The latest EA Sports College Football 25 Deep Dive today focused one of the game's most anticipated modes, Road To Glory. While RTG shares many similar elements to Madden NFL's Superstar mode, there's a lot unique features that makes it look vastly different. Between managing your GPA, securing NIL deals, and earning your Coach's Trust, there's a lot to unpack in this new Deep Dive. Without further ado, let's take a look at the Road To Glory Deep Dive.

Everything You Need To Know About the College Football 25 Road To Glory Deep Dive

Today, EA Sports released their penultimate deep dive for College Football 25 and centers around the Road To Glory Mode. Overall, the Deep Dive focused on player creation, player management, recruitment, and several more details. We'll start with the very first step of your journey, creating your player.

Player Creation in RTG – College Football 25

Before you even create your player in College Football 25, you need to select a starting point. Overall, you have four different options to choose from:

  • Elite – Five Star Recruit (79 OVR)
    • One extra Mental Ability
    • 5 Skill points
  • Blue Chip – 4 Star Recruit (75 OVR)
    • One Mental Ability
    • 4 Skill points
  • Contributor – 3 Star Recruit
    • 3 Skill points
  • Underdog – Two Star Recruit (60 OVR)
    • 2 Skill Points

We'll explain how Skill Points work in a moment, but let's explain the difference between these starting points. Essentially, you can think of these different starting points as difficulties. Do you want to be an Underdog and fight for playing time? Or would you rather be a Blue Chip or Elite player who'll see the field early and often.

What Positions Can You Play In College Football 25 Road To Glory?

The following positions you can play in College Football 25 Road To Glory include:

  • QB
  • HB
  • WR
  • MLB
  • CB

After selecting your player, you need to pick your Archetype. For example, QB Archetypes include:

  • Field General QB
  • Scrambler QB
  • Improviser QB

You'll earn different physical abilities based on the Archetype you selected. Furthermore, it also influences the distribution of your attributes. So expect a Scrambler QB to be much better with his feet than a Field General QB.

Mental Abilities

Regardless of which position and starting path you choose, you'll select one of three Mental Abilities:

  • Fan Favorite – Maintain a GPA above 3.0 to increase composure gains at home
  • Road Dog – Reach Influencer Status via NIL deals to increase composure gains on the road
  • Clearheaded – High Leadership will limit the amount of composure you lose during gameplay

So if you chose to be a Blue Chip or Elite player, you'll earn a Mental ability right off the bat. Once you've created your player, it's time to pick a school!

Recruiting & Signing Day

The Dynasty Deep Dive made mention of Pitches you'll need to make to recruits to get them to come to your school. To do this, you need to learn more about the player and their core values. In Road To Glory, you'll get to set your own goals, which teams will need to Pitch to you. After a brief interview, you'll enter signing day, where you'll see a list of teams interested in you.

Furthermore, you'll be able to see how other players on their depth chart compare to you. For example, if you want to be a RB for Oregon State, prepare to sit behind Ollie Gordon II, who's OVR rating will be much higher than yours. Sure, you could maybe fight for playing time, but you'd rather join a school where you can start or play more right away.

Once you've finally selected your school, you enter the thick of College Football 25's Road To Glory Mode.

Weekly Management in College Football 25 Road To Glory

In College Football 25's Roady To Glory mode, your time in between games will be broken up into two categories: Practice & Weekly Agenda.

Practice

Firstly, Practice acts as expected. You have a choice of participating in either Team or Skill Mini-games to earn Coach Trust (more on this later). The former is a practice conducted between you and your teammates. Skill mini-games focus more on you as an individual. Depending on how well you perform, you earn a certain rank, which awards a specific amount of coach trust.

Thankfully, if you don't feel like practicing every week, there's a way around it. If you earn a Gold Rank just once, you can simulate that practice session every week and still reap the same rewards.

Weekly Agenda

In College Football 25 Road To Glory, you'll have a certain amount of Energy Points to spend your Weekly Agenda throughout the week. For example, most weeks you'll have five energy points to spend. However, Bye weeks will reward you with an extra Energy Point. Short weeks, on the other hand (playing on Thursday), will only allot you four total points. So, what are these points for?

During the week, you'll need to spend time (Energy Points) on five different key activities in the game:

  • Academics – Studying for Quizzes, Exams, etc.
  • Leadership – Activities to earn respect from coaches and teammates
  • Health – Manage your Wear & Tear
  • Training Sessions – Improves Physical attributes and skills
  • Brand – Improve your brand to potentially receive NIL endorsements

Firstly, Academics focuses on your player's GPA and is broken into two categories. The first is Test Readiness. You can spend energy points on studying for the midterm exams. The higher your test readiness is, the more likely you are to pass the exam.

You'll also have to take quizzes throughout the semester, and the game will ask you how much time you want to spend on studying. Again, the more you prepare the better off you'll be.

The second category is GPA, which is your academic performance based on your test results. If your GPA goes below a 2.0, you'll be ineligible to play, and will be forced to attend study sessions (which drain energy points) until you can bounce back. Conversely, earning a 3.0 GPA will activate the Fan Favorite ability. Therefore, you need to spend some of your energy points in academics to keep yourself on the field every Saturday.

Another benefit from the Academic Agenda is that it'll boost your Coach Trust bonuses. Again, we'll focus on Coach Trust soon.

