Last year I gave up on EA’s NCAA Football series. I just did not see enough improvement to make it worth my while; the series had grown stale. Besides, these days I just do not have time to tackle two football titles. I have thrown my time towards Madden, but there was a time when I eagerly anticipated the next annual NCAA Football installment.

So far this year I am still on the sidelines. While I have pre-ordered Madden 11 (a $20 videogame promotional credit from Amazon certainly helped persuade me), I have decided to wait on some of the reviews to come in before making a decision on NCAA Football 11.

I am going to be out of country this week, so that actually buys me some time to read some of the initial thoughts, especially from some of the more informed blog sites. Speaking of reviews (and review scores), this article on the influence of review scores is worth a read.

So far the early scores on metacritic are favorable. I wonder how long that will last and if NCAA Football 11 will hold up. If anything, if NCAA Football 11 provides a “fresh” experience, I expect it will garner higher review scores than Madden 11.

Of course a little competition for EA would be helpful, but thanks to exclusive licensing deals with the NCAA and NFL, that is not going to happen.