With CFB25 mere minutes away from coming out, I just wanted to say goodbye to the game that's been with me for over a decade. Goodbye, NCAA14. I was a sophomore in high school when you came out, and now I'm 26, and my life is so unbelievably different now than it was then. I went to college, moved cities, then states, had my first serious long term relationship, then my first heartbreak; I had friends I can't even remember anymore come and go, various different jobs, houses, dorms, apartments. Through it all, this game has been the one constant in my life.

When covid hit, obviously things sucked for everyone for a very long time for a lot of very serious reasons. But a little thing that was really getting to me was the lack of sports. I started a new dynasty in this game, as an OC at San Jose State, and to get my sports immersion fix, I decided to get a binder and meticulously track by hand everything that happened in that dynasty. What's pictured here isn't even the half of it, but I didn't wanna go too crazy uploading pictures. I handwrote my depth chart (with names, numbers, ratings, and class), incoming recruiting class (names, stars, overall, rank), every stat from every game, every award winner, every All-Whatever team member, all my season stats, my school records, my players drafted, almost anything you can think of, every single season.

It's been four years since I started this, and I played about 14 seasons, which isn't much, but I was playing this very off and on, and I was playing every single game, and it was just so much fucking writing lmao. The way I took notes changed over the years, as well as what I did and didn't include in the notes. I started as OC at San Jose State, stayed there for four seasons, then got promoted to OC of Oregon. After three years with them, I went on to take my first (and only) head coaching job at the University of Kentucky. They were coming off back to back 2-10 seasons, and I felt they were the perfect school for me. Perennial doormat of the SEC, a reputation as a basketball school, and no historical success to speak of, BUT they had some talented young players and were in the biggest conference in the country. They were the perfect "nobody believes in us, let's go catch them all by surprise" team and that's exactly what happened. It took a few years, but we were competing on the biggest stage for the national championship.

All of this is to say: this game has been with me through so much, and I've done so much for this game that I never would for anything else. It's the only reason I still have a PS3. I don't even have my PS4 anymore. I wrote nearly 400 pages of handwritten notes that are just game stats from an over decade old sports game. This game was good enough that I wanted to do that. I wanted to keep a binder filled with hundreds of pages of stats. That's insane behavior. But I know you all can understand it.

I don't know where I'm going with this anymore. I just wanted to give this game a proper send off before it finally got relieved from duty. Thank you for all you've done for us, 14. You can finally rest now.