In every college football off-season, there are five days worth circling on the calendar.
Three of those - National Signing Day, the start of spring practice and the spring game - are well behind us. The fifth, the start of two-a-days, is still about three weeks away.
The other, however, is today: the release of EA Sports' annual NCAA Football video game.
This year's edition, NCAA Football 10, promises more improvements - I saw a list online of 27 specific advancements this year's game has made over last year's. Some are interesting, but most are ridiculous.
The updates range from confusingly broad ("more stadiums/stadium updates") to just plain confusing ("procedural awareness"), and from ultimately useless ("marching bands in the pregame, including some authentic team-specific ones") to Erin Andrews.
No, seriously, the Internet's beloved Sideline Princess and UF alum will be featured as a sideline reporter and will help track the career of your created player in the "Road to Glory" mode.
Early reports say the Day 1 version of NCAA Football 10 will need updating due to the game shipping with rosters and player models that could best be described as "a disaster." From what I've seen on EA's Teambuilder site, several teams don't have all of their new freshmen and still list some of their departed seniors.
My favorite mistake is that the in-game models of four of the nation's best quarterbacks - Tim Tebow (aka "QB #15" per NCAA rules), Sam Bradford ("QB #14"), Colt McCoy ("QB #12") and Jevan Snead ("QB #4") - all look nearly identical, but none of them look like their real-life counterparts. That's right up there with the fact that UF's Pouncey twins don't even look the same in the game. How do you mess that up? They're identical twins!
An online update, if your console is connected to its corresponding online service, will hopefully fix the mistakes before they even see the light of day.
Despite these mistakes, I would still be in line, spending money I really can't afford to spend, to buy NCAA Football 10. (I say "I would" because it simply can't be the case this year, as my Xbox 360 is currently down with its second red-ring failure in three years.)
For Gators fans, the NCAA Football series provides an opportunity to get an early glimpse, whether realistic or unrealistic, of this year's team. I remember turning on NCAA Football 09 for the first time, playing an exhibition with UF and saying, "This is the greatest video game team of all time."
Despite my extreme hyperbole, there was some truth to that statement. In video game football, speed is king. It's why everyone used to turn the fatigue setting off in Madden, play as the Atlanta Falcons, run pre-dogfighting Michael Vick around the field for 60 minutes like a man possessed and crush their opponents' hopes, dreams and gameplans in the process.
Last season, the Gators had all kinds of speed at their disposal on the field and on your video game console of choice. Whether it was Percy Harvin's ability to score whenever he had the ball or the secondary's ability to read plays and break up passes, UF's team speed was unrivaled by any other team in the nation.
NCAA Football 10's player ratings reflect that and predict more of the same, as no UF running back, wide receiver, safety or cornerback is below 90 in the speed rating.
And in case you were wondering, it looks like Tebow is rated 99 overall, the highest possible in the game. Shocking, I know. I just hope they added a digital version of "The Promise" on the wall outside of The Swamp as one of their promised "stadium updates."
