Summary
EA Sports College Football 25ranked which stadiums are the hardest for away teams to play at inCollege Football 25, but not everyone agrees with the rankings. When playing an away game, teams have to worry about things like crowd noise, intimidation tactics, and playing in an unfamiliar environment. It makes sense forCollege Football 25to factor this into the game’s mechanics and make it part of the new Stadium Pulse meter. While the concept is a good one,not everyone agrees with the rankingsof which stadium is the hardest to play at.
College Football 25has been a hot topic among sports game fans since it’s the first college football gamesinceNCAA Football 14. That means it is being scrutinized pretty heavily, and any perceived inconsistency will likely be pointed out. The gamesranking of top offensive teamsalso faced some criticism when it was initially released, with some analysts expressing their surprise that certain teams would be ranked so high. While EA Sports has released some hints at its methods for arriving at the numbers, the exact calculations aren’t shared, so it can be hard to see the reasoning.
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Davis Wade Stadium
Mississippi State
According toEA Sports, when their development team was working on this list, they used a variety of different metrics to arrive at their conclusion. Though not all metrics were shared, EA did name home records, attendance, winning streaks, and prestige as some of the things the developers considered when ranking teams.Home winning percentage makes a lot of sense as a metric, as it is one of the easiest ways to quantify what makes a stadium difficult to play at. That said, not every metric makes as much sense.
One metric that might be questionable is attendance numbers. This is due to varying sizes of college football stadiums. According toCollege Football News, Georgia ranked 8th in terms of total attendance over the last five years. However, their stadium only holds about 93,000 people. Even though the stadium was usually filled to 100% capacity in 2022. Texas A&M, on the other hand, was ranked third in overall numbers, even though their stadium was typically only at 94% capacity in the same year. A fuller stadium would likely indicate more enthusiasm, even with a lower total number.
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Analysts Disagree With College Football 25’s Rankings
Players Agree Texas A&M Did Not Deserve The Top Spot
There seems to be some consensus that EA’s methodology in choosing its ranks was flawed. As Sam Kahn Jr. ofThe Athleticpoints out, it seems strange that Kyle Field would score the top spot on the list despite Texas A&M not having a consistently strong home win record. While wins wasn’t the only metric EA scored stadiums on, one would think it would be weighed a bit more heavily. After all, one of the best ways to quantify how difficult a stadium is to play at is by seeing how well away teams perform there.
Even an article onAggies Wire, a site dedicated to news about Texas A&M powered byUSA Today Sports, doesn’t give Kyle Field the top spot. In fact, it is ranked fifth behind several stadiums that it beat out inCollege Football 25’s rankings. If Texas A&M isn’t the loudest, doesn’t have the highest attendance, and doesn’t have the best win record at home, one starts towonder why EA Sports decided to give them the top spoton this ranking.
How Homefield Advantage Affects Play In College Football 25
Homefield Advantage Makes It More Difficult For Away Teams To Execute Plays
If this ranking by EA Sports had just been done for fun, fans wouldn’t likely take as big of an issue with the rankings as they have. However, home-field advantage actually plays a role in the game. Players gain momentum based on their performance in the game, raising the Stadium Pulse meter. The higher the meter goes, the more difficulty the away quarterback has while executing plays. EA says they have weighted the efficacy of this mechanic differently based on their school rankings, so these rankings have a direct impact on gameplay.
Fans of teams like Michigan, LSU, and Oregon will likely take issue with their team not being given higher spots on this list. Oregon especially has a reputation for being one of the loudest stadiums in college football despite its low capacity.EA Sportshas mentioned that their rankings may change in future updates, so hopefully, they reconsider their methodology a bit when reconfiguring these numbers.
