COFFEETOWN HS SPORTS

EA Sports brought College Football 25 back from its slumber and then some.

The game is a sight to behold, and delivers many a sweet, sweet sound to our ears. Your favorite College Football team’s signature third down song is probably in it.

The crowds coordinate their digital attire to match traditions like checkerboards and whiteouts or blackouts.

It’s a balm for the soul in an otherwise weird and frenetic time in the real world, the sports world and online.

Although I am yet to play the game – I don’t even own a gaming console – I see how much joy it brings to College Football fans. Even if I never play it, the game’s presence is enough for me to feel like part of the world is right again.

But part of this digital world is missing one key game mode that made the older versions of NCAA Football blissfully awesome.

CFB 25 doesn’t have the ‘Road to Glory’ we deserve

Look, I just spent more than 100 words throwing flowers at the feet of EA Sports and its latest masterpiece.

I am not a complainer. Champions don’t complain. But they are allowed to mourn.

And I am in mourning for my forgotten digital brothers in ‘Road to Glory’ modes past.

In case you aren’t familiar with the game, you used to be able to play this game mode as an actual high school football player.

That’s what makes this little column relevant to a site about High School Football. Now, those would-be High School Football heroes don’t get the chance to prove their worth to a bunch of virtual College Football scouts in the stands.

The game has you simulated right up to the point where you are already an established 3-star, 4-star or 5-star player. Then you make your pick. That’s it.

No made-up High School Football teams under the lights of a Friday night. No made-up High School Football players sweating it out with names you could plug in yourself.

The Road to Glory could have started on a backroad with the windows down and a styrofoam cup of boiled peanuts in the cupholder.

Instead, it starts on College Football’s four-lane highway.

Obviously, I’m a big fan of made-up High School Football teams, so all of this bums me out.

EA Sports deserves acclaim for all of the detail it put into the College Football experience

It dives into NIL decisions, passing classes and scooping up your teammate’s ex-girlfriend.

But High School Football is just as much a part of the story of a College Football player as any of that other stuff is.

I can only hope that College Football 25 is just a start to many, many more developments down this franchises’s own Road to Glory.

They make it right in College Football 26, I might just become a gamer again.