One of our minor-league fascinations right now is with Nevada qb Colin Kaepernick. There’s little not to like about him: he plays in the funky pistol offense, he’s at a respectable but out-of-the-way school, and he’s a 6′6″ ostrich of a runner with 4.8 speed who spies a read option beautifully, as he does in the clip below.

We like how the end stays home, but still seems shocked at how fast that thing with the helmet and pads carrying the ball moves past him anyway. In news seemingly designed to excite us personally in an extremely inefficient marketing campaign, NCAA designer Ben Haumiller confirms not only the smarter defenses seen in the demo, but that this year will be a stellar year for lanky freakboy running quarterbacks.

BH: If you are looking for a unique experience with a team that runs an offense you will only find in college, Georgia Tech is the way to go. The flexbone playbook received a huge overhaul this year, and there are a lot of plays that have been added this year that allow you to run the full flexbone style offense. Baylor is a school that a lot of people around the office have had fun using. Nevada is another fun school to use, the Pistol offense can be very effective.

Oh, that’s the spot baby. Keep doing that. Yeaaaahhhhh, that. Protection? Not necessary with you, NCAA. We’ll get together, make a baby, and call it Conquerpants Swindle. It’ll be the most beautiful thing ever created.

A few observations and outright belly-rubs for the demo, now downloadable on XBox Live:

It’s Tebow. Yes, the player is GENERIC DUAL THREAT WHITE QB OF NONSPECIFIC NAME. But if there’s any evidence fo the loving caretakers slather on the franchise, it’s the animation of Tebow, who runs the QB power play in the precise manner as he does in real life: shoulders forward, bouncing off of tacklers, and falling forward for three yards like an albino sequoia timbering earthward. Legal issues of player compensation aside, it’s beautifully done. (The players even seem to throw like the players, though our virgin eyes might just be excitedly reading that onto the general animations of the game.)

Yay aggression. The big and ever-so-slightly intrusive new game feature is a quick check chart allowing you to check whether you want your team to play aggressively, conservatively, or somewhere between the two. You can choose specific options here, too: go deep if the play breaks down on passing plays, for example, or whether to always go for the pick or the strip on defense, etc.

The interface pops up once or twice too often for our tastes, but being an ADHD button-masher means slapping the “B” button to get the thing off the screen becomes second nature after a few games. (more…)

You may win forever, but even Pete Carroll’s tires must suffer defeat every now and then.

They ran over a nail called “Stanford.” My that sounds like an indie rock album title. And we fell into a hole called Oregon State. We’d like nothing better than a Fat Tire to spice up our day, or preferably eight of them consumed over four hours of video game play, a possible necessity after getting warm and fuzzies seeing all the MTSU logos in Franklin this weekend. Coach Bovo Pustule did so much with that NCAA 2003 Dynasty: five national titles in a row, four Heismans, and all done by on Heisman level, no less. Why he ever walked away from such success, we’ll never know.

Maybe he was tired, or maybe his wife threatened to divorce him if he didn’t come to bed, or maybe he just got a copy of Splinter Cell and forgot about the red-mulleted wizard of Murfreesboro and his magnificent team. Whenever we get the preseason guide to Florida football done and put to bed, we’ll live the dream and get back to
what’s really important in life: kicking the shit out of Sun Belt teams by fifty points week in and week out before a three point victory over Ohio State in the national title game.

On-Screen options: Press Y for team celebration/Go join the mascot to celebrate!/Press B to stalk sideline reporter.

Erin Andrews will join the cast of NCAA ‘10 for this year’s edition of the game that effectively spelled the end of our personal growth and development as a human several years ago. (Let’s be frank: it was scheduled for cancellation anyway.) She will do the sideline work in the game, and will be featured in a major mode in the game.

What that mode will be is unspecified, but if you’re thinking something along the lines of “Boonga Boonga,” you’re a terrible, sick person who needs some sunlight. You also will not be able to grind up behind her like Rey Maualuga did, though if you could in the game, an extra real bonus would be Rey vomiting up a six pack on her shoulder in celebration. [/superparanoiddraftguys!]

And now for the requisite page-whoring of typing Erin Andrews’ name twelve times in a row:

ERIN ANDREWS ERIN ANDREWS ERIN ANDREWS ERIN ANDREWS ERIN ANDREWS ERIN ANDREWS ERIN ANDREWS ERIN ANDREWS ERIN ANDREWS ERIN ANDREWS ERIN ANDREWS ERIN ANDREWS .

The AI has to monkeyed with in some fashion here, but this clip of video game Noel Devine in NCAA 2009 is clean family fun nevertheless. And who are we to say it’s totally unrealistic? It does bear some resemblance to the first half of the 2006 Sugar Bowl, after all.

