NCAA Football 12

This year's installment throws a number of new features at its Dynasty mode, and we tell you exactly how you can make your mark.

DYNASTY MODE

    Custom Conferences

• Instead of just being able to swap teams between conferences, now you can expand or shrink conferences from four to sixteen teams
• You can set conference rules from allowing Thursday games, protected rivals, division names/alignment, scheduling of conference games, location of the conference championship game, and more
• You can also edit the bowl tie-ins, so the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl could not include the Big 12 or remove tie-ins altogether and just go off of straight BCS rankings. You could even make it so independents like Notre Dame don't have a tie-in to any bowls, which sounds like a great plan
• No conference creation or BCS playoff-style tournament
• Conferences can be changed from year to year

    Create a Coach/Coaching Carousel

• Start out as either a head coach (use an existing coach or one create one from scratch) or coordinator. Coordinators naturally only call and run plays for their side of the ball. Coordinators will still recruit, however
• Can edit any coaches/players that are existing on the disc. This can be posted as a file online for others to download
• The game wants to replicate the coaching carousel of the NCAA, so your contract status and goals will be closely monitored from year to year. Depending on the school, you'll get goals like getting a bowl birth, having a top recruiting class, winning a national championship, and much more. For coordinators, goals will be stat based
• Your coaching prestige and job security change from week to week, so you'll have to ride the rollercoaster all season, and this also affects your recruiting. If you're on the hot seat, for example, players may be less inclined to sign onto your program
• AI coaches will retire, get fired, and hop from job to job, and this will affect the entire coaching landscape. The AI will hire coaches based on things like whether a candidates is an alum or not, coaching style, etc. You will also get offers while you are currently employed
• Although you can start out as a coordinator, when you are a head coach you do not hire your coordinator positions
• In online dynasties, the commish sets what level everyone is at, whether that's one-star defensive coordinators or full-on high-caliber head coaches

    Online Dynasty Web Browser

• Commish can advance the week from the web – but only if you pay a one-time fee of $2.99 or 240 Microsoft Points
• You can super-sim your games versus the CPU on the web – including calling plays, modifying your depth chart, and more. You can also pause the game at any time, sim forward a quarter, etc. Again, however, this will cost you a one-time fee of $2.99 or 240 Microsoft Points
• Both of the above browser features can be bought in one Commissioner Pack for $6.99/560 MP, and the pack also includes the ability to be commish to up to five dynasties

    Misc.

• Custom Playbooks: Add remove plays and formations at will. You can set up exactly how you see your playbook, from grouping all medium passes to putting all play-action plays together, and more. This is not sortable via your NCAA browser page
• Recruiting in Dynasty mode has been tuned, but not changed greatly

For more on NCAA, check out our screens and trailers below (including this story on the game's zone defense), as well as our previous preview detailing some of the gameplay changes.