r/CFB26

Like a lot of you, I have mixed feelings about CFB 26. I love college football. And while I have played the game religiously since last July, I constantly feel like something is missing. The depth wasn't there. And the challenge — even with house rules — never felt right. I'd win national championships in year 2 with a 3★ program and shrug, because nothing in the game made the management side of running a college football program actually hard.

So I started tracking everything in an Excel spreadsheet. Three goals when I started:

1. Immersion + depth the game doesn't give you.
2. Real stat tracking beyond what the in-game UI lets you see
3. A challenge that comes from realism, not house rules — where even a powerhouse like Ohio State or Alabama would have to strategize to win every year, because real programs do

I realized pretty quickly that a spreadsheet was not going to give me what I wanted. So, I began building an app and have been doing so for the last 6 months. It runs alongside the game — you play CFB exactly how you always have, the app sits on top tracking the program-management layer the game ignores.

Original plan was to ship it earlier this year for CFB 26, but every time I sat down to call it "done" I'd run into another feature the dynasty experience was begging for, and I'd build it (even built a halfway decent radio call-in show that automatically generated after your game completed but costs are going to be astronomical for the voice generation so not looking likely to be included - let me know in the comments if you want to discuss price for the feature to be added).

Long story short, as the app continued to grow, I made the call to hold the release until CFB 27 drops in a couple months. There'll obviously be tweaks once we see what's new in the game itself, but waiting also means the launch lands when the community's actually fired up about Dynasty mode again instead of late in the CFB 26 cycle. It also gives me time to gauge interest on this and hear any ideas you may have.

The pieces I think the community will appreciate most:

• Every FBS roster is seeded with real players. And every player, both on the roster and subsequent recruits, has individual NIL economics/motivations — ratings, position scarcity, personality, family/agent pressure, competition tolerance (how they react to other guys at their position), coach loyalty. They're not interchangeable cap hits; they're individuals with demands. It will be up to you on how you balance these demands with your bankroll and what tough decisions you make on roster management along the way. This is the real transfer portal we need.
• A Full Coaching Staff with Player Connections. Build out a full coaching staff (not just OC/DC). Each coach recruits specific players. Those players develop bonds with those coaches. At end-of-season salary negotiations, those coaches remind you who they signed and what their market value is. Lowball them and they walk — and the recruits they brought in may follow them out the door.
• Fanbases that act like real fanbases. Ohio State fans aren't happy with 10-2 and a loss to Michigan. Alabama fans aren't happy with anything short of a playoff run. The bar scales with prestige + tradition, the way it does in real life. A 3-loss season at a blue blood after years of dominance is firing-coach-thread territory. The defaults are intentionally harsh. As your success on the field increases, the fanbase expectations follow and the demands create constant pressure for perfection. Certain fans will ride with you through thick and thin. The bandwagon fans will be looking for the next big thing and will jump ship almost immediately when things get difficult - and with them goes their NIL money.
• Boosters with personalities. Real cash flows in from them, but with strings. Use your NIL Collective to develop relationships with Boosters to generate the necessary funds to support your program. But, Boosters don't give their money away for free. They have favorite players, favorite coaches, and opinions about your scheme. Win and they're quiet donors. Lose, or ignore them, and they get loud — and the money dries up right when you need it for recruiting.
• Effortless stat import. Honestly, this is probably the feature I am proudest of. After months of testing and tweaking, I beleive I have cracked the code on screenshot imports. For Xbox users, link your OneDrive account to the app once. From there, just take screenshots in-game like you normally would — top 25, conference standings, box scores, player stats, game stats, awards. OneDrive auto-syncs them to the app, the app's AI runs OCR + parsing on every one, and the data lands in a clean reviewable view. When you're done playing, you open the app, hit Approve (or edit if anything looks off), and everything saves to your dynasty. No manual typing, no juggling spreadsheets. (PlayStation users can drag-drop the same screenshots in — same parser, no auto-sync - Playstation doesnt allow API connection)
• Generated media coverage. When you mark a week complete, the app writes a recap article about your game and your dynasty. No two articles are the same. It recaps the game, discusses the season as a whole, and takes a look at future matchups.

There are a ton of other features that I am excited to share with you but, for now, I just wanted to send this introductory post. I'm a solo dev, this is a side project, and I'm sharing now to start the conversation with the people who'd actually use it.

What I'd love your input on:

1. What's missing from this list that you'd want in your dynasty?
2. Which feature above resonates most — what should I lead with going into CFB 27?
3. What kind of management depth do you wish CFB 26/27 had that I should consider building in?

