Dynasty Mode

NCAA Football 2005 Real Roster FAQ Version 2.0 Written By Andy Becker(aka beckdawg) Last update: 19 August 2004 Table of Contents 1.0 Version History 1.5 Known Errors In Game 2.0 2005 NCAA Football Rosters 2.3 Division I-AA Rosters 2.5 Division I-A Coaches 2.7 Division I-AA Coaches 3.0 Closing READ BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE!!!!! 2005 Football Team Rankings Last updated on 07/06/17 at 11:08 PM CST The Formula where c is a specific team's total number of commits and R n is the 247Sports Composite Rating of the nth-best. NCAA Football 2005 was the 12th installment of the NCAA Football Series. The game was developed by EA Tiburon and released by EA Sports on July 15th, 2004 for the PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, and Xbox. The primary feature of this game is introduction of home-field advantage and 'The 25 Toughest Places to Play'. Contentsshow Cover The cover of the game features University of Pittsburgh. Walmart Affiliate Linkhttp://goto.walmart.com/c/1406/9383?veh=aff&sourceid=imp22333344&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.walmart.com%3Fsourceid%3Dimp%.

Preseason
The Preseason is the first stop on your Dynasty journey. There are several choices in the Preseason menu, and many of them are discussed below in the During the Season section. However, there are a couple of choices reserved for the Preseason.

Preseason Options: Custom Schedules
This allows you to set up who you will play. There are two or three default games already, but you can edit them to get better matchups. There are two basic philosophies here. If you are a struggling school trying to establish itself in the game, you might want to go against some mid-range opponents (Rankings 15-25) to put yourself on the map. Otherwise, here's what you do:

• Going for the Undefeated Season
  If you are a decent team in a pathetic conference, you might just want to play cupcakes and go for the undefeated season. In this case, you can play some games against the dregs of college football (peruse the ratings to see who they are). That way, you'll ensure a great season and lock in a bowl bid.
• Boosting Your Ranking Early
  In order to establish yourself as the team to beat early in the season, and get a crack at the national championship, load up your preseason with contenders. I'm talking the USCs, Miamis, Floridas and Nebraskas of the world. Put one high-ranking school on the docket early and you'll ensure yourself of a ranking... as long as you can keep winning. The other thing playing ranked opponents does is allow you to build your EA Bio early on... provided you actually win.

The Pre-Season isn't all that involved. Once you're done with match-ups, head over to redshirting freshmen and sit some athletes down! It will help you in the long run. Here's the philosophy behind it:

Preseason Options: Redshirting
For those who don't know, 'redshirting' is sitting out a year from the team whilst not losing one of the four years of eligibility. Usually a team will redshirt a freshman player to give him a chance to get accustomed to college life, sharpen up his studies, or to give him time to develop his football skills.

It's more likely that you'll redshirt a player at a position where you have a lot of depth. If you have a junior and a senior QB who are both awesome players and you just recruited another freshman stud, there's no sense in keeping the freshman on the bench. He's probably not going to play because of the guys ahead of him, so why waste a year of his eligibility? Redshirt him for a year, and next season he can be the backup QB as a redshirt freshman. This way he still has all four years of eligibility remaining. Now if disaster befalls your first two QBs you can pull the frosh off the redshirt list and put him on your active roster, which forfeits that redshirt year for him. He's got to play out all four consecutive years now.

Also, you can redshirt a player in any year. If you like the way your junior linebacker has developed and you know you've got a sophomore linebacker who's going to be a gamer as well, you can make sure they play their last two seasons side by side by redshirting the junior. You take the lump this season by holding back a talented player, but you'll have two awesome guys going for you the next season and the season after that.

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You can only redshirt a player during the offseason, but you can bring a guy off the redshirt list during the season. It's better to put a guy on there knowing you can take him off later than to miss the opportunity to sit a player when you had the chance. Also, players will develop and improve their skills during their redshirt year, so it's almost like you're getting an extra year of ratings boost by redshirting a player at some point during his college career. Once you're all done tweaking, go back to the menu and select Play Week to start playing!

