho Crap, I thought you were going to bring out some other skeletons out of the closet

Remember Wyokie Close that book

[wyokie]

HEY, first it's Wyoming bb playing in the '06 Rainbow Classic (I'm stoked for that tournament) and now this....

What's next,....dare I say it the Return of the Paniolo Trophy Rivalry.

Ho Crap, I thought you were going to bring out some other skeletons out of the closet

Remember Wyokie Close that book

I may look stupid but I 'aint CRAZY!!!! I 'aint talking about that other stuff on this board ever AGAIN!

[AreaCode808]

dang they got Wyoming in one of the screen shots. too bad they don't have Hawaii

WOW!!! That's a shot of our Bronze Boot rivalry with Colorado State. Plus, that's War Memorial Stadfium in Laramie, not the one on Maui.

HEY, first it's Wyoming bb playing in the '06 Rainbow Classic (I'm stoked for that tournament) and now this....

What's next,....dare I say it the Return of the Paniolo Trophy Rivalry.

that would be cool

[NiCkOwNsRTR]

can't wait, fixing to pre-order mine!

[H20]

Screenshots from the XBOX360 version taken off of a monitor at E3:





BOOOOOOO!!!!!!




The rest are here:
http://www.nlgaming.com/nl/asp/id_418/n ... ewDisp.htm

[chawan_cut]

Gamespot's interview with the game producers in 2 Q&A sessions. June Jones gets mentioned in part 2. This year's version supposedly focused on upgrading the playbooks. They mention Nevada's unique Pistol formation as an example.

Part 1

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/sports/nca ... e=previews


NCAA Football 07 Playbooks Q&A Part 1 -- Breaking Down the Game
In part one of our Q&A with EA Sports' playbook specialists Larry Richart and Anthony White, we find out what it's like to watch college football for a living.
By Staff, GameSpot
Posted May 17, 2006 1:42 pm PT

One of the best parts of college football is the wildly disparate styles of play from team to team. Pac-10 teams, for example, play a completely different kind of ball than the down-and-dirty SEC, and the same is true for many conferences around the nation. In the latest entry in its college football series, NCAA Football 07, EA Sports has given the playbooks the largest overhaul yet. We spoke with assistant producers Larry Richart and Anthony White--the guys responsible for all the plays you'll call in NCAA 07--to find out just what went into putting the playbooks together for the game. In part one of our Q&A, we get to know the guys who have the enviable job of getting paid to watch tons and tons of college football.

GameSpot: First off, tell us who you are and give us some information on each of your football backgrounds. What are your positions at EA Sports and how long have you been working there?

Larry Richart: My name is Larry Richart, I am an assistant producer and I have been working at EA-Tiburon since 1999. I started out in QA as a tester and worked my way up from there to the Central Production Team that I am currently on. I was born in Daytona but moved to Orlando when I was 3 after my father took the head football coach job at Bishop Moore High School. I grew up around football as my father was a quarterback at the University of Louisville and would later coach there and at UCF. My father coached me through high school at Bishop Moore and I went on to play quarterback at the University of Florida. During my five years at UF, I learned a tremendous amount about the game of football from some of the best coaches in the country led by Coach Steve Spurrier. I was also a member of the 1996 National Championship Team. I graduated from UF with a sports management degree and was fortunate enough to land a job at EA to get my foot in the door in the video game industry.


NCAA 07 playbooks are receiving the largest overhaul in the series' history.

Anthony White: My name is Anthony White and I'm an assistant producer here at EA Tiburon. I've been with the company for little over a year now and I personally feel I have one of the best jobs in the world. I've been a big fan of the NCAA Football series for years and to now be a part of the team that makes the game is a dream come true. I grew up in Oakland, MS, and I became interested in football while attending Coffeeville High School in Coffeeville, MS. For me I always enjoyed going to practice [and] learning from the coaches the various skills and techniques needed to play the game and to have fun. I wasn't the biggest or the fastest player, but I always had a good understanding of what my coaches were teaching us during classroom work and on the field. After high school I joined the military and during this time I continued to play, but this is where I got my start in coaching. I started out as a volunteer youth league coach, coaching 12- and 13-year-old kids. After leaving the military I floated around the semiprofessional level as a player and then later a coach. That experience allowed me to gain access to various resources such as game cutups, college and pro playbooks, coaching clinics, contacts with high school and college coaches, in addition to keeping up to date with the latest trends in football.

GS: We think many folks would be interested to hear about your jobs. Can you give us a description of what you do in a typical day? What kind of technology and facilities do you have to assist you?

