Hey College Football Fans, welcome back to the Campus Huddle, your home for news and information about EA SPORTS™ College Football 25! Today we are back with more information about Ultimate Team! Let’s dive in!
Ultimate Team is where you build your College Football dream team with Campus Heroes of today and Legends from the past. Build your squad and compete against other players or battle against the AI. Much like reviving a program to its former glory, building your Ultimate Team squad might seem a little daunting… It isn’t and we are here to get you up to speed!
First, we are incredibly proud to announce that in addition to players of today and retired legends of the past, College Football Ultimate Team will feature active NFL players. Thanks to our partnership with the NFLPA, the mode will include active players like Patrick Mahomes, Davante Adams, Christian McCaffrey, Josh Allen, Ceedee Lamb, Stefon Diggs, Joe Burrow, and many more who can join your squad!
At the start of your journey, you will inherit a beginner team. Depending on what your favorite school is, you will start with a handful of names that will be familiar to you. Whether you’re a Solo player or a H2H Champ you’ll have multiple modes to explore, but if you want to jump start your squad and start increasing your Team OVR, you should jump straight into completing ‘Challenges’.
‘Challenges’ are scenarios that require you to complete specific requirements on the field. These scenarios can vary in difficulty and are a great way for you to sharpen your football fundamentals or master a playbook. Some might require you to complete a touch pass, others will task you to lead a comeback against a rival squad. What’s important though is that completing Challenges allow you to earn rewards such as Packs, specific Player Items, and/or Coins that all can be used to improve your Team.
To start the year we have over 100 Challenges, providing variety and different themes to make each Challenge feel unique. We really want to use Challenges as a way to celebrate College Football, its historic past and present. During Season 1, check out the ‘In Case You Missed It’ Challenges to relive some of your favorite moments in college football over the last 10 years. In Ultimate Team 101, you’ll have the opportunity to work on your fundamentals. As the year progresses, we’ll be introducing new Challenges for you to tackle every Season!
Completing ‘Objectives’ is also a great way to upgrade your lineup. Daily and Seasonal Objectives can be completed while playing specific modes, and offer XP for your Field Pass, which earns you Player Packs and Coins. Objectives will often highlight a specific action that needs to be done on the field, like winning games with a specific lineup, or requiring you to reach specific requirements for on field statistics.
With the Coins you’ve earned from Challenges, completing Objectives and competing in various modes, you’ll have a few options to use your resources to earn players. One option is to head over to ‘Marketplace’ and check out the store where you can acquire packs. New players are introduced in weekly releases. Your other opportunity is to check out the Auction House. Here you can exchange coins for specific players that could improve holes in your lineup.
Team building in Ultimate Team begins with setting your Lineup. Deciding who starts for your team is key to winning games. You can manually select who plays at each position, including bench spots or you can select the ‘Generate Best Lineup’ option to make your lineup building easy. Multiple options are available when you generate the best lineup: Create the highest OVR team possible from your Item Binder, select a specific Team Chemistry to build towards, or commit your lineup to a Scheme Chemistry. Ultimate Team is all about team building and you’ll have the tools to create unique and fun lineups with over 153 Chemistry options.
Once you’ve earned players and edited your Lineup, you can watch your Team OVR rise and take on tougher competition. Of course, we’re just scratching the surface of team building in Ultimate Team, let’s dive into the different Chemistries that are available.
Chemistry is an important part of team building and often what makes a good team great! In College Football Ultimate Team you reach higher Chemistry tiers by putting Players in your lineup with matching Chemistries to boost your player’s attributes. Scheme and Team Chemistries will play a role in building your team. With 134 Team Chemistries and 19 total Offensive and Defensive Scheme Chemistries, College Football Ultimate Team offers depth and creativity, offering so many options to build your team.
When you’re building a team, you’re building towards a specific playstyle that represents you best on the field. In College Football Ultimate Team, you’ll want a playbook that complements the type of players you have in your lineup. Some teams like to pound the rock, others like to air it out. Find the players that suit your style and make the playbook you’re calling plays from shine. All Player Items and Playbooks will be associated with one of the following Schemes and count towards your Scheme Chem. As you reach Scheme Chem requirements by having them in your lineup, players of matching Chems will gain attribute boosts.
