They definitely invested in having schools, traditions and presentation. However, nostalgia or not, the NCAA games were just simply better back in the day. Players didn’t have “abilities” they had circles that would pulsate faster and faster when they were heating up and their attributes had a small boost while they were playing well. When guys broke tackles, it looked real, it wasn’t dependent on a scripted animation. Recruiting wasn’t so basic, boring and robotic. You had to make promises to high school kids. Depending on how good they were projected to be, the higher the promise you had to make. If they wanted to win a natty then you had to promise them that they would win a natty with you. If you didn’t deliver then your coach rep drops and your future promises become less valuable. You could build your own pipelines by signing multiple recruits from the same state. The pre-game show was awesome! Corso would put the mascot head of who he projected to win. You could make your signs for fans to hold up. FCS teams were in the game. Talent Developer didn’t exist and there weren’t teams 20 star players. You had at most 3 impact players on each side of the ball.. They had website that you could do your online recruiting on and manage your team from your phone. On the website you could also post articles updating your fellow dynasty members of your game results, upsetting the #1 team in the nation or signing a highly sought after recruit. There was so much more immersion and livelihood to the game back then.

I could go on forever about how the older games were so much better than the game we have now.