LR: Well, my day really depends on what time of year it is. For example, during the fall when college football is in full swing, I am usually watching four or five games a day during the week, from games that were played earlier in the season. Our information-resource department does a great job of taping as many games as possible from the NCAA and will copy those games to DVD for us to watch. While watching these games I will take notes on what formations and plays teams like to use. We have a sheet with every formation in the game on it and we can keep track of how many times teams like to use certain sets. That will give us an idea of what types of formations/plays to put into their playbook for the upcoming game. We also just got a new coach-edit tool that allows us to watch games with a coach clicker to pause, fast-forward, and rewind on the fly. This tool also allows us to save each play to a database where we can label each by formation, play type, result, etc. This is something we will use extensively in the off-season after we ship, as we will be able to create a database full of different plays and be able to find any type of play, from any team, whenever we want. This is extremely useful when we try to find new pass-route combinations, blocking schemes, and new blitz styles. After feeling comfortable that we have done the right amount of research for a particular team, we will move on to the actual update in our play-designer tool. This is where we spend a majority of our time, as we are able to update a team playbook by simply adding or deleting plays that we best feel represent that team's playing style.


Tulsa uses the shotgun triple stack, which features three receivers aligned in a vertical row.

AW: What we do on a typical day primarily depends on what game we're currently working on and at what stage of the development cycle we're in. Early on in the development cycle, which is during the college football season for NCAA, we're watching tons of games. Here at the studio we're able to get video feeds from nearly every game that's being broadcasted during the season. After the research phase is complete we'll go over our notes and then list out the formations we're going to add to the game. With the many hours of research we put in this year, we were able to come up with 103 new formations (87 on offense and 16 on defense), including making some minor adjustments to some of the existing formations. After we've created the formations, we can now add motion, personnel packages, and finally, plays. Once everything comes together, Larry and I will spend a large part of our day in practice mode, tuning the formations and plays to make sure they're working properly. I have stacks of NFL and college game cutups, drill tapes, playbooks, coaching manuals, and other related materials at my desk.

GS: Give us some numbers here--how much game film do you watch per day? How many teams do you cover throughout the year and how many games do you watch of each team? How do you go about dividing the labor between the two of you--by team, by conference, or some other method?

AW: During the workday I'll generally watch four to five games. For NCAA, the games we watch are usually the broadcast versions of the game and, in some cases, the actual game film. For Madden we have access to the actual coach's footage from every team in the NFL. I also do a lot of film-watching on my on time at home. This also had my fiancée questioning my mental stability, but she's very supportive of what I do. This past season I was able to watch at least three games on nearly every college team, including the lower-profile IA teams and the IAA teams. In some cases with teams such as USC, Oregon, Missouri, and here locally with UCF, I was able to watch every one of their games. As a result of our overall research I feel each team's playbook is an accurate representation of what they do in real life from a formation standpoint. We also investigate info on schools that had coaching/philosophy changes from the previous season and try to make sure those team playbooks reflect those changes. For example, Rice is going away from the triple-option offense in favor of a wide-open spread offense. BYU [is] switching to a 3-4 defense, and Cal [is] adding elements of the spread offense to their offensive system, etc. As for deciding what teams we want to research we'll generally start out with the teams we're fans of and go from there. Since I've lived on the West Coast and in the Midwest I keep up with Pac-10 and Big Ten football as well as other conferences such as the WAC, Mountain West, Conference USA, MAC, and the Sun Belt.


Michigan uses a variety of formations that feature condensed receiver alignments, similar to the one above.

LR: During the season and right after it ends is when we are in full research mode. We want to try and get this knocked out as soon as possible so we can move on to creating the new formations and plays that we have seen from our research. We try and watch at least two games for every college team. We try and split the teams up as evenly as possible, but Anthony has some great knowledge of the teams out West and some of the smaller conferences, so he does a few more teams than me for NCAA. The teams we individually research change every year with coaching changes as we track coach movement very closely. During our research time period we will communicate to one another about different teams moving to different styles of offense and defense and go from there.

GS: How do you go about getting tapes and analyzing smaller, more under-the-radar programs?

LR: For some of the smaller college teams, it is harder to actually get video of them, as they are not on TV as much as some of the bigger schools. In these cases we will try to research their coaches on the Internet to try and find out where they have been in the past and what kind of styles they have been associated with. We also look at media guides and team Web sites to try and find out what kind of offensive/defensive styles they like to use. From there, we will just give them formations and plays that fit those schemes.

AW: It's funny you mention "under the radar," as during each week of this past season I would send an e-mail listing of games to our guys in the information resource center titled Off the Radar Games. This would generally cover the lower-profile IA and IAA teams. In addition to our IRC, there are tons of resources we can pull from, including online with ESPN Gameplan and CSTV All-Access. We also will use our various outside contacts to acquire game film from the past season.