During the Season

Aside from playing (or simming) the actual games, there's quite a bit to do and see during the course of the season, although admittedly, a lot of it revolves around tracking your progress in the game. We'll work our way through the Dynasty Mode menu, and help you understand everything that's going on.

Play Week
This allows you to play the upcoming games your team has scheduled. Once you select it, you have a choice to select either Weekly Schedule or Team Schedule. Team Schedule is much more straightforward, as it simply shows your own team's games, and isn't mixed up in the hodge podge of the rest of the weekend's offerings.

If a big star appears next to the game, it is the Game of the Week. This is reserved for matchups of highly ranked teams, huge rivalry matches and the like. Count yourself fortunate if you get one of these. That is, unless you're Miami, where a Game of the Week can be a weekly occurence.

Sports Illustrated
SI is back this year with pretty much the same options as last year. After each week of competition, the cover will change to reflect the weekend's biggest happenings. It's quite a rare achievement to score the cover, so consider yourself a stud if you do. That is, unless you made the cover by losing to Harvard as Ohio State. In addition to the weekly cover that appears on the Dynasty Mode splash screen, there are individual covers for all of the categories within this section. They are:

• Bowl Rankings: Take a look at how the BCS rankings are stacking up. If you're undefeated, or anywhere in the top ten teams in the country, expect to see your name somewhere on this list.
• Top 25 Polls: Since one Top 25 isn't complex or arbitrary enough, there are two: the Coaches' Poll and the Media Poll. If you're lingering near the bottom of one, you may not be on the other. You also might find it hard to break into these polls unless you are playing stiff competition. Win the big games, get ranked.
• Heisman Watch: This section tracks the top five prospects for the Heisman Trophy (awarded to the best player in college football). In order to get one of your players on this list, he'll have to be leading in a major statistical category or two (like passing, running, or receiving). Prospects are tracked week to week to show performance. If their level of play stayed the same, a sideways arrow will display. If the athlete improved, a green arrow pointing up will show. If the player sucked it up on the field, his falling stock will be reflected by a red arrow pointing down.
• Awards Finalists: There are other awards besides the Heisman, and this is where you can track them. These awards track twelve athletes per category, but we all know that the top three are the only real contenders. Still, it is an honor to get one of your players placed on any of these lists, especially if you aren't playing with a Top 25 school.
• Bowl Projections: One of the most important things in the SI menu, this gives you updates as to what Bowl you could potentially be in. Your progress through the season and ranking both nationally and within your conference will play a big part in what Bowl you get selected for (if any). As a general rule of thumb, you'll want to win seven of twelve games to be considered.
• Players of the Week: Not all awards are given out at the end of the year. NCAA Player of the Week honors are dished out every seven days, for the entire country, as well as individual conferences. You'll need an amazing performance to qualify for overall NCAA honors, but conference PoWs aren't that hard to pick up.
• Conference Standings: See how you rate with your contemporaries. Win as many possible conference games to qualify for the best post-season goodies... and keep your eye on the scores of those above you (if there are any).
• Archived Covers: Remember how you got a cover in Week Three, and haven't gotten one since? Well, select this option and relive the glory days. Covers for every week of the season are available.

Note: In the Preseason, you will see Preseason Polls, Preseason All-Americans and Conference Outlook here. Not every section of the SI menu will display until later in the season, close to Bowl time.

Stat Book
This is quite straightforward. It's a simple book of stats... and it tracks all the teams. You can break the display into these easy-to-understand categories:

• Season Stats: Tracks season stats of your individual players.
• Career Stats: Tracks career stats of your individual players.
• Team Stats: Like it sounds.
• Stat Rankings: This shows you how your team compares to other collegiate squads.

Coach Options
Here's where you manage your coach's career. From this menu, set team strategies, review the AD's expectations and see what else there is on the job front.

