Dynasty mode is one of the crown jewels of EA Sports College Football 25, thanks in no small part to its incredibly detailed, complicated, and intricate recruiting system. Nothing is more important to building a college football powerhouse than the talent youâre able to bring in year in and year out, but recruiting the best players in the country isnât easy, especially if youâre trying to bring a smaller school within striking distance of the playoff picture.
To help you build the CFB champions of your dreams, weâve put together a list of tips for how to level-up your recruiting game and land the best prospects in the country in College Football 25.
Study your Team Needs spreadsheet
Itâs entirely possible to track your rosterâs shortcomings by hand, but thankfully College Football 25 doesnât make you do that kind of work. Instead, you should spend a significant amount of your recruiting time in the Team Needs spreadsheet â which you can find by pressing the right stick while in the recruiting menu.
This screen will let you know which positions youâre currently light at, and which ones youâll need more of because youâve got exiting seniors or players expected to declare for the draft. It will also let you know how many players at each position youâre targeting on your prospect list, and how many youâve already got committed this season. You shouldnât feel limited to only recruiting positions of need, but they should be the first bases you cover each recruiting season, and theyâre particularly important in the offseason when the Transfer Portal rears around (more on that later). âAG
Focus on the big fish early, but donât get your heart set on them
The early fall is time for hope in football programs all across the country, both for a better season than the one before, and for all those five-star recruits that barely paid your program a passing glance. You get more hours in the pre-season than you will the rest of the year, so take big shots. Send the House for the five-star who has you listed 8th, and gamble on any high-quality recruits you can. While the chances are probably slim, you might get lucky with a couple of players who happen to match your program just right.
But hope isnât a guarantee, so itâs best to have a backup plan. While you may land the player of your dreams, especially if youâre at a bigger school, the chances are good that most of the 5-stars are going somewhere with a little more prestige than your burgeoning dynasty can muster just yet. But that doesnât mean you shouldnât chase them for a while. âAG
Find the prospects other teams missed
My current Dynasty file is with New Mexico, which starts as a one-star program. That means there are very few four-star prospects who will even give me the time of day (and even fewer five-star prospects).
In the preseason stage of recruiting, I follow the advice above: Find every four- and five-star prospect that will even listen to me, and offer scholarships to the ones I would want on my team. By the time the season starts, most of them end up off my board, because theyâve been offered by bigger schools that I simply canât compete with. But this also leads to the crucial part: Identifying the best prospects that bigger schools overlooked
Itâs actually pretty easy: In Week 0, I filter prospects by âfive-star recruitsâ and âfour-star recruits,â respectively, and then sort it by offers received. (The format for this column is Y for if youâve offered the prospect, N for if you havenât, and then their number of total offers in parentheses â youâre looking for a 0 there). Every single elite recruit without any offers is getting an offer from me.
Using this strategy, Iâve been able to land at least four four-star recruits in each of my three recruiting classes at New Mexico. Later in the recruiting cycle, I fill out the rest of my class with solid three- and two-star prospects, but being able to land these overlooked elite recruits has made a huge difference. âPV
The recommended tab is your friend, but donât rely on it alone
EA Sports College Football 25âs recruiting system features a recommended tab, which surfaces players the game thinks you should target. This largely shows you players that already have you in their top 10, or realistic targets in pipeline states. I find this to be an easy way to find solid recruits to fill out the rest of my class later in the recruiting cycle, but I tend to ignore it at the very beginning unless there are big time prospects that are considering my school (but Iâll likely find those anyway). âPV
Use your pipelines
Pipelines are a crucial mechanic in EA Sports College Football 25, as both your school and your coaches have them. Basically, pipelines give you bonuses to recruits from certain regions of the country. Use this! If all else is equal, it is better to spend your hours on a recruit from a pipeline region than one who isnât â youâre simply going to get more bang for your buck. That doesnât mean you should totally box out recruits from non-pipeline regions (sometimes, you can land them!), but itâs worth prioritizing regions that you already have a footprint in, just like real life.
At New Mexico, that means every season my first targets are the top players in the state of New Mexico, followed by the best players in Texas and California that the big schools in those states arenât offering. Occasionally, Iâll pick up players from other states, but thatâs where the bulk of my recruiting classes are coming from. âPV
Use your hours wisely
You have a limited number of hours each week to spend on recruiting actions, and those hours are even more limited if youâre a small school. So how do you spend them? I tend to max available hours on my biggest targets â the four- or five-star recruits â and spend as much as I can there until they have committed to my school or locked me out. At that point, I move on to the three- and two-star recruits, scouting them (more on that in a second) and spending my hours on them.
