PlayStation 2
Released in 2006 by EA Sports
Grade: A
NCAA Football 07 offers some of the most exciting and intuitive on-field action in this beloved series, with a slight step up in strategic depth from its predecessors. The only thing stopping it from a perfect score is some annoying new displays of on-screen text.
Where it falls in the series
This is the sixth of ten NCAA Football games on PS2.
Praises and gripes
While many PS2 sports games haven’t aged gracefully, this generation of EA Sports football really stands the test of time. NCAA Football 07 is crisp, consistent, and easy to control. The plays are well-engineered and the CPU players react to situations logically.
What makes the action work so well is that it has just the right amount of visual sophistication. There’s enough detail to recreate the functions of football without going overboard. It’s clear what’s happening on the field, letting you focus on improving your skills and strategy over time.
The previous installment, NCAA Football 06, had a certain frenetic energy and looseness that helped distinguish it as college football. This year, that looseness is dialed back a bit. The control is slightly more precise, and the action feels more like the great Madden games from this era.
What’s also more Madden-like is the level of tactical adjustments you can make before the snap. Defensive squads can now “redraw the play” on the spot.
In addition, there’s a new momentum system, showing you that individual players are on a hot streak or tiring out. During timeouts, you need to select a position group to boost, which feels unrealistic and tedious.
There are also new gimmicks in the presentation. You’ll see cinematic zoom-ins in the middle of a play, a feature I quickly turned off. On kick returns, the camera hovers closely behind the ballcarrier, which cannot be turned off. The game prompts you to choose a similar view when trying to block kicks. Text constantly pops up to signal well-thrown touch passes and defensive lineman getting a jump on the snap. There’s just too much stuff on screen, making the flow of the game less comfortable than earlier installments.
On the bright side, the playbooks are even deeper and more varied than before. It’s impressive how much attention is given to each of the 112 teams, plus another 80 historic teams. Football purists and people who played football at lower levels will appreciate being able to run so many different schemes. A game between Penn and Princeton has a completely different look, feel, and speed from a showdown between Georgia and Florida.
The game balances all kinds of plays well, and they each have fair trade-offs. There are long bombs, tight runs, screen passes, option plays, and extended scrambles with receivers improvising to get open. They’re all worth using, but none of them lead to surefire success. There’s a great “anything can happen” aspect to this game, but it always feels fair and realistic.
All in all, this is yet another fantastic edition in one of the best video game franchises ever. It’s inviting to pick up and play, and it’s rewarding to invest time and effort into improving your game. It retains what makes the series so great while offering a bit of a change from the previous year.
Published March 11, 2026