COMPUTER COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Strat-O-Matic’s Newest Game Will Have 237 Teams

By Glenn Guzzo

Returning to the sport after nearly two decades away, Strat-O-Matic will unveil a computer college football game early this fall with all 237 Division I-A and Division I-AA schools that played in 2004.

The vast number of teams, the speed of the computer and the flexibility of the program will allow gamers to play any school’s entire actual schedule or to create their own dream match-ups, bowl games or tournaments.

The timing is outstanding for college fans who were left wondering whether undefeated Auburn and Utah should have had a chance to play for the national championship that USC won in a match-up with Oklahoma. Did Oklahoma just have a bad day against USC, or were the Trojans really that much better? Was LSU strong enough at season’s end after two early-season road defeats (one a last-minute loss at Auburn) to have won a second straight national championship in a full tournament? Would the Texas-Michigan point-a-minute Rose Bowl have turned out differently with you calling the plays?

And now, fans of, say, Princeton and Bucknell (a 7-4 team that is Strat-O-Matic creator Hal Richman’s alma mater) can play a full schedule, too.

“We at Strat-O-Matic have always loved college football,” Strat-O-Matic Director of Development Bob Winberry said. “Now that the sport is perhaps more exciting than it’s ever been, and now that we can computerize it, we’re thrilled to have it back in our lineup of games.”

Following two short-lived Strat-O-Matic college football board games in the 1970’s and 1980’s, this one will be for the computer only – and Strat-O-Matic’s first computer game for college football.

While there will be no board game cards, the computer game will have a card image option at a modest add-on cost to the $49.95 game that comes with all 237 teams.

“We considered offering multiple disks with separate conferences, but decided we could offer better value by including every team priced the same as all of our other computer games,” Winberry said.

Unlike Strat-O-Matic’s two previous attempts at board game versions of college football, this one will have individual ratings for each player. However, licensing barriers that also restrict other prominent computer games prevent Strat-O-Matic from using the player names and school nicknames.

Instead, the game will show player jersey numbers and allow gamers to insert the actual player names and team nicknames. In the past, the Strat-O-Matic community has been a rich resource for finding ways to add team nicknames and logos, player photos and more. Gamers likely will be able to fill in the blanks of their college football game in similar fashion. Likewise, the game will allow users to assign customized sounds for scoring plays.

The game is still under development. Timing and progress will determine whether Version 1 of college football will include such Strat-O-Matic computer-game staples as a draft mode. But other things are known.

The game engine will be “as similar as possible” to Strat-O-Matic’s highly popular computer pro football game, Winberry said. For instance, defensive coaches will have the same control over movement by linebackers and the free safety.

But there will be several important differences:

-- Because there is a much wider difference between the best and worst college football teams than there is between the best and worst National Football League teams, yardage determined by blocking ratings or defensive ratings won’t be standardized and will show a wider range of results. “You could see a -7 where you would expect a -2 in the pro game,” Winberry speculated.

-- Because the NCAA is not as diligent or as consistent school-to-school at keeping individual statistics as the NFL is, ratings for defensive players and offensive linemen will be heavily influenced by team performance, but will vary by individual accomplishment (All-America, All-conference, second team All-conference) and playing time (starters generally will be rated higher than their substitutes).

-- Lacking the necessary individual statistics, the college game will not offer such pro-game options as “do not allow exceeding longest run,” “do not allow exceeding longest pass” and "use individualized fumble ratings.”

-- There will be an unnamed “238^th” team – a generic team to represent the much weaker Division II teams that could show up on a Division I-AA team’s schedule.

-- The enormity of a 238-team statistical database makes an encyclopedia feature unlikely.

-- The impracticality of programming each of 238 computer managers with the sophistication of the pro game means that there will be several basic college game CMs, customized for team tendencies through the use of sliders.

-- However, gamers will have another defensive option, a 5-2-4 formation with five down linemen and two inside linebackers.

-- Gamers also will have animation for a Wishbone offensive formation.

-- The game will support all the essential rule differences between college and pro football, such as the overtime system, stopping the clock on first downs, penalty yardage, spotting the ball after missed field goals and stat-keeping (e.g. in college football, a sack counts against the quarterback’s rushing yardage, whereas the NFL counts it against a team’s passing yardage).

Strat-O-Matic has always adjusted statistics-based ratings by strength of schedule, and that will be a key to rating so many teams that did not play each other. While a strong Division I-AA team will be capable of beating a poor I-A team, the I-AA team will have a tall task against even average I-A teams, Winberry said.

The new game’s release will follow shipment of the annual pro-football upgrade. That could mean late September.

“The need to produce five games in a four-game schedule makes it more difficult to determine a release date at this time,” Winberry said.