re: How many of you was EA's NCAA Football series play a pretty big role in childhood?

Not really childhood, but we had a PS2 and a 13" color TV stashed outboard of the sonar equipment in our submarine on a Western Pacific Deployment in 2002, during which EA's NCAA Football 2002 was our game of choice.

We had multi-player Dynasties going, and you had to play the games in order. We would wake each other up/relieve each other on watch, etc... getting our games in.