Happy New Year and welcome to 2025, everybody!
When I learned that EA Sports’ NCAA Football series was making its return after an 11-year absence, I was overjoyed! I haven’t owned a title in the series since NCAA Football ’98, and don’t even own a system that would play the current title. But, before licensing issues led to the demise of the original series over a decade ago, I was in love with its TeamBuilder website.
Naturally, the new one has a TeamBuilder website too. Lots of new features. It still feels a bit like a beta test from time to time, but pretty much every glitch has a workaround if you are determined and willing to learn.
The new TeamBuilder features something called “custom layers” – in essence, you can upload almost anything you want as a .PNG file (within size and decency limits, of course), and put it on the helmet, jersey, or pants. Each team you create can have up to 10 separate custom-layer elements, and they can be used with any of four finishes: glossy, matte, satin, or chrome.
Helmets in the old TeamBuilder were automatically glossy, but now they can have glossy (called “shiny” for helmets for some reason), matte, or chrome finish. Metal-flake paint is unfortunately not available, and is one thing I would like to see them add.
The addition of custom layers opens up new worlds of possibility. One thing I figured out very quickly was that you could create jerseys and pants with different finishes through this – just upload a solid square of color as a custom layer and spread it across the uniform. The matte finish, ironically enough, has kind of a metallic look when used on jerseys and pants; on pants in particular, it comes fairly close to looking like the old dazzle-finish fabric would, especially on colors such as silver and gold.
I will try not to bore you with too many more details, but there was one tool that proved invaluable in my quest: Canva. Somewhat similar to PhotoShop, Canva is an image-creation and image-editing suite. I learned that they offered a 30-day trial of their paid “Pro” version, and decided to try to create 32 teams (the max allowed for one person by TeamBuilder) in that time.
TeamBuilder allots five uniform slots per team, and I decided I had to use all five every time. Sometimes the differences are subtle and sometimes they’re not. I also chose a model for each team’s stadium, and edited the field, end zones, sidelines, and benches to my liking.
Most of the logos were found via Canvas’ search feature. They already existed but were free to use. I created at least one alternate logo using its generative AI, but mostly used the search bar and did a lot of editing colors, as well as creating various striping patterns and team wordmarks.
One note before I begin showing you my creations: some of them – many of them – are deliberately goofy, or exaggerated, or even satirical. I provide my own take on some of the silly and dumb trends in modern football uniforms. But I think some of them look really, really good.
I will be going alphabetically by team (not school) name. To the best of my knowledge none of these schools are real, but some should be. I have one request: when this series is complete, could you tell me your favorite and least-favorite of my creations? That simple feedback could be quite valuable.
To kick things off (pun intended), here is the first team.
Reno College Aces (Reno, Nevada)
The color scheme and design of the default uniforms are both inspired by the 1997-2002 “Dirty Bird” Atlanta Falcons. I also used gold as a quaternary color, and it becomes prominent in some of the alts.
Logos and School Information
Playing Field
Helmets
Uniforms
Home:
Away
Golden Aces
Red Alternate
Silver Alternate
Angeleno State Angels (Los Angeles, California)
How about a team called the Angels, with Easter Pink as their main color, and gold as the only non-pastel color in their scheme? Also, all their helmets appear to be topped with halos.
Logos and School Information
Kind of hard to create contrast with these colors, isn’t it?
Playing Field
Helmets
Oh, halo there!
Uniforms
Home
Pastel ahoy!
Away
Baby Blue
Golden Angels
This Will Be Weird (Gradient)
…this will not be the last gradient uniform you will see in this series.
Billings State Bulls (Billings, Montana)
I made this one about as Western as I could: from the logo, to the wordmark, to the copper-and-brown color scheme. The throwbacks drop the brown and replace the white with cream (background color above).
The horn was the most difficult part of this. I believe it’s from the main logo but I had to make a lot of revisions to make it look good on a helmet.
Logos and School Information
Playing Field
Helmets
(Yes, the last two are identical.)
Uniforms
Home Uniform
Away Uniform
Brown Bulls
Long Are the Horns
(Don’t tell the University of Texas.)
Longer Still
No nameplate on this one, by design. It just looks so clean.
SoCal College Clowns (Santa Monica, California)
This is the first truly weird team name. It will not be the last.
Also, it’s pure coincidence that my first four teams, alphabetically, are all located out West. This series has teams from Florida to Hawaii and a bunch of places in between.
Logos and School Information
What, you thought they wouldn’t be creepy? Are clowns ever not creepy?
Playing Field
Yes, I had to call their stadium The Big Top. Why do you ask?
Helmets
Uniforms
Home Uniform
Away Uniform
Tears of a Clown
Redrum
Little Boy Blue
Columbus Tech Constructors (Columbus, Ohio)
I’m a proud alumnus of The Ohio State University, where construction is always in season. More than that, though, I’m an Ohioan, and I’ve been to Columbus more times than I can count – and the highways in and around the cities are also always under renovation. Thus, the Constructors, with colors of pavement grey, traffic cone orange, and safety vest yellow. The wordmark is inspired by that used by the “Big Blue Wrecking Crew” New York Giants of the 1980s and 1990s.
Logos and School Information
Playing Field
Nohting quite like a playing field that resembles a construction site.
Helmets
(These first three are all just the home helmet from different angles.)
(The one above is part of a uniform that is designed to look like a slab of pavement. I get weird ideas.)
Uniforms
Home Uniform
Away Uniform
I used a nice very light peach color instead of white for the road uniforms, for no particular reason. It doesn’t really make an appearance in the other uniforms.
Hard Hats and Safety Vests
Hyper-reflective chrome finish on those numbers, for extra safety!
One For the Road
…in which the team tries to look as close as possible to…well, a road. Amazingly, the striping pattern used on the helmet and pants was a TeamBuilder preset.
It is exceedingly rare for me to put a team in the same color head to toe, but I kind of had to for it to work.
Yellow Fever
Part of me wonders if I shouldn’t have used custom layers to create a chrome-finish yellow jersey and pants here. Y’know…for safety.
