The Controversial Early Release of NCAA Football Almost Broke the Internet in 2005

Operation Sports on the NCAA Football 06 Release: https://www.operationsports.com/os-me...

The NCAA Football Release Thread: https://forums.operationsports.com/fo...

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When College Football 25 drops, the release will be streamlined and mostly digital. Folks who pay extra can enjoy early access. The stores still selling hard copies won’t release them until the release date. It should go mostly as expected.

In other words, it’ll be the exact opposite of what happened with NCAA Football 06 in which an unexpected early release from a now-defunct computer big box chain set the sports gaming world in a tizzy.

It was a wild goose chase for many that would pay enormous dividends for a lucky select few who happened to be in the right time and the right place.

NCAA Football 06 was scheduled to be released on July 12th, 2005. On July 2nd, someone at the Operation Sports forum created that who’s got the game thread. The first post mentions how compusa.com says the game is available. That is shortly followed by someone saying they were able to purchase the game in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Apparently, less than an hour later, the website availability had been switched to coming soon. But the NCAA Football loving community was off the races. Within six hours, the thread is 160 posts deep mostly filled with, did anyone get it in (x) city. There was also some wild speculation that the game would be released because of CompUSA’s mistake along with a few of the classics; I know a guy who knows a store general manager-type posts.

What ensued was ten days of chaos as college football fans tried tracking down an early release copy of NCA Football 06.

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