Make College Basketball Video Games Again
The sweet NIL money shall flow forth and I will build a juggernaut at Seton Hall again
One of my favorite video games ever is NCAA Final Four 2001 by the now-defunct 989 Sports, may they rest in power.
I don’t want anyone to run away with the illusion that this was a quality product: it was not. Oh I’m sure by the standards of turn-of-the-century video games it has its charms, but it was a rough play on a console that, by now, is considered with the same reverence the Fortnite brigade the same way my generation thought of the Atari. I just did a YouTube dive and ye Gods.
I didn’t like this game for its cutting-edge graphics or realistic gameplay, because this was 2000 and those things weren’t on offer. I loved this game because it had 2000-01 Seton Hall in all its glory.
Brief primer on one of my favorite random teams ever: 2000-01 Seton Hall was assembled by Tommy Amaker, but the real architects were local kid Marcus Toney-El and ballyhooed point guard Andre Barrett. That duo helped convince Eddie Griffin—one of the preeminent prep prospects in the country that year—to matriculate in South Orange rather than a traditional power or jumping straight to the NBA. Sounds great, especially with Darius Lane, Ty Shine and a precocious Samuel Dalembert returning from a surprise Sweet 16 appearance the year before.
Wrong. The old guard and hot prospects broke off into factions, everything went to shit and Seton Hall barely finished .500 on the season.
Except on NCAA Final Four 2001.
On the game, Griffin was a routine triple-double. Shine was a three-point machine. Darius Lane could scarcely be stopped, and was usually outscoring Griffin in an era when video games favored established players over the freshmen hotshot. The game didn’t have a dynasty mode (which probably helps explain why it didn’t really have a shelf life historically), so even though recruiting was offered, it never amounted to anything and the end of the season always meant starting anew, usually with Eddie and Seton Hall and another romp through the schedule on deck.
I don’t take this stroll down memory lane with you because early-2000s video games with middling reviews require an intensive historical rewind. I do so because it’s 2023, we’re running back the college sports games and if EA Sports can revive its college football franchise, it has the juice to bring us back to the hardwood at Pauley Pavilion, at the Palestra, at Cameron, from the Swamp to the Eugene.
Now… a lot has changed since the last NCAA basketball game, which came out in 2009. We’re overdue, regardless of the legal ins and outs the video game industry has navigated regarding college sports over the past decade or so. Video games are better now, and the details and minutiae that could come in a new college basketball game makes a weird roster-building nerd fairly obsessed with the possibilities, like:
Recruiting
So recruiting used to have a lot to do with academics and playing time (I assume). Now, there are finer details you could use to catch a recruits attention. Hire his AAU mentor. Develop a plan to elevate their social media profile. Get him into the nicest apartment near campus. Or…
NIL
The Wild West. In real life, the options are practically endless. In the digital world, I’m sure there will be practical limitations. But I want to live in a world where part of the offer—the promise—of million-dollar packages to teenagers to come play for you, 100 percent above-board and recognized by the NCAA is now an option in a video game I would spend 250 hours ignoring my family to play. There’s a secondary level of recruiting now, one that involves collectives and opportunity related to Name, Image and Likeness that (weird roster-building nerd again) offers fascinating program-building options in real life and in video games, if one were so inclined.
Arenas
So many options here. The intricate flooring at Memphis and Oregon. The panoramic wide shots of the Palestra and Hinkle Fieldhouse. Looking down at the court at Assembly Hall, from such a drastic depth it’s like the game takes place in a pit. The Actual Pit, for that matter. The Carrier Dome. Cameron with the Crazies doing all their weird things. Just the details on the standard features would be amazing to observe, and that’s before you get to playable options like aircraft carriers and in-season tournaments. Which reminds me!
MTEs
I want this as true-to-life as possible. In Jamaica, make it a small arena with pipe-and-drape blocking out the larger complex. In Maui, we get the hero shots of the beach in the game intro and coaches in Hawaiian shirts. During a late timeout in the first game, we get a shot of Superstar X from the next matchup, stretching in the hallway or with his headphones on in the locker room. And it wouldn’t be an MTE without a semi-regular clock malfunction that causes a brief delay and forces one coach to completely and utterly lose his shit, so please include that as well.
Scandals
So you’re rolling right along in your season, piling up wins and recruiting your ass off and then a mid-week simulation slams to a halt with a text from your assistant:
“Coach — [shooting guard] got busted tonight on DUI, with a handgun and a pound of weed in the car. What should we do?”
A. Suspend him four games.
B. Kick him off the team.
C. Run him until he vomits tequila shooters.
D. Nothing, we’ve got Duke and North Carolina this week.
A real Nate Oats choice, with Oatsian consequences—meetings with the AD and University President take away recruiting and game prep time, an otherwise benign press conference makes national news, your player thinks you’ve been too harsh and threatens to transfer. And you’ve still got Duke and UNC to worry about, regardless of what you decide.
Real coaches (and their movement)!
I love this. I love that a coach can take a new job and leave the cupboard utterly bare at his old school, taking assistants and recruits with him. You got a great class coming in but Virginia is offering you a chance to replace Tony Bennett? Make some buck-wild demands of your current situation, like a million-dollar cash bonus to prove their seriousness, or boosters to circle up and pay off your house for you. How would fictional Iona handle fictional Rick Pitino getting eye-balled by suitors until St. John’s finally poached him—where would they draw the line at their hypothetical reputation versus what it would actually take to keep Slick Rick in town another year? Say you take over a mid-major as a young hotshot—you betting on yourself with a shorter contract to goose your potential with other employers thanks to a smaller buyout, or do you get your current employer paid with a big buyout clause? There’s no right or wrong answer—just choices, and those you make versus those you should have made.
Real players (and their movement)!
TRANSFER PORTAL BBY! You love your guy who was named Freshman of the Year in your respected mid-major league? So does West Virginia, and they’re prepared to snatch him out of the portal with a six-figure NIL offer if you don’t rearrange the terms of his package. Think you’ve found a Division II sleeper who can give you minutes? So does another team in your league, and they’re thinking about offering his step-dad an assistant job. It’s all the trappings of recruiting, only now you’re fighting over players who have proven themselves (in video game form) and either trying to fight other teams for the gems or trying to outsmart them for actual Guys In Need of a New Situation. Getting Bryce Hopkins vs. “landing” Efton Reid might be the difference in the Sweet 16 and the unemployment line. Choose wisely, O Great Basketball Mind of the Greater Ozarks!
An aside: I don’t know how the game would hypothetically handle the newish rules around early entry for the NBA Draft, but a very humorous (in a video game) outcome would be a player getting docked a few games for impermissible benefits if they came back to school but didn’t appropriately dot every i and cross every t during the exploratory period. Imagine you’ve brought in a loaded class and return significant pieces from a Sweet 16 run the previous year, only your point guard tested the waters and had too many meals paid for or something stupid and now he’s suspended for the first six games. This is the ultimate “The game is cheating me” scenario I can think of.
Shit will look nice
Always default to this when considering a video game. Check this screen grab from 2010.
Now this one from the latest 2K release.
That seems like a fairly tangible difference in detail and beauty, to me.