After you get to know a recruit well enough, you unlock the option to âHard Sellâ or âSoft Sell.â This allows you to make a more targeted pitch to the recruit, highlighting three specific areas you want to focus on. This is best used when your programâs strengths line up with the recruits priorities (which will be shown with a check mark on the recruiting tab). If youâre able to sell them well on all three of their priorities at once, itâs going to help you out massively on the recruiting trail. If they donât align, your hours might be better spent elsewhere. âPV
When to scout and when not to scout
You have the option to scout recruits, learning more about their attributes, and if you fully scout them, the game will tell you whether they are a gem (with a green gem icon), a bust (with a red X over a gem icon), or neither. Think of a gem as a player whose actual ratings are equivalent to a star rating above them, and a bust as the opposite. So a three-star gem is more like a four-star recruit, and a three-star bust is more like a two-star recruit.
When to scout depends largely on the program youâre running and what kind of recruits you want in the door, but in my save file with New Mexico, I donât scout any four- or five-star recruits ever. Even if they are busts, they will still benefit my program. I do scout almost all three- and two-star recruits I am considering, to try and prioritize gems. If possible, I try to do some scouting in the preseason, but lately thatâs been waiting until midseason so that I can maximize my limited available hours on just the four- and five-star recruits Iâm targeting.
One other note, which weâll follow up on in a second: Donât scout players in the Transfer Portal. Because they are known entities in college, there isnât the degree of mystery that there is with high school players, and their listed star rating is their real one. There are no gems or busts in the Transfer Portal. âPV
The Transfer Portal is here to help, but donât bank on it
The Transfer Portal is one of the most helpful tools in the recruiting process. At the end of every season, players unhappy with their current team situation can throw themselves into the whirlpool of the Portal, opening themselves up to offers from teams all around the country â including yours. This is the perfect way to fill out some depth for your roster, or to chase one or two more stars before you get ready to start your next season, but you shouldnât count on it to fill all the gaps on your team. Thereâs no telling exactly who will be in the Transfer Portal each year or how good theyâll be.
For this reason, itâs best to approach the Portal by looking for any stars within your grasp, as well as maybe a third or fourth string player at a couple positions, rather than counting on getting a surefire starter who was unhappy at their previous school. âAG
What you need to know about Visits
Visits are a particularly effective and important recruiting tool that becomes available after a player has listed your school in their top 5 choice. From there you can invite them to your campus for a home gameday. During their stay, you can have them focus on one element of your program. Ideally for this youâll want to choose a category thatâs important to them (has a checkmark next to it on their scouting sheet) as well as something youâre rated highly on, ideally with a B grade or higher.
While these visits are a great way to seal the deal with recruits, there are a lot of nuances to doing them right. For instance, youâll lose influence with the player youâre recruiting if you lose the game the week of their visit. Even more importantly, you can schedule multiple players to visit on the same week, which can give you either complementary bonuses or conflicting penalties. If you have a quarterback and a wide receiver both visit on week 8, theyâll compliment each other and each boost the otherâs interest. On the other hand, if you have something like three cornerbacks all visiting at the same time, their interest will all drop because they donât feel youâre as interested in them specifically.
All of this leads to visits being a bit of an imprecise science, but still a very important tool to get used to in your recruiting adventures. âAG
The end is not necessarily the end
Sometimes, a recruit can seemingly lock you out â but thatâs not always the end of things. Each recruit has a Dealbreaker â one element of a school that they prioritize above all else. Some of those Dealbreakers are fluid â Playing Style, Playing Time, Championship Contender can all change over the course of the season. If a recruit commits to a school, and then their Dealbreaker is no longer valid with that school, they could still de-commit and sign with you on National Signing Day.
Similarly, with New Mexico, I offered scholarships in the preseason to a group of prospects with Championship Contender as their Dealbreakers. At the time, my Championship Contender rating was sufficient, but over the course of the season, it dipped below what was acceptable for them, and I was seemingly locked out. However, no other school offered any of the recruits a scholarship, so I kept them on my recruiting board just in case. When Signing Day came around, sure enough, those recruits signed for me, even though their Dealbreaker didnât fit with my school. Now, theyâll be at a higher threat of transferring than other recruits, because players retain their Dealbreakers once they get to college, but I got them in the door. âPV
For more College Football 25 guides, see our beginnerâs guide, learn how to throw a perfect touch pass, and check our recommendations for how to pick the best pipelines.