With all the new customisation features and over 1,700 head models added for the audience, it is a statement not to add the option for the coach creator.
It doesn't need to be a highlighted or pushed as a major feature, because it isn't. It's a baseline for equality.
I know im a bit late on this but there were a hand full of female coach models in madden 25 for franchise mode so hopefully they expand on it like they do with all the men. I dont know why they havent added it to cfb either when they have the models in madden 25 it doesnt seem like that hard of a thing to add 5 female models when they have "over 1700" men
According to USA today 47% of NFL fans are women, thats nearly half. if you look at a sport like baseball the percentage of female fans is around 39%, With the NBA its 39% and the WNBA its around 44%, the popular games for both those sports, MLB the show, and NBA 2k have some kind of mode to play as a women, to appeal to what is nearly half of there fanbase, but madden and CFB have nothing. I cant speak for the franchise mode because I've only played the road to the show in MLB the Show, but in MLB the show 24 and 25 you can customize and play as a female player and play in the league alongside the men. Do I think we will ever have women playing along side men in the MLB? No, but they still put it in the game, i could not find definitive percentages of how many women played mlb the show but 50 percent of all gamers world wide are women and women are taking an increasing interest in sports worldwide as well. Dont you think they should capitalize on the increased popularity of football among women and try to pull in a wider audience towards the game?
Im going to post this on my own thread as well so it hopefully gets more attention from the devs
I hope that the development team see this. Adding women provides more to the game and grows the fanbase. It doesn't take away from anyones experience, so why aren't they included?
You've brought up some great stats that highlight even more why women should be added to the game, and also, I'd love to see the option to play as a woman in the road to glory mode!
The womens models already exist in the game. Why exclude them from a single player mode?
We have an update fixing needed issues, but also adding new helmets, uiforms and mascots. Development Team. When are women coach options going to be added.
While I understand the desire for broader customization and representation, it’s important to remember the context of the game. NCAA 26 is designed to simulate real college football, and the reality is that there has never been a female head coach at the FBS level. Including that option in Coach Creation — while perhaps well-intentioned — introduces a feature that doesn't reflect the sport as it currently exists.
As for the claim of “1,700 new head models,” let’s be honest — that’s a marketing stretch. Those models are mostly background assets like crowd members, not detailed or functional additions to actual gameplay. Using that number to justify missing features in coach creation is disingenuous at best.
And let’s talk priorities. Many users still can’t complete a single game without crashes, especially in Team Builder. Stability, functionality, and core gameplay should be the focus — not features that have no basis in reality or impact on actual play.
Representation has a place — no question — but pushing for features that don't exist in the real sport while the game is barely functioning? It’s just silly.
The game is a simulation, where (in dynasty) you can be a football coach. With that, you should be able to create the coach that you want to represent yourself or others that you want to make.
Aside from the audience models then, they still added 175 new customisation heads for coaches.
Advocating for one thing, doesn't take away from another. For example, we can support players rights whilst at the same time, ask for better regulation of the NCAA.
Adittionally in relation to priorities, releasing a game that is not functioning is a separate issue. There will always be the visual design elements needed for a game. In the update two days ago, new uniforms and other visual elements that have no gameplay mechanic were added, and will come from separate development teams. This isnt an indie developer with a shoestring budget and 5 employees.
I get where you're coming from, and yes, the game does let you “simulate” the experience of being a coach. But if we’re talking about simulating real college football, then it should be grounded in the reality of the sport — and that reality, as of today, does not include a female head coach at the FBS level. Wanting to create yourself is totally fair in a fantasy game or something like The Sims, but this is a sports sim that markets itself on authenticity.
As for the “175 new customization heads for coaches” — that’s fine, but let’s not act like it’s some massive inclusion effort when the overall customization tools for coaches are still barebones. Face models alone don’t offer much when the system lacks depth or real variety.
Saying “advocating for one thing doesn’t take away from another” is true in theory, but that argument doesn’t hold when players can’t even finish a game without it crashing. Prioritization absolutely matters. You don’t plaster on a new coat of paint when the foundation is crumbling. Whether it’s visuals or functionality, it all falls under the same release — and players are paying full price for a product that still doesn’t run properly for many.
And yes, different teams may handle visuals vs. mechanics, but it’s still one game under one studio. This isn’t an indie dev scraping by — this is EA Sports, a billion-dollar publisher. When users are locked out of key game modes and the focus shifts to cosmetic tweaks or symbolic features, it’s not a good look — it’s a distraction.
At the end of the day, this is just a weird hill to choose to die on. You're advocating hard for a niche feature that doesn't reflect the real sport, in a game that's already falling apart under its own technical issues. It feels like an oddly defined stance — one that ignores the broader, broken picture in favor of surface-level wins. Representation is important, but function has to come first.
As you say, the game is broken and many of the mechanics are not realistic, but that's aside from the point.
Women being coordinators and head coaches, is not completely out of the realm of reality. A large part of why this hasn't happened yet is due to systemic inequalities. That's even shown here with comments in this post and other posts where people have asked for women to be added to the game.
With my comment before, I completely agree that EA should release complete games, and with substantial improvements for yearly releases. Fixing a broken game should be their priority, but it shouldn't be like this in the first place. Additionally, people have been asking for women coach options since the deep dives of 25's pre-release. This is something that they had time to work on, and in the 26 coach options, they chose not to make a ratio of the heads feminine.
EA is a billion-dollar publisher and they will work on visuals, like the additions in the last update, so there's still the capacity for them to add this. It's an easy fix, and something that EA has in many of its games already. Advocating for equality will always be a hill I'm willing to die on.
The game’s still broken, core features don’t work, and this thread is basically just you bumping it. Even the comments in your own thread speak on this. This isn’t reality — there are no women head coaches or coordinators at the FBS level, and there’s no actual movement in the video game community pushing for it. No one but a small handful of people, if even that, are asking for this. If that’s what you want, you might need to make your own football game. Until then, maybe let's focus on fixing the one we actually have — at least a stable version across all platforms, with true physics, AI-driven plays and schemes, custom weather, custom broadcasts, dynasty recruiting that actually matters, and core football mechanics. But hell, I probably sound just as delusional as you wanting all that