[/envious of teams that beat MFT last year, stabbing pastward]

Peter Crouch: no longer all-time LB in NCAA 2009.

We have had NCAA 2009 for two days now, and are overjoyed to say that for once, the recently updated update of a game monkeyed with mercilessly does….does not suck. It doesn’t suck at all in fact, and despite the embarrassing number of hours we played the good-not-great NCAA 08, it will easily surpass its predecessor in hours logged. Our XBox360, just like yours, keeps track of all of that for us. Our XBox360 is an asshole.

Cardinal points follow:

Die, nine-foot-tall linebacker, die. One of NCAA 2008’s most grating tweaks was the hyperbolic pass coverage of opposing defenses, both yours and the defense’s. A 5′10″ middle linebacker with a 74 rating would, with bowel-twisting frequency, go on his toes when your qb dropped back, accelerate into the air like an anime character, and pick off your perfectly lofted crossing pattern. If this wasn’t galling enough, the character would sometimes do this from impossible angles, or after “recovering” from a play-fake bite, or even soaring from the bench trailing little Nintendo stars on his way to ruining the clean slate you thought your were finally going to post in a game BUT NO NINE FOOT LINEBACKER MUST GET HIS.

The nine foot linebacker has been euthanized in NCAA 2009. (more…)

Delays this a.m. due to a need to sleep. We blame New York, where the bars are too close together for our good.

In the meantime, consider the preview of NCAA 2009, where home field advantage turns your pre-play route display into a bad trip.

Wii!

EA Sports is allowing fans to vote for the mascot who will appear on the cover of NCAA 2009 for the Wii, a dubious honor since if the Wii edition of NCAA is as much of an epilepsy simulator as the Madden franchise is, the game will shovel piles of suck in suckhell forever.

(If you haven’t had the chance to play it, its bizarre controls force you to conduct Bernstein’s exact hand gestures from guiding the New York Philharmonic through Mahler’s Fifth. Our favorite move: the “Throw The Goddamn Thing Into the Ficus Plant” move. Never say we don’t know how to throw the ball away when danger nears.)

We cast a vote for Albert, but noticed something previously unseen: SEC mascots are all remorseless killing machines or hammered redneck militiamen with guns. Remember: as a conference we’ve got the only mascot that’s actually been on a killing spree. Toss out the genteel Commodore, and we’ve unveiled the iconic representation of all the Southeastern United States values: fangs, an unstoppable killing urge, little in the way of higher brain function, and a facility with firearms.

Kayne’s been to Blacksburg. We’ve played “White Cliffs of Dover” in front of thousands.

Miami receiver Kayne Farquharson has plenty of experience playing in Blacksburg against Virginia Tech. Hell, he can even control the weather there, since the only time he’s played there is a as a participant in a game of PlayStation football.

Farqurharson, who has never played a game at Virginia Tech, said he has a pretty good idea of what to expect Saturday from playing the video game NCAA Football 08 on Playstation. He feels it’s just as intense when playing on the road in cyber games against the Hokies.

“I got an idea,” Farqurharson said. “On the Playstation, you got home-field advantage. You press L2 [button] against the team and the joystick will rattle. The screen will shake. … The joystick vibrates. They scream hard. They scream real hard. That’s the closest I’ve been to Blacksburg.”

This could explain so much about Miami’s offense this season…someone grab Patrick Nix’s playbook, stat! If our theory is true, the audible calls should be something like “LEFT STICK D-PAD UP CHECK!” For variation, we imagine they toggle back and forth between XBox and PS3 setups.

Also, if this qualifies as experience, we’ve got vast experience at the following jobs: professional guitarist, ping-pong player, mercenary-for-hire, assassin, government operative, Italian plumber, zombie slayer, charismatic Sim, builder of cities and entire civilizations, and as defender of humanity against a cruel race of unstoppable parasitic aliens. Oh, and as the Heisman-winning qb for the six-time NCAA champion Middle Tennessee State Blue Raiders. Not many men can throw for fifty TDs and run for 40 more in a season, but we’re not normal, people.

(HT: The Great Barstoolio)

In addition to once dressing up as a bell boy and greeting his team at the door of their hotel once, Bill Walsh should also be remembered for his pioneering work in another important field: video game football.

It was a far piece better than Sega’s “College Football National Championship,” mostly because it was simpler and you couldn’t win every game by running the toss sweep with Jerome Bettis. (Damn you, Cuddles Swindle. Damn you and Jerome to hell.) You got scouting reports from Bill on each team. You got 360 degrees of replay. You got, as you might have guessed, glorious amounts of passing yards. And of course, it also featured, per video game rules of engagement, an unstoppable Bo Jackson bent on destroying the world with his cleats.