NCAA Football 10: Now the Season Showdown Counts

I've been waiting for long, long months to say this: It's college football game week!

Whew. Let that soak in for a while. Feels good, doesn't it?

The persistent problem with the traditional July launch of EA Sports' NCAA Football series has been that a good chunk of the audience has abandoned the game by the time the real college football season rolls around. Whether it's moving on to other games (like Madden) or simply having already wrung the fun out of the game, there's a chunk of fans out there for whom NCAA Football's cycle has already run out.

That thinking is at least part of thinking behind the Season Showdown mode, introduced in this year's NCAA Football 10. The mode, which essentially tracks and scores the activity of users and assigns them to each player's team of choice, will officially kick off once head-to-head match-ups begin in college football starting this Thursday. EA Sports has kept track of all the user credits accumulated by NCAA Football players and released a top ten Season Showdown list heading into the regular season.

1. Ohio State (more than 100 million credits earned during the preseason)
2. Florida
3. Texas
4. Michigan
5. Miami
6. Florida State
7. USC
8. LSU
9. Alabama
10. Notre Dame

An interesting list and one Michigan fans should savor, as this might be the closest the Wolverines get to the Top 10 all season long. I kid, I kid.

I wasn't the biggest fan of Season Showdown when it first was introduced--it looked like little more than an excuse to show Coke Zero ads. That said, it will be interesting to see how the NCAA Football fanbase takes to the feature now that the regular season has just about kicked off. Fans will be able to earn credits for their team by playing online versus their school's weekly opponent, taking part in some specialized Facebook games, or simply playing the game offline.

Are you still playing NCAA Football? What do you think of the Season Showdown mode?