It’s up to you as the coach of your Ultimate Team to decide which scheme suits your playstyle the best, and all are worth experimenting with to find that answer. If you are looking for a pass-first system, Run ‘n’ Shoot or Air Raid are great places to start! Both offenses rely on the QB to make quick reads, allowing your playmakers to go to work in the open field. Other schemes like Option and Power Spread put your RB room in position to tote the rock and win games on the ground.
Defense wins championships! With high powered offenses all over the country, it’s important to have a defensive scheme that makes you and your players shine! We’ve seen teams have great success mixing personnel, finding creative ways to bring the pressure, or disguise their coverage to confuse the offense. Look into the 3-3-5 if you have the athletes to keep up with the Spread, or run 4-3 if you’re trying to fill the box.
We know Playbooks are going to be important in your College Football Ultimate Team journey. Not only does Ultimate Team feature all 134 team’s playbooks, but it also includes scheme-specific playbooks. With 19 total schemes, we want to help make finding your on-field identity easier for both sides of the ball. Don’t jump into the Auction House and spend coins on a new playbook! Instead, head over to Challenges and check out ‘Offense Scheme Trials’ and ‘Defense Scheme Trials’. Here you can experience each scheme and see how it plays with your squad before committing to a specific style. Learn and perfect the philosophy behind each scheme. The first Challenge of each scheme will give you the opportunity to earn a Scheme Specific Playbook of that Offense or Defense.
You’ll also want to consider a player’s Team Chemistry when building a roster! All Player Items will have a default ‘Team Chem’ from the school they represent. However, with the transfer portal having a large impact on College Football, we wanted to allow you to put your favorite players from all over the country on your team. Meaning, Player Items will have access to all 134 Team Chems, so you could build a crazy Ohio St. Buckeye Theme Team full of Michigan Wolverines… but you wouldn’t do that, right?
Once you unlock a Team Chem bucket on a Player Item, you’ll be able to replace the current Team Chem with the one of your choosing. Increase your Team Chem tiers by loading your lineup with a specific Team Chem and boost the attributes of your favorite players from your favorite school – discovering all new Lineup possibilities all year long.
With thousands of players in College Football 25, it might take some effort to remember them all. So these Player Item Fronts highlight key attributes based on the archetype and position of that player. OVR is a great way to get a sense of a player’s ability on the field, but sometimes you want to see those key attributes at a glance. Items also come in all different rarities and can be represented by different colors. Those rarities are highlighted below.
Item Rarities:
With a flick of the right joystick, you can flip the Player Item to see what Abilities are currently equipped. If you see a number on the front, you will see the same number of Abilities equipped and displayed on the back. As you equip new Abilities and replace others, you will see those represented on the player item. On the back of player items, you will also see a list of attributes for that player and position.
As highlighted in the previous Gameplay Deep Dive, we have a ton of abilities in College Football 25. In College Football Ultimate Team, you have the choice to unlock and equip multiple Abilities to a player. Abilities can be turned active in your lineup by allotting the required AP amount. Lineups cannot exceed the AP point limit.
Abilities play a role in team building! So when viewing a Player Item, head to the ‘Upgrades’ tab. Here you can spend ‘Training’ that unlocks Ability buckets. These buckets house the different abilities that the Player Items can equip. We’ll have different buckets dedicated to mental and physical abilities. Once the buckets are unlocked, you can exchange training for an ability of your choice. If you end up changing your mind about which Ability to activate, you can refund the Training cost of those upgrades/unlocks.
You’ll be able to earn Training by quickselling Items in your binder. Note that quickselling an Item is permanently discarding it.
Throughout the year, we will have new and exciting live content updates for you to engage with. Be on the lookout for new challenges, players, game modes, rewards, and store offers! These are just a few of the Programs we’ll be playing at launch.
Ultimate Alumni are returning to their stomping grounds in Season 1 of College Football Ultimate Team. Here the top players from previous college entries will make an appearance and give opposing fans headaches once again. Play through Challenges to relive some of their brightest moments on the field, complete sets and open packs for these stars to improve your squad!
