I was just browsing through some of my old posts and spotted this one that covered a week in my college football "Alternaverse". Back then, I was rocking a Playstation 2 and playing NCAA Football 2007. My teams at the time were the USC Trojans, Colorado Buffaloes, and San Jose State Spartans. I didn't post anything after that but I had fun writing up the little blurbs on my teams' games and it's fun to read them now. Just as a little exercise in writing and time suckage, I'd like to revive this process. I've since upgraded the game system to an Xbox 360 and the game to NCAA Football 2013, but the spirit is still the same. EA Sports has done away with the player discipline portion (not sure what year that happened) so there won't be any infractions for me to embellish in my write-ups. Maybe I'll pick a random player from each team and write up a whole fake back story along the lines of, say, Manti Te'o? We'll see.
My two current teams in the game are my hometown Nebraska Cornhuskers and the Texas State Bobcats. Whenever I get a new version of the football game I will always start with the Cornhuskers. After I've dominated for a few years (I've already won two National Championships) I will usually have my "coach" of the Huskers take a position with a different team. But I'm still at Nebraska for now. So, my two coaches are the faux Bo Pelini (not to be confused with this faux Pelini) with the Huskers and a young whippersnapper by the name of Nate Johnson at Texas State. I find it both satisfying and frustrating to play with more than one team. You get more variety in opponents, talent, and bowl games by playing with more than one team. Especially if you have two teams on opposite ends of the spectrum like Nebraska and Texas State. But it also takes you twice as long to go through a season if you're playing with two.
The pull of a powerhouse team (aside from favorite team allegiance) is that you know you will always get top-tier talent and will almost always be in competition for a national title. But that can also get boring if your team is so good that it wins it all year after year. That's great when the real-life team is winning like that, but it gets boring in a video game. Hence the attraction of a team near the bottom. You get the challenge of trying to win with a team that is not nearly as talented. Recruiting is much harder and it usually takes at least one season to even get ranked in the top 25 and three-to-four more to be in contention for a national title. And this is even if you go undefeated and win your toilet bowl game. Usually, if your team is coming from a lesser conference and you perform well for a few years, you will be invited to join a better conference. This helps a lot in the quest for the National Championship. But it also increases the level of your competition.
In the previous "Alternaverse" the team I brought up from obscurity was San Jose State. It took quite a few years but eventually I was able to get marquee recruits and win multiple national titles. Patience and lots of time wasted are the keys to success.
I don't know how long I'll actually run this little fake football recap but I hope to have some fun with it. If you've read any of my blog you know that I am not consistent. At all. In fact, I am only consistent in not being consistent. I'm gonna shoot low and promise at least three write-ups. We shall see. In the meantime, watch this video of a dude and his dog talking about bacon.
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