EA Sports College Football principal game designer Ben Haumiller joins Richard and Alex to answer their questions (and many of our subscribers’ questions) about the new CFB video game that comes out July 9. This episode covers new features and gameplay changes, why EA decided to implement an NIL system in dynasty mode, what interactions with schools have been like, which new FBS teams and stadiums made it into the game, and whether Ben is willing to apologize to Alex for all the clock-saving injuries that cost him games last year.

* 0:27: Alex’s shameful record in last year’s game

* 5:47: NIL comes to the EA CFB franchise. Why and how?

* 15:16: Mascot Mode back, plus other new features and how the video game has become a very real part of the college football economy

* 27:04: New team and stadium additions, and what didn’t make it in time

* 32:05: Road to Glory changes, “generational recruits,” ratings logic, and “dynamic weather” as new parts of the game

* 51:38: Tweaks to the coach carousel and player decisions, plus the aesthetic changes that Ben says will make the game feel more real. Plus: How does a professional game developer feel about all of those AI mockups?

For $10 a month (or you can get a free month with an annual subscription), www.splitzoneduo.com subscribers get about twice as many Split Zone Duo podcasts, as well as our coach carousel reporting, deep dives on college football history, Q&A opportunities, and many more goodies as we think of them. You also help keep this show independent and ensure we’re making a podcast that puts our listeners, not anyone else, first.

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Alex, Richard, and Godfrey spend this subscriber episode reopening some of college football’s ugliest firing files: the decisions that looked reckless in the moment, the ones that aged like bad cheese, and the cases where the process was the bad before the next hire even got started. The trip runs from Nebraska and Washington through FIU, East Carolina, Maryland, and Ole Miss, with athletic directors getting at least as much scrutiny as the fired coaches.

In this episode:

* 2:23: The honorable-mention bucket, including Bo Pelini, Larry Coker, Jeff Jagodzinski, Rick Neuheisel, and Mike Price.

* 17:24: Nebraska actually gets its own division, with Frank Solich tagging in

* 22:13: Mario Cristobal at FIU, an incomprehensible mistake

* 32:38: Ruffin McNeill at East Carolina, which becomes a real AD disaster tale

* 41:27: Ralph Friedgen at Maryland is arguably the worst of all, feat. a James Franklin “coach in waiting” mess

Everyone can hear a free preview of this episode To get the whole thing, become a paid subscriber today. For $10 a month (or you can get a free month with an annual subscription), subscribers get about twice as many Split Zone Duo podcasts, as well as our coach carousel reporting, deep dives on college football history, Q&A opportunities, and many more goodies as we think of them. You also help keep this show independent and ensure we’re making a podcast that puts our listeners, not anyone else, first.

Producer: Anthony Vito

Mike Goodman, cohost of soccer podcast The Double Pivot, joins Richard and Alex to talk about a subject that’s been on our minds a lot lately: tournament expansion. The World Cup expanded from 32 teams to 48, and we’ve already seen some of the benefits (and perhaps some of the drawbacks) of that move. What can the recent experiences of the world’s biggest sporting event tell us about college football’s potential playoff expansion to 16 or 24 teams?

* 0:17: Should the World Cup’s expansion prompt a rethink of the CFP’s?

* 3:21: Mike Goodman joins and explains FIFA’s weird (read: corrupt) politics

* 27:39: Why this has worked fairly well in soccer but probably isn’t translatable to college football

* 45:21: What college football could learn from FIFA’s situation

Producer: Anthony Vito