How Pipelines Work in CFB25

Pipelines in the new game work differently then they did a decade ago. We've got you covered with all you need to know to maximize your recruiting potential.

A new era has arrived with the return of college football video games. The Dark Ages have officially ended, sort of. The game has had a ton of issues and one such issue is a lack of explaining to the player how a core mechanic works. Other than two paragraphs in the Dynasty Deep Dive blog post leading up to launch, the actual game itself makes zero effort to explain how pipelines work so, let's explain how pipelines work.

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What Are Pipelines?

Pipelines are a mechanic in College Football 25's dynasty mode that influences recruiting. Every school has a pipeline, every coach has a pipeline, and every recruit has a pipeline. Each pipeline is a geographic region in the United States (i.e. East Texas, Big Apple, South Florida). There are 50 total pipelines in CFB 25.

How Do Pipelines Work?

As pictured above, when creating a coach you select your alma mater and your pipeline. The alma mater is completely superfluous and does nothing. The pipeline can have a dramatic impact on your gameplay experience and is very important. Let's start by breaking down pipelines into its 3 main categories: School pipelines, Coach pipelines, and Players pipelines.

School Pipelines

Certain schools have an easier time recruiting from certain pipelines. EA has said this is based off actual historical data of previous recruiting classes. For example, historically the Florida Gators usually have first dibs over recruits from Central Florida over schools like Miami, Florida State, or UCF. To represent this in CFB 25, the Florida Gators have an easier time getting recruits from the Central Florida pipeline.

LSU has always reached into East Texas and taken recruits from there, so in CFB 25, LSU has an easier time recruiting players from East Texas. In the game, schools also prefer coaches that have the same or similar pipeline as them. This is not game breaking by any means, but is worth noting and may be worth taking into account. If you're trying to have the absolute best possible recruiting chances, it may be best to avoid picking Oregon as your school be using a Big Apple pipeline.

Coach Pipelines

Coach pipelines function similarly to school pipelines. If you select the Big Apple pipeline, then players from the New York/New Jersey area will be easier to recruit as that coach. Recruits do tend to prioritize proximity to home over the coaches pipeline (meaning a school's pipeline is more valuable than the coaches).

Player Pipelines

In the recruiting menu, you'll be able to see where a recruit is from. This determines their pipeline. For example, the player above is from Crosby, Texas which is in East Texas, so his pipeline is East Texas. Schools like the Texas Longhorns, Texas A&M, and LSU are going to have an easier time recruiting this player than a team like Oregon or USC would.

How Pipelines Influence Gameplay

Beyond just making recruiting easier/harder for certain guys, pipelines do produce different types of players. Just like in real life, the best recruits tend to come from California, Texas, and Florida. If you're trying to cherry pick the best recruits possible, selecting one of those areas as your pipeline will be a good idea.

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Also just like in real life, Texas tends to produce powerful recruits, Florida tends to produce smaller and faster recruits and the Mid West tends to produce the best offensive linemen. If you want to get as many extremely fast players as possible, selecting Central or South Florida as your pipeline would be ideal. If you really want to improve your OL and replace Notre Dame as Offensive Line University, a pipeline like Iowa would be a great choice.

The main gameplay related choices you are making as the player in regards to pipelines are:

1. Do I want to match my pipeline with my selected school?
2. Do I want to target a specific type of player (strong, fast, etc.)?
3. Do I want to go for big ticket prospects from high school hot beds or rummage through the hometown heroes for hidden gems?

The pipelines system is interesting and it's a shame the game makes literally zero efforts to explain it to you because it's far more engaging and compelling when you actually understand how it influences your gameplay experience.