Come back tomorrow for part two of our interview with Larry Richart and Anthony White, as we delve deep into the playbooks of NCAA Football 07.
-GameSpot

[chawan_cut]

Part 2:
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/sports/nca ... e=previews


NCAA Football 07 Playbooks Q&A Part 2 -- More Options Than the Option
In part two of our Q&A with Larry Richart and Anthony White, we crack open the new and improved playbooks of NCAA Football 07.
By Staff, GameSpot
Posted May 18, 2006 2:05 pm PT

Because college football styles vary so much from conference to conference, it makes sense that keeping track of all those varying styles of play can be a full-time job. That is exactly the case for Larry Richart and Anthony White, two EA Tiburon producers who maintain the ever-expanding playbooks in both the NCAA and Madden series. In part one of our Q&A with Richart and White, we got to know the pair and how they go about collecting the data that goes into each year's playbook upgrades. In part two of our discussion we talk about the fruits of their hard work in NCAA Football 07 specifically, some of the very team-specific plays that give NCAA 07 its collegiate flair, and just who each thinks is the smartest coach in college football.

GameSpot: NCAA Football 07's playbooks have been expanded this year. What areas of the game's playbooks did you focus on specifically?


The old punt rooskie in action.

Larry Richart: Playbooks have undergone the biggest update in the history of the game. The overall playbook size has increased by about 30 percent with each team having an additional three formations and about 50 more plays. We have added over 100 new formations to the game, with 87 offensive and 16 defensive. Some of the new offensive formations include Nevada's pistol formations, South Carolina's Emory and Henry, Illinois' shotgun triple stack, Texas Tech's shotgun cluster, and Florida's shotgun slot F trips. One of the popular offensive styles that has become very common in the college game is the spread offense. With that in mind, we have created some new shotgun QB slot option plays out of multiple formations where the slot receiver can be motioned into the backfield opposite the halfback, and then will become the pitch man for the QB on the option. We have also created some option passes out of these same formations to keep the defense on their toes. We have also created several new pass routes for the receivers that are spread throughout several formations. These routes include post stops, corner stops, sluggos (slant and go's), shallow crosses, and some new double-move routes like shake routes.

Special teams have also undergone some major revamping. To go along with our Turn the Tide feature, we have added several new special-teams trick plays. For field goals, we have added four new trick plays: a shovel pass to the wingback coming underneath, an over-the-shoulder pitch to the kicker, a pitch to the kicker where he can pass it, and an option play where the holder will get up and run with the kicker as his pitch man. For punts, we went a little old school, as we went back and pulled out some footage from the 1980s and found the punt rooskie. This was a famous play used by Bobby Bowden and the [Florida State] Seminoles to defeat Clemson. I have always been intrigued by this play and am very excited that we got it into the game this year. We have also created an option play and an option pass play off the rooskie fake. And finally we have added both kickoff and punt-return reverses and reverse fakes that the user will be able to use.

With all the work on improving the offensive playbooks we haven't forgotten about the defense. For the first time ever we have multiple defensive playbooks based on style as opposed to one global defensive playbook. Each team will be assigned one of the following playbooks based on their style: 4-3, 3-4, 3-3-5, 4-2-5, and multiple D. Each of these playbooks have several new formations and plays, including new versions of the 4-3 (over, under), 3-4 (under, over, solid), 3-3-5 (split, cougar, bear), 4-2-5 (over, under, bear). We have also added the 4-6 bear defense as well as the quarter 3 deep set.

GS: How do you decide the "cutoff line" for the number of new plays added from year to year?

LR: We don't really have a "cutoff" per se, as we will still add new plays up until they tell us not to! During the alpha process we will still be making minor adjustments here and there by tuning different plays to get them to work the way we want them to and at the same time we will also be continuing to brainstorm for new plays.

Anthony White: We're usually adding and making adjustments to plays up to the very last minute, which is right before we go beta. During preproduction we'll sit down with our team of software engineers and discuss what we'd like to have in regards to playbook sizes and they'll try to make it happen for us. We work with some tremendously talented engineers for both current- and next-gen NCAA, who were able to come up with some creative ideas which allowed us to increase the playbook size. With all of the new formations we added to this year's game, there are still roughly 25 to 30 formations we weren't able to get in this time around, but I'd say that 103 is a good start.

GS: If there's one thing you could add to the NCAA Football series, what would it be and why?

AW: I'd add an IAA dynasty mode option that allows you to play in the actual conferences, and at the end of the season if your team is good enough, compete in the IAA playoffs. As for my reasons, I enjoy watching IAA football, especially when it's playoff time.

GS: From your point of view, which NCAA coach or coordinator has the most interesting or innovative playbook and why?

LR:: That's easy. Coach Steve Spurrier. I am biased, of course, but Coach Spurrier has done some unbelievable things in the passing game. From becoming one of the first coaches to really utilize five wide-receiver sets to creating some of the more common route combinations that just about every team uses today, he has made a huge impact on the college game. Some other coaches that I really enjoy watching and have great respect for are Charlie Weiss, Bobby Petrino, and Urban Meyer. All of these coaches do a great job of utilizing multiple formations and always seem to get the ball into the hands of their playmakers. Their playbooks in the game hopefully represent that by having multiple different formations sets with a unique combination of plays.


