The College Football 25 Dynasty Deep Dive today revealed more information on recruiting players, the Transfer Portal, and much more. In Dynasty mode, you'll not only need great coaches, but a roster full of talented players to win games. Not only will your performance as a coach influence the decision of players, but several other factors. Overall, College Football 25's Dynasty Mode brings back many features from NCAA 14, but with several new features as well.

How Does Staged Recruiting Work In College Football 25?

In College Football 25, recruiting is built around three phases, Discovery, Pitch, and Close

Discovery is perhaps the longest part of the recruiting process and broken up into multiple phases:

  • Search for prospects with a variety of filters
  • Check your Team Needs
  • Spend recruiting hours wisely
  • Use your Recruiting Board to see who you've looked at over the course of the year
  • Identify players across four different levels of scouting
    • Unscouted – Default State for every recruit
    • Partially Scouted
    • Mostly Scouted
    • Fully Scouted – Discovered everything there is to know about the player

Additionally, there are five other recruiting actions to help you learn more and connect with a potential recruit. These include:

  • Offering a scholarship
  • Scrolling through their social media
  • DM'ing the player
  • Contacting their Friends and Family
  • Send all your recruits and scouts after them

In Stage 2, Pitch, you need to sell the recruit on your school, and there's two different ways you can do so.

Firstly, you can soft sell your pitch, which is a low-risk, low-reward way of motivating your recruit. Therefore, if you soft sell on the wrong category, like Campus Lifestyle when the player actually cares about Playing Style, you won't lose that recruit instantly.

However, if you know what your player wants, try a Hard sell tactic. This high-risk, high-reward tactic will earn you tons of motivation from your recruits who'll be much more inclined to play for you.

Overall, College Football 25 features over 20 Pitch types, which is a collection of three motivations. However, you'll be fighting with several other schools to land your coveted prospect. You'll receive a set amount of hours per week to convince, persuade, and even sway recruits to come to your school. This all leads to the closing phase.

Lastly, the closing phase finally marks the moment in which you can meet your prospect. However, you must have offered this player a scholarship, as well as be one of their top five schools. You can host up to four recruits per week, but only when they have the time to visit. Overall, visits are broken into two main factors: Scheduling, and Activity

Firstly, you need to schedule when your recruit should visit your school. You can wait until your conference championship game to really impress them. However, you run the risk of them already committing. Therefore, you need to invite your prospects at the proper times to ensure a chance you'll get them.

Make sure to invite them to a big game, though. A game against a rival or top-seeded team will help increase your influence on the player. However, you can also invite the player when on a bye week, though you won't receive a game bonus.

Furthermore, you need to wisely invite certain players at certain times. A QB and WR prospect might like the idea of attending a game together. However, if two RB prospects attend your game, that might rub off the wrong way on certain players.

Once you schedule a visit with your players, there are 14 different activities that you can go through with. Like the Pitch phase, you'll want to choose the activity that reaches closer towards your prospect's motivations. Therefore, choose activities that'll increase their opinion of your school.

Verbal commitments are nice, but not final. All recruits in College Football 25 make their decision on either Early Signing Day or National Signing Day.

School Grades & Team Prestige

There are several factors that determine whether or not a recruit will come to your school in CFB 25. One such factor is your school's grade. Overall, your school grade is determined by:

  • Playing Time – How long it will take for a player to become a starter
  • Playing Style – Determined by player stats over the course of the season. For example, a high yards-per game output will attract offensive players.
  • Championship Contender – Team readiness to win a Championship
  • Program Tradition – Team history
  • Campus Lifestyle – Unchangeable grade about your campus/surrounding area
  • Stadium Atmosphere – Determined by toughest places to play ranking
  • Pro Potential – Likeliness of a player going Pro from your school
  • Brand Exposure – Overall brand recognition. Do your players have several NIL opportunities?
  • Academic Prestige – Unchangeable grade based on academic rankings
  • Conference Prestige – Overall strength of the conference
  • Coach Prestige – Based on skill of coaching staff, including head coach and coordinators
  • Coach Stability – Coaching staff experience
  • Athletic Facilities – Measures quality of athletic facilities
  • Proximity to Home – Unique to recruit and based on where the school is in relation to the recruit's home pipeline

Some of these grades change throughout the season, while others don't change until the end. However, your school grade plays a big role into your Team's Prestige. In College Football 25, Team Prestige is a 5-star rating which represents the overall quality of your school. According to EA Sports, very few teams will be able to reach and maintain a 5-star rating for long.

Recruits, Motivations, and More

every year, 3,500 new recruits will be generated across the country in different regions. Some regions might consistently produce better talent than in other places of the country than others. And different recruits prioritize some grades more importantly.

For example, a five-star recruit might care more about NIL deals and Pro Potential over Proximity to Home. However, a two-star recruit might prefer a place with a better academic rating or proximity to home. Overall, each recruit has three major motivations (or grades) that will highly influence their decision. Therefore, you need to consider various factors when discovering new talent in College Football 25.

Some of these motivations are so important, in fact, that they are considered Dealbreakers. These are motivations that players will not budge on. If a player wants guaranteed playing time, you must ensure that they'll receive it.

Another factor that plays into recruiting is Pipelines. In total, College Football 25 features 50 total pipelines across to represent the regions of the country. While some schools will have better influence than others in local areas, there will always be competition. For example, if you're coaching for Oregon, expect to compete with Washington for some of the higher-rated local recruits.

Recruits also have in mind their top initial schools they'd like to play for. Furthermore, that list will narrow down throughout the season until they reach the top 3. After that point, you won't know who they select until National Signing Day.

That explains the overall recruiting process

How Does The Transfer Portal Work in College Football 25

EA Sports College Football 25 will also incorporate the new Transfer Portal rules. However, the window of signing players from the transfer window are much shorter, so you'll need to act fast.

Overall, your roster can hold up to 85 total players in College Football 25. However, you are allowed to go over the limit before a new season, though you'll need to convince some players to leave afterwards. Each season, you'll see the Transfer Portal completely change up the league.

For example, you may see a team lose all of their players to the Transfer Portal. However, other teams may stay the same if the program is good enough. The offseason signing process goes on for four weeks, giving you a short amount of time to take a risk and grab one of these players. Like recruits, Transfer Portal Players also make their decision on National Signing Day.

Like recruiting, you'll need to spend your time wisely. It's up to you whether you want to focus on High School recruits, or potential immediate starters via the Transfer Portal. And your school will need to motivate the player and convince them to play for you.

Signing Day

Lastly, we come to Signing day, the final moment of College Football 25's recruiting and Transfer Portal process. Overall, the game features two total signing days:

  • Early Signing Day – Begins at start of Bowl Season
  • National Signing Day – Begins seven weeks after National Championship

Most players will tend to commit before Early Signing Day. However, some players might take longer, ultimately signing on National Signing Day. Lastly, those who don't get signed tend to become walk ons during the offseason.

Overall, that includes all of the major details about Recruiting and the Transfer Portal in College Football 25. We look forward to building our teams with both methods in both offline and online Dynasty. But that's not all, as the Dynasty Deep Dive also went into great detail about many other things. Take a look at the new improvements to coaching and more.

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