Countdown to kickoff: Day 3
Playing “NCAA Football 2009″ with default rosters is fine. But if you want the true “NCAA” experience, you need to replace those numbers with the names of the players they represent. Which brings us to today’s topic — roster sharing.
If you’ve ever taken the time to input the names for every player on every team in “NCAA Football,” you understand what a HUGE undertaking it is to rename rosters. First, you have to research each team, making sure you have an up-to-date roster. Then you have to match jersey numbers on the game with those of real players. And while EA does a fair job of assigning each player his correct jersey number, you can count on using height, weight and class to identify some players. Then, of course, you encounter problems with true freshmen, transfers, jucos and other variables that can throw a monkey wrench into the whole process.
Naming rosters is a pain in the butt. No two ways about it.
Thankfully, there are a select group of people out there who enjoy this masochistic task. These guys put in countless hours doing the research and renaming so that gamers like you and I can get the most enjoyment out of “NCAA Football.” Transferring these rosters into your game could be quite a chore in the past and often involved memory cards, transfer kits and a bit of trial and error.
This year, EA is changing all of that for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owners. With the new EA Locker Roster feature in “NCAA 09,” grabbing a named roster will be as simple as going online with your game.
Here’s how it works: Fire up your copy of “NCAA 09″ and go to Online in the main menu. From there, head to the EA Locker. Enter the Xbox Live Gamertag or PSN screenname of someone who has posted rosters and, voila, you’re done. It’s painless. How do you know who has a named roster file waiting to be grabbed? That’s easy, too.
The Web site www.freencaa09rosters.com will keep an up-to-date list of trusted users to help ensure you download just what you’re looking for. The folks there will also be providing links to download named rosters in case you need to use a transfer kit or USB drive (for those who don’t have access to Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network.) These guys have been editing rosters for years and I’ve been using their rosters for as long as I can remember. They know their stuff and do a great job of getting each team as accurate as possible.
Of course, there are other ways to get named rosters, including purchasing them from Ebay or some other roster Web site. But with high-quality free rosters readily available, why would you ever want to pay for them?
So if you’d rather hear the announcers talk about White and Devine instead of QB No. 5 and RB No. 7, be sure to download a set of named rosters. It’s never been easier.
