College Football 25’s Team Builder has everything NCAA Football’s did — you just have to know where to look

One major feature of EA Sports College Football 25 that didn’t get a lot of attention when the game launched July 19 is because, well, it actually wasn’t available until July 19. And that’s Team Builder, a creation suite that is just as fully featured as the original web app + console game toolkit from the old NCAA Football series.

You just have to know where to look if you want to get the most out of it.

Everything about the original Team Builder, which straddled NCAA 10 to NCAA 14, is in here, rest assured. That includes the means of uploading a custom logo, plastering it on your helmet and football field in the design space, and seeing it come to life in the video game.

It’s perhaps the most important feature of Team Builder, otherwise you’d be stuck with a variety of generic logos that look like they came from a clip art CD-ROM circa 1996. When you log into the Team Builder web app, it’s not immediately obvious where you upload your own logo.

I’ll cut to the chase and show you. In the left hand rail (see the image at top), open the logos menu, and then click the square with the plus in it at the end of the generic logo options. That brings up a second window with two buttons, one of which says “My Uploads.” Click that button.

Voila, there’s where you upload your custom design. These images have to be in .png format, maximum file size 512 KB. You get 10 uploads (Team Builder users must be logged in under a freely created EA Sports account).

The other thing making Team Builder seem smaller than it really is comes from how it’s presented in the game itself. Team Builder teams are part of the Download Center from the main menu. In the Download Center, Schools are just one tab among several, including custom difficulty slider settings and the new custom playbook sharing feature. Nowhere does the term Team Buiilder appear in the game, which has been confusing for some.

Also, don’t expect to simply browse the latest and greatest from the community, as you can with creations in the WWE 2K, or Forza Horizon, or even MLB The Show series. You can access others’ creations without knowing their Gamertag or PSN ID, but you still have to make a specific search by term. A search for Columbia, a Football Championship Subdivision school (a rung below college football’s top flight) still turned up several hits. So did one for the University of Denver, a perennial favorite among the create-a-school crowd.

These two fig leaves, on image upload and browsing creations in the game, are my only two quibbles with Team Builder. But honestly, I think I kind of know why EA Sports would be coy about custom logos and searching out created schools, who in all likelihood are representations of real schools.

During Team Builder’s five years in the old NCAA Football series, I heard more than one anecdote that someone from the brand or marketing office of a Football Bowl Subdivision school (which was not in the game) would call down to EA Sports in Florida and politely ask them to remove all community creations featuring their marks. EA Sports would comply, but it was a case-by-case headache for whomever got stuck with the task.

While EA Sports requires uploaders to state that they aren’t infringing anyone’s trademarks, they probably still are. But if everyone can get along and not say the quiet part loud, the rest of what diehards remember about the old Team Builder is still here.

What else is in College Football 25 Team Builder?

Newer features include more helmet options (including what to put on the front and back bumpers); field marking options, and means of choosing a real life apparel brand (Adidas, Under Armour, or Nike). It may sound esoteric but it’s another thing for uniform geeks — and there are many — to obsess over. In addition to custom logos, creators can also upload custom layers, to get even more intricate (or faithful) with their designs.

The roster your created school gets is entirely fictional. But unlike the roster in the main game — which uses real-life college players under their own names for the first time — it is completely editable; numbers, names, ratings, all of it.

All of this will take on greater importance when Madden NFL 25 launches Aug. 16, because its players will get full use of Team Builder, too.

One thing that did not survive, however, was the means of choosing another school’s fight song and playing it as your own. Again, I suspect licensing is the cause here. Players will instead hear a generic fight song.

That’s good enough for now. I can remember all the work I put into my created team in the old game — including putting three good friends on the roster, plus some of their friends. It’s nice to see the rabbit hole has opened up once more. Now if only I could get the typeface on the helmet numerals right …

EA Sports College Football is available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

Featured image: Screenshot of College Football 25 via EA Sports