The Power of Storytelling in College Football 25’s Dynasty Mode!

I absolutely love franchise style modes in sports games. Any time I can fully control a team from top to bottom, I’m game. It’s how I learn more about sports I don’t know well. My main love, however, is American football. I have played countless hours of Franchise Mode in Madden and then Dynasty Mode in NCAA. Well, with the release of College Football 25, we now have the Dynasty Mode back and it’s better than ever.

You can read my piece on Dynasty Mode in my review of College Football 25 for the basics, but I wanted to do something a little different for this piece. I want to take you all on the journey I went on playing Dynasty Mode for the first time in College Football 25. I played the entire journey on All-American. This is the best way to keep games close without having to be perfect on every level. With how quickly I needed to get this project done, I didn’t want to go insane.

My name is Adam Moreno, I am an alumni of the Middle Tennessee State Blue Raiders (MTSU). I grew up near Knoxville Tennessee watching the Tennessee Volunteers (Vols) play with my grandfather who was the biggest Vols fan I’ve ever known. I love a good build in a story, so I started my journey as the Offensive Coordinator for MTSU.

I decided to pick offensive players to recruit myself and follow recommendations for the defense. We filled our board and started targeting prospects. You can recruit four and five star recruits as a two star program, but it takes a lot of hours talking to the players, and with a smaller school like MTSU, we only had so many hours. So I picked a few I liked and focused the season on recruiting them.

I realized pretty quickly that running the ball in College Football 25 was going to be my friend. I used the Tennessee playbook which allowed me to have some fun zone running and power running with multiple running backs. Frank Peasant became the work horse back and we ran all over Conference USA winning every game in the conference. On top of that, we went to Ole Miss and beat them in their own house. The only blemish on our record came from Memphis, who beat us with a score of 35-28.

Sadly, I really underestimated the wear and tear system and Frank got hurt during the last three games of the regular season. You’ll want to make sure you’re mixing up the running backs throughout the season to counter this and make sure you have your full arsenal ready for the end of the season. While our depth was decent at running back, nobody ran like Frank. He ended as the best running back in the nation!

We ended the season with MTSU ranked as the #16 team in the nation and got ourselves a spot in the College Football Playoffs as the last seed. We played Ohio State in Ohio and… well… We’ll just blame the 45-7 loss on my pushing Frank too hard and the wear and tear not allowing him to play.

Regardless of a full team meltdown against Ohio State, having the number one running back in the league and taking MTSU to the playoffs allowed me to have some interesting options during the coaching carousel the following offseason. With OC offers from better teams or HC offers from some smaller schools, I chose to leave my HC at MTSU and try my hand at coaching the Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles.

During the next offseason, I fully scouted out players I hoped to bring to Southern Mississippi. We targeted almost every position to get better, but wanted to make sure our young roster knew their spots are theirs as long as they keep the work up. As a motivator and a recruiter, I knew we would need depth regardless of how well our team did during the regular season.

As we got into the season, we made Jalen Washington (RB), JQ Gray (RB), Dorian Kaplan (ROLB), and Caleb Moore (RE) our leaders of the team and we weren’t wrong to do so. Just like Frank Peasant the year before, Jalen Washington led the entire College Football world in rushing, however, unlike last season, we made sure JQ Gray got enough touches to make sure everyone stayed healthy. Our defense shredded the Sun Belt leading us to a 12-2 year with 6-0 against conference teams.

Again, we were ranked, this time Southern Mississippi was the #12 team. I went into my college football playoffs with a level of confidence that I should have known would get me in trouble as we flew down to Texas A&M and got our but spanked 70-7. Humbled was an over exaggeration.

However the season ended, we had things to celebrate after my first year at Southern Mississippi as we were the SBC Champions and had the CFB rushing champ on our team. As of writing this, I have offers from Stanford and MTSU to be their HC and Miami to be their OC. But there’s something special about the first team to give you a HC job and being there long term.

All of this, all this journey was just one dynasty and two seasons. The replayability of this mode is really where Dynasty is going to shine. While this may have been a different way to showcase Dynasty Mode in writing, I think it encapsulates how cool the experience of playing Dynasty Mode can be. Now, it’s time for you to start your own Dynasty and make your mark on the CFB landscape!

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