EA College Football 27: Road to Glory review

Sports games are so iterative that at times it's hard to see the forest for the trees. In this instance, we're three years into the return of college football to video games, with EA College Football 27 set for a July 9 release, and its two major game modes have received major changes. Well, one mode got a major change, and the other is somehow even more annoying to play than last year's version.

Dynasty continues to build on the momentum of the last two years, layering in enough new wrinkles to feel like a genuine step forward. Road to Glory, meanwhile, feels like EA looked at last year's foundation, shrugged, and decided "good enough." The result is a mode that's simultaneously more bloated with ideas and somehow more tedious to actually play.

Starting our Road to Glory

Loving the new menu screen. Credit: EA

Let's start with the good news — the gameplay is still great. College Football has always felt smoother and looser than Madden, which, by comparison, feels stiff, over-polished, and weirdly lifeless. The core experience of just playing a down hasn't lost a step.

That said, in terms of iterative development, Road to Glory drew the short straw against Dynasty this year.

College Football 26's big pitch for Road to Glory was high school football. Build your reputation, get recruiters interested, boost your star rating before you even set foot on campus. Good idea, especially since skipping high school entirely in College Football 25 was one of the most common complaints.

The execution was bad. Instead of playing six to 12 real high school games and earning your reputation the way the old NCAA Football series let you, you get four games built around random, preset "moments," short bursts of gameplay where you're told to do something specific, like "audible a hot route and gain 15-plus yards." How well you pull these off determines how much colleges want you. God forbid a coach wants you to scramble for 50+ yards, but you accidentally throw a first-play touchdown pass. You'll get the points for the TD, but you'll fail the moment.

It was the worst part of College Football 26, second only to Ultimate Team. At least you could turn it off and go back to picking a school the old-fashioned way.

I still don't get why EA thought this was good, especially since nothing about it has changed in CFB 27. "But Chance, it's called College Football, not High School Football." Sure, sorry for wanting an immersive career mode to actually be immersive.

The real changes this year are one extra game and a basic NIL system tied to scholarship offers. Instead of just grinding to get offered QB2 over QB3 on the depth chart, schools now sweeten offers with perks like better academics or more brand exposure. North Texas might offer you the starting job, but their exposure package (10,000 followers) doesn't compare to Florida's, which doubles that and includes better facilities and conditioning.

You can see the scholarshop bonus from schools that offer you. Credit: EA

One thing I do like is that schools you're interested in will actually contact you and tell you where you stand. I made Texas my top choice, and Steve Sarkisian flat-out told me they didn't need a quarterback and I'd struggle to even make the roster as a backup given my lowly three-star rating. But when I switched to Edge Rusher, one of three new positions along with Tight End and Free Safety, Sarkisian couldn't stop talking about landing a four-star pass rusher because the roster desperately needed one. It's a small touch, but it makes recruiting feel real instead of just filling up a meter.

Thanks coach. Credit: EA

So all in all, the High School Experience still kind of sucks. Just let me play some high school games and keep the new recruiting process, and I'll be a happy camper. NCAA 14 did it 13 years ago, I don't understand why EA won't do it now. You'll have'll a better time turning off High School Experience and starting in college based on star rating alone.

RTG's Gameplay Problems

The actual RTG experience once you've picked a school is death by a thousand cuts. You need the patience of a Tibetan monk not to throw a controller at your TV.

The UI is a pleasure to look at compared to last year, especially with the action shots next to the headlines, but the in-game experience is hell on Earth. I don't even play on Heisman difficulty — All-American alone is a gauntlet. I can only imagine the horrors waiting on Heisman.

Credit: EA

The same RTG complaints I've had since CFB 25 still exist. Horrific pass blocking, brain-dead running back AI, wide receivers who drop the ball at the slightest whiff of contact, and total dependence on the AI's playcalling mercy.

I know some Reddit warriors will tell me to use my pass-blocking adjustments. That shit doesn't matter. The AI linemen just don't block — they get stuck in an animation and slide around the field, a friendly reminder that your All-American left tackle is just polygons and code. I've ended games with 7-plus sacks and 40 pressures purely because the AI whiffed every assignment.

For another taste of the AI's mediocrity, running backs still can't find the open hole. They seek out contact or bolt for the sideline instead of hitting the lane when they're not busy colliding with their own teammates — a persistent AI plague. Running an HB screen is nearly impossible since the back hop-skips just far enough to still be standing directly behind an edge rusher, so the second you throw it, he's tackled instantly. Crossing routes and posts get murdered the same way, receivers tangling with defenders or linemen, leaving you as bait for the edge rushers to commit literal homicide.

Left: Look at where the RB starts compared to where he ends up. Credit: EA Sports Right: Rage-inducing behavior. Credit: EA Sports

None of this would matter as much if the AI didn't sit in zone defense the entire game. Beating zone means stacking underneath routes to move the linebackers, or punishing them when they play too deep. Meanwhile, your receivers play like they're scared of contact — and unlike the Derek Carrs of the world, I'm not trying to get mine decapitated. But speed and separation are everything in the passing game this year, which means your guys rarely separate, which means every throw turns into a jump-ball animation.

The problem with jump balls is that receivers drop them on contact regardless. Two hands on the ball doesn't matter — clip the smallest part of their body midair, and it's on the ground. Hell, even wide open, they'll drop anything that isn't a 100% accurate throw, which is a tall order when you're getting pressured on every snap because the O-line CANNOT BLOCK ANYTHING.

Then there's the small stuff still broken. The infinite injury-timeout bug turns clock management into a nightmare. The wear-and-tear system keeps triggering injuries all game, so if you've got the ball with two minutes left and want to run the clock, good luck. Go three-and-out, and maybe 15 real seconds pass because the AI keeps getting phantom stoppages it doesn't even have timeouts for. Pray you're not in a close game. And even up 50 points, you can't kneel it out if the opponent still has timeouts — normally, under 1:30, you can kneel and let the clock expire, but not here. Been broken since CFB 25. Still broken now.

Immersion, Interrupted

I mentioned earlier that immersion is huge for me in this game. It's part of why I get addicted to Football Manager and why I hated how FM26 stripped out so many little details that fed that immersion. Here, EA has at least tried to make RTG feel like being an actual college student.

Credit: EA

Most of the non-gameplay RTG experience is functionally unchanged. You've got a weekly agenda where you spend 6 or 8 energy points (6 in-season, 8 on bye weeks) across Academics, Leadership, Health, and Brand Exposure. The new addition is Fitness, replacing Training. Instead of boosting XP, Fitness gives passive stat buffs or nerfs based on how much energy you sink into it. Stay conditioned, and you get better composure, XP boosts, coach happiness, and less wear and tear. Slip into Sluggish or Out of Shape, and it's the opposite, plus it costs more energy to dig out. Small win: the old Academics penalty for investing in Brand is gone.

The real problem is there's not enough energy to go around, especially since you're constantly bombarded with scenarios, and NIL offers drain it before you can breathe. NIL offers you can decline. The scenarios, though, are always some version of "spend 3 energy to study," or "cheat off old test answers, or spend 1 energy studying yourself." Either way, it's spend energy or eat a GPA hit — four of these a week. So there are stretches where I'm out of energy, my Fitness craters to Sluggish, and it costs 3 energy just to nudge the meter — except all 3 of my remaining energy already went to an NIL deal promising 100 skill points in eight weeks. By this point, I'm not immersed. I'm just annoyed.

Speaking of skill points, CFB 27 ditched its old upgrade system for an NBA 2K-style progression model — including skill caps on ratings. Skill caps. On a single-player career mode. That barely makes sense for 2K, where MyCareer is woven into online multiplayer and caps exist for balance. I'm just playing the AI. Why do I need a cap at all? Now, starting RTG means allocating player potential like it's 2K. Which is a whole new can of worms, due to the potential of microtransaction creep.

Credit: EA

Previously, skill points were bought into six main rating categories, so one point in Accuracy would bump every related attribute at once. Now SP functions like tokens, upgrading attributes one at a time. Cap breakers and overall boosts come from your Legacy Score, driven by milestones like rivalry wins, bowl wins, and awards. Transferring schools docks your legacy — inconsistently. Going from North Texas to Florida dropped my score; Florida to Texas somehow raised it.

The simulation is still broken, same as always. Case in point: undefeated 10-0 Memphis ranked No. 3 nationally despite playing in the non-Power 4 American Conference — one spot above 10-2 Texas, and three ahead of 11-1 Tennessee. The Volunteers share a conference with Texas and already beat them this season, yet sit at No. 5 behind a Memphis team whose best win was unranked South Florida. I don't even mind an underdog story, but it's immersion-shattering, because the real-life CFP committee would never rank a non-Power 4 team this high. Ever.

These rankings don't make any sense. Credit: EA

For comparison, Army went 9-0 in the same conference as Memphis in 2024 and finished Week 12 ranked No. 24. In my RTG universe, Memphis kept its playoff spot after losing the conference title game 42-7 to a 10-2 North Texas squad. BYU, in real life, lost its playoff spot after a conference championship loss — and they're in the Big 12.

I'm still upset to this day about the unjust outrage towards James Madison and Tulane for winning their conferences and making the CFP last year. Imagine the reactions if North Texas and Memphis made the CFP from the same conference. It's immersion-breaking to the point of hilarity.

Closing Thoughts (For Now)

So, where does that leave Road to Glory in College Football 27? Pretty much exactly where it left off last year, just with a shinier coat of paint and a few new toys duct-taped on top of the same broken frame.

The gameplay foundation is still genuinely good — I want to be clear about that, because it's easy to lose sight of it after 2,000 words of me screaming about o-linemen who forgot how football works. When the game lets you actually play football, it's still smoother and more satisfying than anything Madden's put out in years. That's not nothing.

But RTG keeps finding new ways to get in its own way. The high school experience is still a glorified skill-check simulator wearing a letterman jacket, the NIL implementation is a half-measure dressed up as a full one, and the actual on-field AI — pass blocking, route running, zone coverage, the whole nine — feels like it hasn't been touched since 25, bugs and all. I shouldn't still be losing games because my left tackle decided to interpretive-dance his way out of a block, and I definitely shouldn't have to still deal with the wear-and-tear system manufacturing injury timeouts out of thin air.

It's a mode built on good ideas surrounded by bad execution, propped up by a gameplay engine that deserves better than what's being asked of it. EA clearly knows what players want — real high school games, honest recruiting, an AI that doesn't actively sabotage you — and just as clearly keeps choosing not to deliver it.

Next time, we'll dig into Dynasty.