NCAA Football 08 gives Montana a kick to the groin

Posted on July 20, 2007 by Colin O'Keefe
On Tuesday evening I drove up to the local nerdy video game retailer and picked up a copy of NCAA Football 08 for the Xbox 360. Before I bought the game, I was almost positive the Griz would not be 'In the Game.' Even so, there was still that glimmer of hope one always gets right before they find out their earlier assumptions were true. Nevermind that, I was content playing without UM for another year. No biggie.

The funny thing then when I decided to try out their 'Campus Legend' game mode. In this gimmicky waste of time, you create a high school player, play through the high school playoffs, get recruited by a college and then go from there.

So I create a guy -- Cameron Young -- and play through the playoffs. I plug in Sentinel as his high school. The game generates a little state playoff bracket complete with names of real Montana cities -- all 16 of them. So I battle my way through the first two or three games on a small high school field. The championship game is against Columbia Falls and it's not on a tiny field anymore. No, a bigger grander stage for this epic game.

You know where it was played? On the big blue duck killing smurf turf! That's right. According to EA Sports, the Montana high school state championship game should be played in Idaho. Nothing more realistic than that.
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Washington-Grizzly Stadium: it's not in the game

Posted on June 5, 2007 by Colin O'Keefe
It remains highly unlikely that the Montana Grizzlies, or any FBS team for that matter, will make an appearance in the next-gen version of EA Sport's NCAA Football 08 but some do still hold out hope. After all, the Griz do appear in the 06 and 07 versions for Xbox (not 360). The only downer was that you had to play in some big empty stadium instead of the crowded Washington-Grizzly Stadium. Well, for anyone hoping that the Griz would not only be in the 360 version, but also play in a fully rendered Wash-Griz, I'm sorry.

TeamXbox.com has screenshots from every stadium in the Xbox 360 version of the game and Washington Grizzly is not one of them. I really didn't think the stadium had any chance of making it in the game -- the team as a whole probably doesn't either -- but it sucks to know for sure. How sweet would this be in a video game?

After the jump are some of the small-ish stadiums that did make it into the game. None of them are from the FBS.





This gives you a feel for what the facilities look like at the lower rungs of the FBS. It also makes you appreciate having Washington-Grizzly Stadium.
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