• Strategy: You can do several things here. If you're not happy with your team's playbook, select a new one! You can also choose to turn recruiting assistance on or off. In your first season, keep this set to 'on' so you can get a sense of how things are supposed to work. Then, once you've seen it done, tackle it on your own. The other options here are to tweak whether your team concentrates more on the run than the pass, and if you like to sub a lot. To be honest, these are more philosophical than anything. It doesn't seem like choices here reflect themselves much in gameplay.
• Positions: This allows you to create a coach, edit your existing coach's appearance, or quit your current job and go looking for new challenge.
• Report Card: On this screen, you'll see a thumbnail of your career, and the current season. Be sure to check out the job security bar on the left side of the screen. If your team is winning, or you've resurrected the program, this will be in the A-A+ range. Be worried if you're at C or below. You don't want to get fired! Use the Report Card to see what expectations are (by glimpsing the Contract Info). Remember, the worse the program you inherit, the lower the expectations are going to be. You can also see how your attendance is, and how you've fared in TV games at this screen.

Features
The Features menu only has two options: Rosters and Create-a-Playbook. Be sure to go to Create-a-Playbook to set your audibles... all of them. You don't want to be stuck at the line of scrimmage without any recourse when the D has stacked the run and you're running a HB Dive.

My NCAA
This menu is so special, it exists in many sections of the game. We've also dedicated a My NCAAsection of the guide to it. Click the link for more info.

Early Off-Season
After the regular season and before the bowls, conference championship trophies will be presented. After the Heisman has been presented, you will learn whether or not you've received a bid to play in a Bowl game. If so, you'll have one more game to play. If not, get gear up for the recruiting process a little earlier.

If you did exceptionally well, and surpassed expected goals, the university may offer you (as Coach) an extension. You can choose to accept or decline. If you're planning to build your squad into an unbeatable Dynasty, better sign. If you performed under expectations, they may show you the door. All of this will happen before you ever get to the postseason menu.

The offseason menu contains much of what the during-season menu did. The following sections are exactly the same (see above section if you're wondering what they all are):

• Stat Book
• Coach Strategy
• My NCAA

Features
The Features section contains one thing it did not during the season... Create-a-Prospect. This allows you to build a Prospect, much as you do Create-a-Player. You'll also be able to tweak Rosters and Create-a-Playbook from here.

Recruiting Recap
This will only show up after you've... um... done some recruiting. Take a look at the Offseason Schedule/Recruiting portion below to see what you're in for. Return to this section when you're done with the process to get a quick glimpse of all that went down.

Sports Illustrated
The Sports Illustrated section of the Offseason menu focuses on the same kinds of things it did during the regular season: mainly accomplishments and awards. Here's a rundown of each section.

• Heisman Winner: This section displays the top five vote-getters for the Heisman, as well as who won.
• Award Winners: All of the other award winners are displayed here, including Best RB, Best QB and Best Coach. Win one, and be rewarded in the EA Sports Bio.
• All-Americans: A full list of every All-American. 1st Team, 2nd Team and Freshman honors are handed out here.
• Bowl Results: Who won the Rose Bowl? Who won the AXA Liberty Bowl? Find out here, and get some info about each game, if the spirit moves you.
• Top 25 Polls: How did your squad end the season? Did you even make the Top 25? Did the Bowl game elevate you in the rankings? Check the slate one last time.
• Players of the Week: Peruse past Players of the Week for the entire season.
• Final Standings: Here's where you can view the full list of just where every college team finished the year. You can also search by conference.
• Archived Covers: Take a gander at all 22 weeks' worth of SI covers.

Off-Season Schedule/Recruiting

There is one last thing to do in the offseason, and it's both the most important and the most time-consuming. It's also at the top of the Dynasty list. It's the Offseason Schedule, and it will walk you through the recruiting process. Click on it to go to an eight-step menu. At any time, you can skip down this list and have your assistant coach handle the recruiting duties. But what fun would that be?

Step 1: School Budgets
This is a new step on the journey for 2005. There are three sliders you can manipulate here in order to allocate moneys to different portions of your school's budget. You start with 0 available percentage points, so in order to add points to any area, you'll have to take them away from another one. Here's how they break down:

• Recruiting: Smaller schools might have some difficulty pulling in talent, and you may want to consider cranking up the Recruiting budget a bit to help in this effort. You probably still won't be able to pull in the AAA players, but the quality of interest will generally be better. If you're a prestigious school, don't get too carried away with this slider.
• Training: This is where you can improve the stats of your existing players and the ones you recruit. If you are only planning on playing a season or two of Dynasty, go ahead and crank this slider up. It will help make your existing guys good, sacrificing the future for some short-term gains.
• Discipline: Don't change this slider too much, because the further it drops down, the harder it will be to keep your players in line as the year progresses.

