I love the game , just three issues that kill immersion for me.
Since CFB season started up I've been playing this game again in anticipation for the pro game. It's the best College Football game on the market, and I love playing it. But there are three things I notice that bug me and can ruin the immersion for me.
First is the transfer portal. I feel that the game doesn't simulate the craziness of the real life portal enough. You don't see the top players in the country ever transfer in the game, which is just unrealistic to the real transfer portal. Cam Coleman went from an SEC team in Auburn to Texas, but you never see that in the game and it sucks. Starting QBs never transfer and that's the biggest problem. Miami and Indiana have been raiding the portal for QBs, but it just can't happen in the game because an elite starting quarterback won't transfer, and so will pretty much every other position. Teams like Oklahoma State and Florida completely rebuilt their teams in the portal and it doesn't feel possible in the game. And it bugs me to see five star transfers going to G6 schools, because in real life the five star transfer were the best players in the country last season and most will be future draft picks. It'd be better if there was a future reworking to the system so that if a player has a breakout season he'd want to go to a better team in most cases, a 90+ overall player on a G6 school would want that bigger paycheck and allowing for that to mimic real life would make things more realistic. The portal in game just doesn't feel as crazy as it actually is.
My next issue is with the coaching carousel, and this is probably the biggest issue. I might be alone but one of my favorite parts of CFB is following coaches careers or seeing how they do at new programs. But unfortunately the game doesn't simulate the coaching market as realistically as it could. Firstly not enough head coaches get fired compared to real life. This past year we had 15 head coaches get fired, and 34 new head coaches in total. I rarely see more than 10 head coaches fired and most openings are because of retirement. Secondly too many coordinators get promoted to HC, and not enough HC get poached. I have a file going for 10 years and in that time I've seen around 10 head coaches get poached to a bigger job, maybe less. This is unrealistic because this year alone had 10+ head coaches getting poached. Most of the time a team just hired a coordinator, but this happens far too much compared to reality. Like I had a save with real players and coaches, four years in Cignetti retired and Indiana hired Cal's OC. Far too many times I see random coordinators get hired to a great HC, when in reality many of these are filled up by young up and coming head coaches. It's common that head coaches stay in jobs 10+ seasons even when winning a lot of games and in most cases they would be poached away long ago.
My last issue is with overalls. This is the most subjective and not tied to realism as much, but I just feel that overalls are too low. Like I said I've been playing with real rosters, and it was awesome to see the best teams in the country at or in most cases above 90 overall. It felt like there really was a difference between Ohio State and Akron. This also helped the transfer portal because even though the top performers don't transfer, it was nice seeing 90+ overall players in the portal. The issue is as the years progressed by the 3rd, and 4th seasons most overalls went down again because the incoming recruits weren't nearly as good as the players leaving. You rarely see 3 star recruits start because their overalls are in the 60s. But in real life there are plenty of 3 star recruits or worse that come in as freshman and dominate. Even at big programs unless they are a generational prospect a 5 star never starts as a true freshman or even in their second year. A player like Jesse Legree isn't possible, even a Jeremiah Smith because the players come in with such lower overalls. Smith might've been the best player in CFB as a freshman, but in this game he wouldn't even be 90. It's might be just a me thing, but if everyone was +10 overall I'd like it more, maybe there is on option for how high you'd like that, cause it'd make recruiting and scouting more fun too if you could scout a high 80+ overall 3 star or a breakout 4 star that not many teams know about, even if it's not common it'd make that more fun.