Florida's innovative offensive system gives them the ability to run the triple option from the shotgun, even with four receivers.

AW: Some of my favorite offensive systems are the ones used by Rich Rodriguez at West Virginia; a definite innovator as far as the shotgun running game is concerned. The old BYU offensive system under Lavell Edwards and Norm Chow is another favorite of mine. This is the system that a large part of the Texas Tech air raid offense is based from. June Jones' run and shoot is fun to watch. I've been a big fan of the run and shoot since the days of the old Houston Cougars with Andre Ware and when it was used in the NFL with the Oilers, Falcons, and Lions. The one-back offense that new Idaho head coach Dennis Erickson first made popular when he was the head coach at Miami is also fun to watch. On the defensive side of the ball, I enjoy watching teams that do multiple, yet sound, things on defense such as Southern Miss, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.

GS: To do this job, you must love college football. What is it about the game that appeals to you?

AW: I enjoy watching all of the different styles of play. In the college game there are so many diverse styles of play and the games tend to be more wide open. Every week during the season you'll see something different and unique. It didn't hurt either that I grew up in the south where college football is king. Growing up in Mississippi, the closest professional teams were in New Orleans and Atlanta, so the local college teams were in a sense our pro teams.

LR: It's college football. To me, college football is the most exciting sport to watch and to be able to be a part of making this game, it is a great thrill. College football is a much more wide-open type of game as compared to the pros. Take the spread offense, for example, and what Vince Young did in that system last year. You don't see that in the NFL, even with Mike Vick. It gives us an opportunity to be more creative by designing different formations and plays like the QB slot option out of various shotgun formations. We get an opportunity to try and create more unique styles of playbooks, like Nevada's and its pistol formations.

GS: You guys probably watch more college football than anyone else. How do you think the college game has changed over the past, say, 10 years, especially in terms of game planning?

LR: I think the game has changed some with more wide-open offenses, but more importantly, the players have changed. The players are bigger, stronger, and faster than they were 10-15 years ago. You are seeing 6-foot, 5-inch, 250-pound QBs running 4.5's and having cannons for an arm. And the coaches are better, too. They are better prepared and have taken advantage of technology to make themselves and their teams better.

AW: I think the overall skills of the players today allows coaches on both sides of the ball to be more creative with the things they do. Not only are players bigger, stronger, and faster, but in my opinion they're getting outstanding coaching at the high school and below levels. In turn what you get is more and more true freshmen being able to come right to campus and immediately compete for a starting job. As far as game planning is concerned, you're definitely seeing a trend where more and more teams are basing a large percentage of their offense from the shotgun. Just a few seasons ago this was a small number, but nowadays it's quite common to see the quarterback in the shotgun with four and five receivers. The Big Ten for years has had the reputation of being an I formation, three yards and a cloud of dust league, but this past season seven of its teams based a large percentage of their offense from the shotgun, including Ohio State and Penn State.

On the defensive side of the ball, the use of faster, more athletic players on defense is also quite noticeable. If you look at some of the depth charts from around the country, you're seeing more 210-pound linebackers/safety-type players who can play the run and cover slot receivers in pass coverage. These types of players fit perfectly in the 4-2-5 and 3-3-5 defenses.


Near pro is a traditional formation in the West Coast offense, and is one that Stanford uses frequently.

GS: Finally, tell us your favorite new play in NCAA Football 07.

LR: There's so many, you want just one? I think I'd have to go with the drive play out shotgun 5WR trio in the Notre Dame playbook (among many others). This play features a new formation, three new pass routes (a slant and go on each side and a wheel stop on the left), and a new route combination by the inside receivers called Drive. This plays gives you plenty of options to throw to as you should be able to find an open receiver.

AW: Shotgun empty trips TE-WR screen. This is a new formation and play where the receiver running the screen goes up the field for a few yards as if he's running a pass route and then comes back behind the line of scrimmage to receive the pass. This allows time for the blocking to set up and hopefully spring the receiver for a big gain.

GS: Great stuff. Thanks for your time, guys.
-GameSpot

[flipen]

cant wait for the game..i usually by the NCAA football games every other year because EA doesnt seem to change much in the game each year..but i'll be buying this years version, finally a bigger playbook..also could be the last one in line for ps2..i wont be buying ps3..i wish i could though..

[chawan_cut]

I was just reading through part 1, and one of the guys said this:

"I also do a lot of film-watching on my on time at home. This also had my fiancée questioning my mental stability, but she's very supportive of what I do. "

Imagine telling your wife, "But its for work!!!" when having to watch football tapes at home too for research.... what a life.