Step 2: Players Leaving
Here's where you bid your hard-working warriors adieu. Will they leave and head for greener pastures in the NFL? If they do, make sure you export your save for use in Madden 2005. There are three ways players can leave. First, they can graduate. This happens when a player uses up all of his eligibility... err... completes his studies and receives a degree. When a player has played his senior year, he has to leave, even if all that's waiting for him is a job as a ditch digger. Second, he can choose to go to another school, claiming he is not making a difference on the current team. Some of your better players may also want to depart for the NFL early. If a player is good and wants to go, there's really nothing you can do about it.

There is a way to keep guys around if they're headed out the door, but it involves using some of your recruitment points for Week One. Our opinion? There aren't too many indispensible athletes. Unless you have an emotional attachment to a guy, let him leave. After all, you don't want to have to play like crap just to keep your talented people around. Let them go... you'll make more. When you're done, you'll have two choices... either export your draft class or simply continue to recruiting. Exporting your draft class only need be done if you plan on playing Franchise Mode in Madden 2005 .

Step 3: Recruiting
Recruiting Central displays a map of the US, and highlights your home state. From this location, you can get Recruiting Reports or check your squad's Team Overview. On the Recruiting Report, you'll see these options:

• State Prospects: A list of all of the prospects from the state where your school is located.
• Current Targets: The players to whom you've offered scholarships. After week one, it will still list them even if they've committed to other schools.
• National Top 100: A list of the top 100 players in the nation regardless of position. All of them are blue chip prospects as designated by the five stars next to their names. Don't even try to land one of these guys unless your team has at least four stars of prestige.
• All Prospects: Just like it says, this is the massive list of every school kid and junior college player that wants a scholarship to play ball.
• Interested Prospects: The most helpful list. It includes all of the players, both good and bad, who want to come to your school.
• Returning Players: Also very helpful. See exactly where your strengths are at a micro level, and look at individual stats. For instance, if you know you have one slow receiver, you may want to look slightly beyond rating when recruiting and pick up a faster WR.

On the Team Overview screen, you'll see a global view of how your team is composed, and ratings of each and every position. Obviously, you want to attack the lowest rated areas first and make sure those are hammered down before working on improving some of the other areas.

Other things to note here include number of scholarships you have left (this is the total number of players you'll be able to recruit). You'll also want to take a look at any orange categories. This means that you're light on players at that position, and you'll need to fill them up. If a line is orange, look over to the far right where it says 'Needs' to see how many to recruit.

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You'll have five total weeks to recruit players, and you should keep an eye on your Team Overview after every move you make. After all, you want to have the fullest, best squad possible at the end of the recruiting period, or you could lose ground in your conference.

Start with Interested Prospects. If there are five star athletes looking at your school, lucky you. Throw some resources at them to move yourself up in their estimation. Especially go after highly-rated players who have you listed as the first school in their Top 3.

If you're interested in getting a guy, you can do two things with the Prospect: Scout or Recruit. Scouting will give you a quick idea of the player's strengths and weaknesses, and how he measures up in areas of strength and speed, based on 40 speed and bench press, etc. Scouting guys costs recruiting points, so don't scout every last person you're interested in. If a guy has a high star rating, consider that he will probably be a quality player even if he's not exactly what you thought he'd be. Save your recruiting points for the Recruiting process, and to scout players who are really questionable. However, if you really want to land a guy, don't be bashful about throwing some heavy artillery his way.

Now it's time to Recruit! When talking to players, you can stress different things. Scroll back and forth where it says 'Pitch' in order to talk up Coach Prestige, Program Prestige, Location, Playing Time, or Coaching Style. If it's a local boy, you can talk about location. QBs might dig the Coaching Style angle. If your school is extremely respected, pitch the Prestige angle, but only if you have the stars to back it up.

