Hey Everybody, I’m Ben Haumiller and I’m a designer on the
NCAA Football series. I’ve been at Tiburon since 2000, starting out as a tester
in QA, and I’ve been a member of the NCAA Football design team since NCAA 06.
Since joining the team I’ve primary worked on our career modes (Dynasty, Campus
Legend, etc.) our Online features, as well as a lot of the features you’ll find
when checking out the My NCAA and Team Management sections of the Main Menu .
You would be hard pressed to find a more passionate college football fan than
myself, so working on the NCAA Football series has been a dream come true.
On NCAA Football 09 I was the designer for what had been
long considered the “Holy Grail of NCAA features”, Online Dynasty. I couldn’t have been more excited to get
this feature into the game. Dynasty is without a doubt my favorite feature in
any sports game, and bringing that experience online brought a tremendous
amount of life into an already great game mode. Based on the feedback from the
community I was not the only one that was able to resurrect gaming rivalries
with old college roommates that now live on the other side of the country,
increase my desire to sign the recruits in the nation for no other reason than
to force the other dynasty members to settle for a 3 star prospect, and feeling
the pressure of knowing the result of your head to head game will mean the
difference between a BCS berth or finishing your season in December.
When it comes to any Dynasty (online of offline) it all
starts with which team(s) will be human controlled. One of the most difficult
decisions to make is which conference will be used. If you are all about the
head to head games and want that BCS tie-in then the PAC-10 and Big East are
great options since you know for sure you will play everyone each year. If you
have a full 12 members and want to decide the conference title in a
championship game, or if you want the challenge of taking a “mid major” and
turning them into the next powerhouse you have a number of options.


However, sometimes it’s not that easy, sometimes it can be
next to impossible to find a conference with the right mix of teams to make
everyone happy. Well in NCAA Football 10 we have made life easier on
commissioners across the nation with the addition of Custom Conferences. Now
you will be able to swap any school in or out of your conference and replace
them with another FBS school. Each
conference will keep their current number of members, so if you feel it’s about
time that Notre Dame joins the Big Ten you’ve got to decide which school will
become an Independent. Since there are 120 FBS schools in real life, you will
need to keep 120 FBS schools in your dynasty. While Michigan
fans won’t be able to prevent Ohio
State from ever playing
football again, they can take pride in relegating them to the MAC.


Custom Conferences will allow for increased flexibility in
your dynasties. Now it’s entirely up to you how the college football landscape
will look in your dynasty. If you can’t play with anyone but your Cornhuskers,
and your friend feels the same way about Clemson don’t just duke it out in a
non-conference game, put a conference title on the line.
Wanna create a super conference with the top schools in the
nation? Go right ahead. Do you miss the days of the old Southwest Conference,
dust off the old wishbone playbook and put them all in the WAC, Mountain West,
or Sun Belt. In NCAA Football 10 it’s up to you how you want to set it up.
-Ben
For more on NCAA Football 10 and the new custom conferences, check out ESPN's interview with Ben. Also, stop by the NCAA Football 10 forum to discuss this blog.