40 Acres Sports

EA is giving Devin Hester a 100 speed rating in Madden 2008, the first ever perfect rating for a player.

Boise State QB Jared Zabransky will be on the cover of NCAA Football 08. My ERTS stock immediately dropped.

Not Longhorn related but pretty freaking cool.

NES ROM of Tecmo Super Bowl featuring current NFL rosters. Very cool.

Vince is an 82, and will be starting for my Titans over Billy Volek (84).

New Blazer talks about basketball video games and the NBA.

The stadiums and the crowds look absolutely gorgeous.

Don’t like that EA chose USC’s Reggie Bush for the cover, then make your pick from over 150 covers courtesy of Fanblogs.com. A ton of schools are represented, with players you know as well as guys you’ve never heard of have their own covers. No great Longhorn ones yet, but a couple of Vince Young and one of Jamaal Charles to choose from. There will probably be more created as we get closer to the release date.

Only two more months till the game’s released on July 18th.

IGN has the very first preview of NCAA Football 2007 for the Xbox 360 and it looks pretty damn good. Key thing in that last sentence is that it “looks” good because the article actually makes me a little worried about how the game is going to play.

This Xbox 360 version of the game was developed seperately from the current gen versions and it sounds like several features I was most excited by yesterday won’t be making it into the game. The momentum system is different, the cool Home Field Advantage feature from last year is missing, no mention of the spring game in the Dynasty mode, and the new Campus Legend mode is a no show as well. Worst of all, despite the additional capabilities of the Xbox 360 the playbooks in the game will actually be smaller. None of the work they put in to making them larger and more varied will be taken advantage of for this version. And no cool trick plays.

I hope they keep the main gameplay intact from the previous games. There’s just something about NCAA Football that feels different and makes it plays better than Madden. It’s lighter, faster, and more enjoyable. EA has had the atmosphere and everything else just right in previous games and I hope they’re able to continue that while the game improves and evolves. I don’t want to play a skinned version of Madden with college teams.

Screenshots and a little info on the new momentum system, improved AI, and revamped playbooks.