With highly-rated players who are also interested in you, make sure you give them at least a visit from your head coach. Even if the interest level is high, you want to keep it up there. If interest is flagging a bit, and you can spare some points, go ahead and double-team a guy with coach and assistant coach visits. It may pay huge dividends.

When you are done with Interested Prospects, head to your State Prospects. Use the Location angle on these guys, and visit the highly-rated ones with at least one coach to bring up their interest level. Even if a player does not currently have an interest in you, you may want to try the Location thing and throw some points at him to see if you can get him interested. Remember, it's a five-week process and you don't need to do it all the first week... but you do have to plant the seeds.

If you still have a lot of points remaining after pursuing Interested and State prospects, take a quick gander at the National Top 100. If there is anyone on this list interested in you, make sure to throw the full load of points at you. If he is a player at a skill position, preach Playing Time. Otherwise, preach Coaching Style or Location (if nearby). Don't waste points on someone whose interest level is less than half, though. They'll probably go elsewhere.

Once you have done all you can, go back to the main map and press Start. Advance to the next week if you want to keep recruiting, or Simulate All Weeks if you don't care. If you choose to do the next week, set things in motion, and you'll begin to see prospects commiting to your university. If you didn't land many recruits the first week, lower your sights a little. Focus on the players who are interested in you in the next rounds, and throw a lot of points at the guys you really want. Remember, you are competing against more than a hundred other schools. Sweeten the deal in the second round and bring those recruits home!

Also, be mindful of the fact that you have a finite number of scholarships. You really must focus on the things you need on the Team Overview screen. You'll also want to bring up your lowest rankings by aggressively pursuing good athletes in those categories. Anything at C- level or below should be considered an immediate priority.

In the rounds after one, keep working on Prospects that you have already wooed but who haven't signed. You'll note that a lot of their Interest Levels will have risen if you've paid close attention to them. Make sure you keep the pressure on if you want them to sign. If a player's Interest remains flat, try a different approach during the Pitch. If Location doesn't work, use Playing Time or Coaching Style. Mix it up and see what happens.

If you ever run out of scholarships, that's when you should head back to the map and go to the next week. You can only offer the number of scholarships that are left after each week, so if you recruit a player, that scholarship will be gone. As you move along, the weeks will go faster and faster. After the final week, it's on to the next bit of business. Once you finalize the recruits, the CPU will add walk-ons for every team.

Step 4: Position Changes
This is another new element in this year's game. It happens a lot in college football, where corners may become receivers, and tight ends might be better served as linebackers. Why would you switch a player? Usually because you're already loaded up in one position and lacking in another. By moving players around, you don't have to re-recruit for positions you may be lacking in.

Select a player, and a pop-up window will appear showing current position and the new position. Scan through the new positions and check out the Ovr rating that appears. You'll want it to be about the same (or better, which is rare) than the player's original position.

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Step 5: Training Results
All that Training does is show how your players' attributes changed. A player might have a Breakthrough year and improve a lot, or show Minimal gain. This section is basically designed to show you who your future stars may be. Press Start to continue to the next step.

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Step 6: Cut Players
Time to get rid of some dead weight. Or not. If you don't want you, you don't really need to cut anybody. You can just let the CPU do it. But if you have a ton of players at one position, you may want to set some guys free. The roster needs to be at 55 or less, so if you want to manage the cuts, go for it. Otherwise, the computer will simply cut all the lowest rated players at the most full positions.

Remember when cutting that you can redshirt guys before the season begins. So if you think a guy near the bottom is going to blossom down the road, slap a redshirt on him and see if you're right.

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Step 7: Set Depth Chart
The CPU will automatically put the top-rated player in the first place of each position. However, if you value speed over rating (for instance at the HB position), you'll want to take matters into your own hands. It's not imperative that you do any reordering here, though, as setting the depth chart is available from your Season menu as well.

When you are done with setting the Depth Chart, press Start, and the rest of the process will be automated, and you'll be sent to the next season. Play through, or sim it and get right back to building your Dynasty... it's all up to you!

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Step 8: Start New Season
Just like it sounds.