Leadership is about building your team by doing activities together. The more time you spend with your team during these activities, the more respect and trust you earn. The higher your leadership bar is, the more benefits your team receives as a whole. One of these bonuses include increases in Composure Gains, Coach Trust bonuses, and Team XP bonuses. Lastly, the highest level of leadership grants you the Clearheaded ability.

Health is about managing your player's health. If you've read any of the deep dives, or watched any recent gameplay videos, you already have a general understanding of how Wear & Tear works. Essentially, the less you rest, the more likely you are to incur injury. Unlike in Dynasty, you do not automatically recover a some health when advancing weeks. Therefore, you must spend your Energy points on Health to keep fit.

The Training Agenda is essentially a progression bar that you can increase every week via training. Once the bar fills up, you earn a Skill Point, which you can use to increase your attributes. However, training also puts slight wear and tear on your body. Therefore, make sure you're well rested before gameday.

Lastly, Brand represents your player's off-field status. The more you socialize, the more fans you earn. This opens up NIL Slots, which you can use to enhance your brand. When you reach the final tier, you earn the Road Dog Mental Ability.

That explains the different activities in the weekly agenda. However, there'll be other events throughout the season to shake up your experience. These include, Scenarios, Dillemas, and NIL Deals.

Scenarios, Dilemmas, and the NIL

Throughout your Road To Glory experience, you'll face different scenarios, all of which could impact your player. Here's some examples of different dilemmas mentioned in the deep dive:

  • Skipping night Class (lowers GPA) to attend a party (increases Brand)
  • Skipping class (lowers GPA) to earn some rest (increases health)

You'll also receive NIL deals throughout your collegiate career, which comes with its own risks and rewards. For example, you might accept a deal with a company for two weeks, which rewards you with 500 fans per week. However, it might cost you one energy point per week, which you might need to spend on different Agendas.

What is Coach Trust in College Football 25?

In College Football 25's Road To Glory mode features a Coach Trust system, which represents your coach's faith in you as a player. For example, if you're a backup QB for Arkansas and need to build your way up, you need to earn Coach Trust to engage in a position battle. But, how do you gain Coach Trust?

Generally, a lot of the activities listed above grant players coach trust. Maintaining a high GPA, spending time doing team building activities, and playing well will increase your coach trust. However, just keep in mind that the player above you on the depth chart is also working on their coach trust.

When you finally manage to catch up to the starter, you'll engage in a position battle. This consists of three different mini-games, and you'll need to beat the starter in a best of three competition. Should you lose, you'll need to wait a few weeks and build up more trust in order to compete again. Conversely, your backups might also threaten your spot, so be aware of your competition.

Gaining XP & Skill Groups

In Road To Glory, you earn XP from the following ways:

  • Gameplay – Completing goals and performing well
  • Training – Completing Training Sessions

But unlike Dynasty, you don't earn XP in the offseason. Therefore, it's much more important to train and perform well in order to increase your rating.

If you read the Dynasty Deep Dive, you'll have already heard about Skill Groups. Essentially, they represent a grouping of attributes rather than one particular skill. So if you upgrade the Power Skill, you'll be improving things like throw power and strength. Depending on your position, you can only upgrade a certain Skill group a certain amount of times. The max amount of times a skill group can be upgraded is 10 (depending on your archetype).

The only way you can increase your Skill group's level cap is if your coach possesses a certain ability. Speaking of abilities, let's take a look at physical and mental abilities in Road To Glory.

Physical & Mental Abilities in Road To Glory

Unlike Dynasty, you'll be able to upgrade your Mental abilities throughout your RTG career. In order to do so, you need to complete certain objectives over the course of the year. However, you still need to ensure your Mental Abilities are active. For example, you won't be able to enjoy an upgraded Fan Favorite ability if you're GPA is below 3.0.

Physical abilities, on the other hand, can be upgraded via Skill Points. However, these might require a certain attribute of yours to be at a certain number. It might be you need a better Play Action or strength rating to upgrade your physical ability.

Playcalling in Road To Glory

Say you're a young QB starting his first game for the Iowa Hawkeyes. Well, don't expect to take full reigns of the offense, as your coach will provide plays for you. You won't be able to cal audibles, though you can hot route your receivers. So, how do you select different plays?

By increasing your Coach Trust, you earn more chances to ask for more play changes. These play changes make the coach provide another two plays for you to decide on. So if you don't like his first call, you'll have two more options.

Transfer Portal & End of Year

When the season ends, you'll be able to take advantage of the Transfer portal system, while also looking at all yearly awards you vied for. When entering the Transfer Portal, you'll receive offers from team's who's goals align with yours. Remember your recruiting interview? The goals you picked there may play a role in who wants you.

And of course you'll also get to see the awards you've earned over the years. And, when it's all said and done, you can either retire your player, or export them to Madden NFL 25. From there, you'll be able to continue your player's career in the pros.

College Football 25's Deluxe Edition launches in less than one week, while the the game officially releases three days after. Pretty soon, everyone will either be coaching their own team, or starting as a young new player for another. Regardless, we can't wait what everyone does with CFB 25 releases next week!

In the meantime, check out some of the other information revealed this week ahead of launch. The developers released a list of the top 100 player ratings, as well as another Deep Dive on Ultimate Team. At this point, all that's left to show is Teambuilder, which will let you create your own program.

For more gaming and NCAAF news, visit ClutchPoints. Furthermore, subscribe to our gaming newsletter for more weekly info.