All I know is that when Auburn Cam Newton is released in EA College Football 25, I will need some time off.
EA finally revealed one of the final details for College Football 25: the details of its Ultimate Team structure.
Yes, the game will feature NFL legends as alumni in their college uniforms, per the deep-dive blog that was released on Tuesday.
We saw images of cards for Miami Hurricanes’ Ray Lewis and Ohio State Buckeyes’ Joey Bosa, and there were text references to collegiate versions of Patrick Mahomes, Davante Adams, Christian McCaffrey, Josh Allen, Ceedee Lamb, Stefon Diggs, and Joe Burrow.
While Newton wasn’t one of the legends revealed, his card could be the one that gets me to spend more time in a mode that usually isn’t my top priority.
Here’s an overview of the best pieces of info on CUT.
How Do You Start in CUT?
You pick your favorite school and receive “a handful of names that will be familiar to you.” That sounds like a mixture of players from the current team and others who attended the school in the past.
Challenges and Objectives
CUT isn’t re-inventing the collector mode wheel with its functionality.
Similar to Madden Ultimate Team, players can complete the challenge and objective concepts to earn rewards, which can take the form of packs, player items, or coins.
According to the blog, the game will launch with more than 100 challenges, and some re-runs will be in the “ICYMI” tabs to give late adopters a second chance to earn the rewards attached to the challenges.
The Marketplace
CUT will give users the chance to earn coins by completing challenges. Of course, there is a way to purchase coins with real money. With the coins, users can buy items from the marketplace, like packs.
The Auction House also returns, giving users a chance to use their coins to buy specific players’ cards.
Team Chemistry is A Part of CUT
In CUT, Chemistry is based on several different categories, schools (134), and offensive and defensive schemes.
If you’re running a ball-control offense, you’ll want player cards that complement that playbook. The same can be said for pass-heavy offenses and various defensive schemes.
The more player cards you have that match your playbook schemes, the bigger attribute boosts you’ll receive. You’ll have an opportunity to test different schemes in the trials to see which works best for your style and current set of player cards.
Thousands of Cards
There will be tons of cards available in CUT, and while all of them will have overall ratings, they will be classified by the following rarities:
- Common – Grey
- Uncommon – Green
- Rare – Blue
- Epic – Purple
- Legendary – Gold
Those cards can have unique abilities to enhance the player’s effectiveness on the virtual field. Looking at the back of the cards with a flick of the right stick will reveal this information.
The abilities in CUT are the same as those in the base game and have been divided into the same two categories: mental and physical.
Users will be able to train to add abilities to cards and acquire cards with those abilities already in place.
Programs
New content will be introduced through programs, and the Ultimate Alumni, also available for customers who pre-order, will be one of the first to release.
It works exactly as it sounds, and EA introduced the list of player cards that will be part of this series. To unlock them, players play through moments modeled after the players’ top moments on the college gridiron.
- Brock Bowers
- Blake Corum
- Cooper Dejean
- Michael Penix Jr
- Jared Verse
- Adonai Mitchell
- JC Latham
- Jordan Morgan
- Payton Wilson
- Quinyon Mitchell
New Ways to Play
CUT will introduce a new game mode to EA’s collector mode catalog called Solo Seasons.
Users can play a Season format with their Ultimate Team against AI opponents. It’s very similar to MLB The Show’s Mini-Seasons in Diamond Dynasty.
If a user can go 5-0 in their season, they will get a bye for the playoffs and compete for the championship to earn rewards. This system is repeatable and always remains an option for CUT users.
There is also a PvP version of Seasons called H2H Seasons and a Co-Op version called Squads Regular Season.
Another new game mode is Gauntlet. This feature is another PvP mode that challenges users to take their opponent online against others with the task of racking up ten wins before they take two losses.
This setup is similar to Battle Royale in Diamond Dynasty, though no draft is ahead of the action. The challenge begins every Friday and refreshes the following Thursday.
There is one other game mode that will live within CUT.
House Rules lets users play online games that bend the traditional football ruleset. At launch, EA will release Touchdown Tango and Overtime.
Here is a breakdown from EA’s blog on both House Rules stipulations.
- Touchdown Tango – 25-yard first downs AND 14 points for a touchdown. Go up by 28 points and earn the immediate win! Earn ICYMI players and packs from accruing wins.
- Overtime – Play the iconic College Football overtime against other players! Each team gets one drive to score a touchdown or field goal until someone does not match. Top score wins.
While Ultimate Team isn’t my favorite way to play Madden, and it won’t trump Dynasty Mode in College Football 25 for me, it does sound like a fully fleshed out feature that will become very lucrative for EA.
College Football 25 releases on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on July 19, and for pre-order customers on July 16.