Happy to answer anything about how it works. Please join the waitlist here:

https://tally.so/r/rjJVrX

Additional screenshots in the comments

The Standard League is accepting applications for CFB 27 Online Dynasty.

Crossplay. Tier 3 teams only. Custom playbooks allowed. $200 prize pool.

We are looking for active users who communicate, schedule games, respect opponents, and stay committed through the season.

No cheese.

No quitting.

No excuses.

Applications are open now.

Team selection coming soon.

Comment or DM for Discord invite.

THE STANDARD HAS BEEN SET.

The offseason is here and now it’s your turn to become part of the story.

We’re opening up Custom Recruits for Season 4 of the ULM Warhawks dynasty. Your player could be the next star built into the ENIGMA SPORTS universe.

Drop the following below:

Name

Position

Height / Weight

Skin Tone

Gear / Helmet Style

Any extra details or swagger you want added

Whether you want to be a 5-star QB, Run stopper linebacker, coverage corner or underrated gem recruit… this is your shot to earn an offer and become part of the program.

The standard doesn’t lower in Season 4

This is a realistic league not a spam or cheese league!
Things that we have in our league: NIL money for recruiting, spring game, NIL money for improving your team, prize picks, in the zone when players get hot, offseason focus and a lot more of incentives. We play on Heisman, we advance every 48 hrs. 4 play cooldown and 7 play call limit. Rules are put in place to eliminate any type of cheese and spam play. This is a skill based league

https://discord.gg/rWE4uzmC

This kid was 2nd in heisman voting, and 2nd in returner of the year and left my program to be “closer to home” even though it’s a 5 hour drive. Just to transfer to Oklahoma. This game can be so goofy sometimes

Good morning to the Sack!

Over the last 6 months two of our members were diagnosed with Cancer and underwent risky surgeries to remove it. Corey Harris and Alan Gegax .

Thankfully both are alive to tell the story.

This episode Alan recounts the surgery itself and the immediate days after it.

Seems like any episode where either of suffer becomes very popular...I am starting to wonder about you guys.

Link in the comments!

What if the 90s went crazy?

I think this is my favorite alt-history alignment. Here are the significant points of divergence. 

• Big Eight/SWC merger starts earlier, and grabs Arkansas and TCU, instead of letting Arkansas go to the SEC in 1992.. 
• Penn State, after being snubbed by the Big East, begins discussions with the ACC instead of the Big Ten. They join with Florida State in 1992. 
• The SEC invites two prominent Southern independents, South Carolina and Tulane after missing on Arkansas, to bring its membership up to the required 12 teams for a conference championship game.
• Seeing the large TV contracts the Big XII and SEC were getting, the Big Ten and Pac-10 discuss a merger, like in the 1950s when the PCC collapsed. However, negotiations fall apart around number of conference games, divisions, and travel to remote college towns. Fearing the worst in a new BCS system dominated by the SEC and Big XII, 6 West Coast teams simply agreed to join the Big Ten in 1997 rather than create a new merged conference. 
• In the wake of the collapse of the SWC, several Texas teams joined the WAC, which was ballooning in size all the way to 16 teams. In 1998, 8 teams left the WAC (Air Force, BYU, Colorado State, New Mexico, San Diego State, UNLV, Utah, and Wyoming) to join the abandoned PAC-10. It would rename to the PAC-12. The WAC would take the best programs from the Big West, and rename to the Mountain West. Over the course of the 2000s and 2010s, the MWC invited Houston and UTEP from C-USA, New Mexico State from the Sun Belt, and would be the home of several FCS move-ups like North Texas, Texas State, UTSA, and Sam Houston State. 
• The American was formed in 2013 after the Big East floundered in the wake of losing Virginia Tech and Miami in 2004 and Boston College and Rutgers in 2005. Eventually, independence fell out of favor when the new CFP system did not give Notre Dame a seat at the bargaining table or any particular special access. Memphis and UCF were the first call-ups and brought the league to 9 teams in 2012. Temple and UMass got nods in 2013 to reestablish the league's footprint in the Northeast. Navy joined in 2015. In 2016, after getting excluded from the NY6, Notre Dame, already being a member in every other sport left over from the Big East, decided to move its football team to the AAC alongside Army, closing out independence as a viable option in the sport.

For the Sun Belt, C-USA, and MAC I just geographically realigned the remainder of the teams. 

This is a tweaked version of another conference setup I didn't quite get around to trying earlier this year. We've got 6 power conferences, or probably more like 4 powers and 2 mid-majors, but I'll have to test in the playoffs. What do you think? Who has the best schedule? Is the SEC too weak compared to the B16 or Big XII? What stands out that needs fixing before it could be fun?