While we are at it, let’s reveal the Ultimate Alumni Player Items that you can choose from as part of the Last Chance Pre-Order Offer!*
Leading up to the Season, we will be highlighting incredible stories and the players who were a part of them! New Challenges, Players, and Sets will become available. Be on the lookout for your favorite Conference and check out the Challenges to relive some of the classic moments from each!
ICYMI will bring you up to speed on the last decade of college football. Whether it’s the 2013 Miracle for Auburn, UCF’s perfect 2017 season, or Alabama’s Title Redemption against Clemson, you’ll get a chance to look back at these moments, as we look forward to the College kickoff. This program will feature players who had those iconic moments and led their schools to victory and balled out.
Legendary All-Americans will be returning to campus and be highlighted during launch week. With College Football returning we also wanted to honor some of the Legends that made us all fall in love with the game! With legendary players showing up every week, this is going to be an exciting time in College Football Ultimate Team and you will have an opportunity to see how the GOATs of the past match up against today’s Stars!
Ultimate Team will be celebrating college football throughout the year and you won’t want to miss anything. Head over to the Live Events tab to stay up to date! Filter to a specific Program so you can see all the content in that Program all in one place.
The Live Events tab also highlights your Field Pass. Your Field Pass is representative of the progress made in the current season. As you level up by completing Objectives, you’ll earn rewards that will help you progress through the year and give you the tools to build a championship-level squad.
The ‘Orientation’ Field Pass will be available on launch. The Orientation Objectives and Challenges will help you get familiar with Ultimate Team and jumpstart your team. After you’ve attended Orientation, you can hop right into the Season Field Pass and start earning more rewards like Coins, Packs, and Players that can take your lineup to the next level.
Sets will allow you to take lower OVR players and exchange them for a player with a higher OVR. This is a great way to find use for some of the players that may have fallen out of your lineup and are no longer needed. To help you decide who to place into a Set, we will suggest the lowest-rated items that meet the Set requirements and allow you to redeem them with a single button press. New Sets will be introduced throughout each Season as Programs release.
We’ve covered Challenges that you’ll be able to play throughout the season with your squad. Beyond that, College Football Ultimate Team offers many ways to play no matter if you like to play solo, squad up with friends, or really put your skills to the test against other players online.
First up though, we’re very excited to introduce a new way to play that we call Solo Seasons. With Solo Seasons, you’ll be able to play a Season format with your Ultimate Team against AI opponents. Go 5-0 in your season and get a bye for the playoffs, compete for the championship, and get ready to do it all over again. Solo Seasons is completely repeatable and offers greater rewards as you progress in each season! Ultimate Team also offers Solo Battles, where you’ll be focused on accumulating Battle Score for each win and earn rewards as you progress!
For those who enjoy playing vs others online, College Football Ultimate Team has the more traditional modes in H2H Seasons, where you’ll play through a season, make the playoffs, win championships, and move up in divisions for even better rewards. If you want to squad up with your friends, check out Squads Regular Season where each player takes on an assigned role of the team as the Offensive Captain, Defensive Captain, and Head Coach. Hop online with your friends and move up in divisions for those sweet, sweet rewards together.
Now if you’re looking for a new way to sweat, College Football Ultimate Team has a brand new experience that we’re calling the Gauntlet. Every Friday, enter the Gauntlet to take on the best the mode has to offer online. Become a Gauntlet Champion by achieving 10 Wins, but take 2 losses and your Gauntlet run for that week is over. A ton of great rewards are up for grabs, including Coins, National Champion Packs, and exclusive players!
Note: Gauntlet events start every Friday at 1:30 PM ET and end Monday at 1:30 PM ET.
How can you enter the Gauntlet each week? You can play Champs during the week to earn a Gauntlet entry or pay a coin entry. In Champs, you’ll play a maximum of 20 games against others, but getting 16 wins in the current week’s Champs event will be all you need to enter the Gauntlet.
Note: Champs events refresh every Thursday at 1:30 PM ET.
If you’re working up a sweat reading this, you can cool down as we talk about House Rules. With House Rules, you’ll be able to play games with unique twists to the traditional football rule set. House Rules will rotate in and out throughout a Season, so be sure to check your Live Events tab. Below are the two House Rule modes you can play at launch: