College Football 27: Suggestions to the developers

I am happy to see some involvement from the community manager in this thread and would like to expand a bit on your ideas with more suggestions that the developers should be aiming to achieve.  

Immersion goes much further than just the crowd, the pregame shows, and media.  I love those ideas, but they absolutely need to dive deeper into the depth that is available for a football program.  I think you have to include a number of elements to truly encourage the level of immersion you are wanting:

• A full coaching staff for is the starting part of building a team culture and EA has never truly embraced the idea of providing that and that is a travesty.  When I say full coaching staff I am not just talking about the position coaches.  Strength and conditioning is probably the foundation of most staffs, but you have a number of back office and position coaches that can have huge impacts on the success of recruiting and on the field. 
• It would be nice to see them incorporate personalities, schemes, skills, goals, etc. for building out your staff and your players.  There are guys that can absolutely improve the culture of your team and their are guys that can absolutely destroy it.  The coach cap and/or skill trees need a different approach.  Coaches, like players will develop until they have peaked.  
• You also need to expand to 105 man rosters.  You cannot truly balance the needs of a college program with 20 spots missing from your program.  It allows for easier management of redshirting and injuries.  However, the change to redshirts may resolve that on its own this year as well.  
• Winter conditioning, spring practices, summer training, and fall camp.  At a minimum allow for some depth by choosing what you have players work on.  Pretty sure EA did this with baseball years ago.  This would allow for smaller progression of the players at different points through the year with different time periods focusing on different areas.  For example, winter conditioning sets the tone for the year on both conditioning and strength training.  It is the core of most programs and we this game does nothing with it or the strength and conditioning staff.   
• Coach mode.  Bring back a pure coach mode where I control the plays, but do not control the actual game play.  I find that much more challenging when the sliders are right.  (I will admit I do like that the QB will now take off and scramble if you use current coach mode on his own).  You could also do an AD mode that allows a different type of depth to the program.  
• Allow renaming, deleting, or creating of conferences.  Doesn't hurt to have the option. 
• Allow full customization of fake players, race, hair, eligibility, position, height, weight, etc.  You are generating way too many people who hail from the mountain of the Caucasus in here.  NIL players should have limited editing as well.  Ratings, class, numbers, etc.  
• NIL needs to be a part of the game...
• Quit making position change stagnant.  We should be able to change their position at any time during the year.  It happens in real life so not sure why you are trying to make it more difficult then it needs to be.
• Change the way you handle ATH designation.  These players should show up in the depth chart for any position they are capable of playing.  However, the player should progress slower at any position that is not their primary position.  You can base this on designation or by the snap counts at a position.  
• Dynamic rivalries and dynamic recruiting.  Pipelines can change, rivalries can be established and others can fade away.  
• Dynamic depth charts that adjust for your team's scheme.  They need to put more effort into explaining the roles of positions and skill sets for certain positions.  Most teams do not have a simple WR depth, but have 3 separate and distinct positions here.  Typically WR-X, WR-Z, WR-SL.  Each having different traits that particular coach wants for those positions.  Same with multiple different looks on defense from teams ranging from heavy DB looks to heavy LB looks, but they are not the same and I think they have made the approach to defenses way too simplistic in comparison to the offense.  One 3-3-5 is not like another as LB's and backend may be more focused on specific types for their purpose.  Some have 2 LBs and a safety for the backers, others have 2 LBs and an athletic edge.  I feel like they have slept on the complexity of the game by making the depth charts way too simplistic for what the game has evolved into.  They need to be team specific too.  
• Player progression in college football literally happens before our eyes for most players as they settle in to playing time.  Players should be upgrading their dev traits during the season and off season, increasing their OVR, and their awareness much more during the season.   Game play attributes such as awareness, ball carrier vision, block shedding, finesse moves, power moves, pursuit, play recognition, etc. should be impacted by player performance.  However, the physical attributes such as speed, strength, agility, etc. should be impacted more by off season training along with the game play attributes.  I also think transferring players should take a hit to awareness, play recognition, etc. as they are moving to a new system.  Regression can also be an issue with players as they are passed on the depth chart, suffer an injury, or just hit a cold spell.  
• Recruiting is year-round and should be in the game as well.  Most classes are more than half filled before the season starts.  Most official visits happen during the summer for these recruits now and some are in spring.  Need to add this to the game and to the off season additions mentioned above.  Recruiting is also much deeper than we currently have.  From unofficial visits, camps, official visits, all of these things could have a good or bad impact on a recruit and their ultimate decision.  You need a much more robust recruiting board to make this realistic as school typically start with close to a 100 prospects on their recruiting board and narrow them down through the spring and summer as prospects make decisions.  I would highly recommend at least one of the developers subscribe to 247 or On3 to understand the nuances of recruiting much better than they seem to now.  

I could probably go on with a number of other issues that should be addressed, but I liked the talk about the immersion and depth of the game in this post.