This is college football.

>From start to finish, NCAA Football 2003 is exactly what the college football experience is, minus the tailgating and drunk college students. As always, the game runs of the already familiar Madden engine, but manages to make it its own. Although there are always little nit-picky things players will discover about their home team stadiums (such as the missing portals in Tiger Stadium), it is hard to not like what you see. From first game warm-ups to the final seconds of the National Championship, everything about the game is perfect and as true to TV as you can get. There are a few spots where the game slows down (mostly during big pile-ups) and the collision detection still isn't where it needs to be (such as players running through other players or refs), but after seeing the amount of detail the game presents, its very easy to forgive the little things.

I would like to give a big thank you to EA and whoever handles their licensing department. For the first time ever in a college game, NCAA features over 200 fight songs and chants. I was especially ecstatic once I heard not only the LSU fight song, but also the touchdown song as well. For this reason alone, the sound deserves a perfect score - but we have to remain objective here.

What college experience would not be complete without your College Gameday hosts - Brad Nessler, Kirk Herbstreit and Lee Corso doing commentary? For the most part, the commentary is good and usually fits the situation. One of the more noticeable additions is the commentators make note of special things about players - such as them making their fifth or sixth touchdown for a game.

Last year, one of my biggest issues with NCAA was that even though my Running Back was having a great season, the commentators would ramble on and on before every game about how great my Receiver or Tight End was even though they were doing nothing the entire season. I was extremely happy to see that the game would take note of who is doing well.

This is college football.

No, this is not typo - it is just something that is worth repeating again. NCAA 2003 is hands-down the best college sports game to ever come out, regardless of sport. At every turn, the game goes out of it's way to bring the experience to players. The most noticeable, and in my opinion, the coolest thing about the game is the My NCAA feature. When you first turn the game on, you will be prompted for you favorite team. After that, every time you turn the game on, you will be greeted by your school's fight song. As always, it is the small things that make me happy. My NCAA is not just a cheap parlor trick. Not only does it customize the game to your team, it also allows you to keep track of your profile's overall game record as well as keep track of the trophies you have won.

You heard me right. In addition to the National Championship and Heisman Trophy, NCAA 2003 features just about every rivalry trophy available to showoff in your trophy case, including:

• LSU-Arkansas's Battle for the Golden Boot
• Boston College-Notre Dame's Battle for the Ireland Trophy
• Illinois-Northwestern's Battle for the Sweet Sioux Tomahawk
• Indiana-Purdue's Battle for the Old Oaken Bucket
• Indiana-Michigan State's Battle for the Old Brass Spittoon
• Minnesota-Michigan's Battle for the Little Brown Jug

The inclusion of these trophies and rivalries adds a lot of the game and goes toward making college football what it is.

As much as I could talk about the game's features, eventually you will have to actually play a game of football. For the most part, NCAA 2003 is a solid engine and gives a damn good game of football. The running game is much improved over last year, as is the passing game. I ran into a few problems with players making one handed, jumping catches in double coverage or guys fumbling the ball more than they should, but more on that later.

One of the most aggravating things - and a feature that is exclusive to the GameCube version - is the unbelievably large memory card requirement and long load times. Because of NCAA regulations, player names cannot be used in games, fortunately NCAA 2003 does allow players to input player names. This is a feature I use every year and something that makes the game that much better. The problem is that the game's memory requirements for both a season and settings is so big (224 blocks), that even with the Memory Card 251, the game requires 2 cards in order to be able to use the name feature. While this will not matter for some people, it is a something that will ruin the game experience for some gamers. The bigger problem is that it is a something that you cannot blame any one person for. Nintendo would say it's EA's fault for making the save files too big, but on the other hand EA would say it's Nintendo's fault for making the memory cards so small. Regardless of whose fault it is, I hope that its something that will be fixed before next season.

If there is one thing that EA Sports has always had a problem with it is balancing the difficulty in their games. As I see it, this is one of the biggest problems in NCAA 2003 - the degrees between difficulty levels are unevenly spaced. Playing the rookie level is a breeze, but jump the difficulty up a notch and the game feels like you have gone up two. For those who are either just getting into football games, or those who just need an extra bit of help, NCAA 2003 offers an Easy Play option that turns on various assists as well as fully customizable AI and penalty settings.

Although I will probably face staunch argument from various people for saying this, there is no way anyone can convince me that the computer does not cheat. No matter how good my defense was, the computer seemed to always be able to convert on a third and long. This becomes even more frustrating when its during pivotal point in a game and the computer is able to get the conversion off of a cheap one-handed catch in triple coverage. Obviously, this does not happen all the time (otherwise I would not play the game), but it happens a little more frequently than it does in a real game, designating it a cheap move rather than a gamebreaker moment. Fumbles also occur more often and seem to happen whenever the computer needs the turnover the most. Again, even when using some of the best hands in college football, fumbles happen at the worst times - and always during a big push to win a game. These instances should in no way deter you from playing NCAA 2003 since it is still possible to have an undefeated season. Nevertheless, it is also good to be aware that this does happen in the game and it does add a bit of frustration to the overall experience.

One of the best things about EA football games is that you can have as much or as little control in the game as you want. For players who would rather just coach, they can just pick a play, snap the ball and let the computer handle everything. Alternatively, you could also micromanage the hell out of your team and control every position; it is all up to you and your play style. Since this was my first chance to play a football game on the GameCube, it was hesitant to see how the controller would work with the game. Since I have become so used to playing football games with the PS2 controller, I was not sure that if I would get the same response or comfortable feeling from the GC controller. Thankfully, the controls are easy to settle into, but some of the 'unique' features of the controller do not exactly lend themselves to the game. The most notable is the lack of buttons on the controller - there are more actions than buttons, resulting in some things (such as calling a time out) requiring two buttons instead of one. This is not a bad thing and is doable, but when it comes to tight situations, it is easy to forget.

>From top to bottom, NCAA Football 2003 is about as complete as the college football experience can get in a game form. Although it is usually seen as 'Madden's little brother', it features enough gameplay elements and features to give its older sibling a run for its money.