My name is Luke and I have a day job as a documentary filmmaker but I’ve been moonlighting as a fantasy baseball draft writer for over a decade under the name Mr. Cheatsheet.
I started this series as a copy of Ricky O’Donnell’s fabulous work at Tremendous Upside Potential. He has spent the past couple of months as a digital coach in NCAA Hoops 2k8 and has turned the Western Illinois Leathernecks into a college basketball dynasty. It inspired me to want to do something similar in NCAA Football 14. Here’s the plan:
We’re going to create the most entertaining and successful college football coach of all-time!
NCAA Football 14 was made by EA Sports and is the last college football video game made by anyone. We’re dusting off that game and running through a long-running dynasty that will slowly chronicle the rise of a man named Coach Luke. Our coaching career started at Akron and is now continuing at Wyoming.
The end goal for the series to make Coach Luke into the greatest college football coach of all-time by winning at least seven national titles. Bear Bryant ain’t got nothing on Coach Luke.
Much like Coach Rick before us, I am not actually controlling the team’s actions on the field. It’s a CPU vs CPU simulation that we watch. In other words, I don’t actually “play” the games. I handle the team’s recruiting and pick a playbook and handle the coaching upgrades that the game bestows upon us. From there, I watch, as a fan, to see how the team does.
A quick primer on the series
For the first fourteen seasons of this series, Coach Luke was the beloved head coach of the Akron Zips. LeBron James became a vested Zips fan. He financially backed the building of LeBron James Stadium which helped the Zips eventually move on to the Big Ten Conference. We had many legendary players such as QB Kenneth “K-Dubs” Washington, QB Cortez Haumiller, CB Anthony Morris, DE James Smith, and many more.
You can read through that entire first chapter of this series in order by going through the posts at the bottom of this page. However, you can read a history of the Zips here as told by the readers of the series:
Read through the Akron chapter in order
A primer may not be enough for you. You may want to read the whole damn series. Good on ya! Here are links to all of the posts in order:
Year 1 (2013-14): Year 1 Season
Year 2 (2014-15): Year 2 Season
Year 3 (2015-16): Year 3 Preview, Year 3 Season
Year 4 (2016-17): Year 4 Preview, Year 4 Season
Year 5 (2017-18): Year 5 Preview, Year 5 Season, Year 5 Conclusion
Year 6 (2018-19): Year 6 Preview, Year 6 Season, Year 6 Conclusion
Year 7 (2019-20): Year 7 Preview, Year 7 Season, Year 7 Conclusion
Year 8 (2020-21): Year 8 Preview, Year 8 Season, Year 8 Conclusion
Year 9 (2021-22): Year 9 Preview, Year 9 First Half, Year 9 Second Half
Year 10 (2022-23): Year 10 Preview, Year 10 First Half, Year 10 Second Half
Year 11 (2023-24): Year 11 Preview, Year 11 First Half, Year 11 Second Half
Year 12 (2024-25): Year 12 Preview, Year 12 First Half, Year 12 Second Half
Year 13 (2025-26): Year 13 Preview, Year 13 Regular Season, Year 13 Postseason
Year 14 (2026-27): Year 14 Preview, Year 14 Regular Season, Year 14 Postseason
[Spoiler] Then, read through the Wyoming chapter here
Yes, if you’re just scrolling through, you can see that the Akron chapter ends at one point and a new chapter at a new school begins for Coach Luke soon after. That school was Wyoming and you can read through those chapters here:
Year 15 (2027-28): Year 15 Season
Year 16 (2028-29): Year 16 Preview, Year 16 Season
Year 17 (2029-30): Year 17 Preview, Year 17 Regular Season, Year 17 Postseason
Year 18 (2030-31): Year 18 Preview, Year 18 Season
Year 19 (2031-32): Year 19 Preview, Year 19 Regular Season, Year 19 Postseason
Year 20 (2032-33): Year 20 Preview, Year 20 Season
Year 21 (2033-34): Year 21 Preview, Year 21 Season
Year 22 (2034-35): Year 22 Preview, Year 22 Season
And, for bonus content, the readers here wrote up some wonderful faux oral histories and look-backs at past players. Read it here.
Twitch streams
Reading about the series is cool. Watching the Cowboys/Zips together is also cool. You can do that by joining my Twitch channel and watching our regular streams.
It’s free to join up there so you can comment and joke with us as we travel on this simulated journey.
Discord server
Once you’re totally into this series and want to chat with the other people who are into it too, you must consider joining our awesome Discord server.
Subscribe and tell your friends!
Sign up now so you can get updates on this series sent straight to your email inbox. If you have any fun ideas on how to make this experience better for everyone, you can reach me at lgloeckner@gmail.com.