College Football 25: Which Coach Archetype to Choose

When you start a new Dynasty in EA Sports College Football 25, the first thing you’ll do is create a new head coach. This is your avatar for the school and the basis for how well your team plays on the field and how effective your coaching staff is at recruiting new talent. Beyond changing your coach’s look, you’ll have complete control over how they develop their abilities by selecting their coaching archetype. At the start of each Dynasty in College Football 25 you’ll only have access to three archetypes, but you can earn several more by playing and recruiting well. Below, you’ll find a list of our favorite coach archetypes in College Football 25.

Best Starting Coach Archetype in College Football 25

When you create a new coach in College Football 25, you’ll only have access to three archetypes. Depending on which program you select and how you plan to build your team, all three have their uses. It’s also worth noting you can’t currently respec your points, making it important to get it right from the jump. Here’s a breakdown of all three and our recommendations for when you should select each archetype:

• Motivator – With this archetype, you’ll earn more in-season player XP, get a better injury boost reward, and have a huge boost to off-season player XP. If you’re playing in a school with several great players already on campus, this might be the way to go. Otherwise, Motivator is a solid archetype for speccing into later in your coaching career.
• Recruiter – For this, you’ll earn quicker scouting, more recruiting hours, and better boosts for visits. Most players will probably start here because they need the recruiting boost to improve their program quickly.
• Tactician – With Tactician, you can expect gameday ratings boosts. Tactician is something you’ll probably want to spend some points on, but not the archetype you’ll focus on unless you want to heavily build through the transfer portal.

Each of these can then be upgraded to the Elite level after you complete a few objectives. For example, to unlock Elite Recruiter, you need to sign two Top 5 Recruiting Classes and spend 50 points in the Recruiter skill tree. Before moving on, it’s important to remember that your assistant coaches will also unlock skills on their trees, so supplementing your abilities with assistants is a smart way to build out your tree even further. 

How To Unlock More Archetypes

Beyond the first three archetypes, you need to accomplish specific tasks before you can purchase the other archetypes. Most of these are a combination of the three main archetypes, so you’ll need to spread your points across them if you want to unlock specific archetypes. Here is how to unlock everything:

Talent Developer

• Have two players drafted in the first round
• Spend 25 in Motivator
• Spend 25 in Recruiter
• Perk: Boosts XP when a player maxes a skill group

Strategist

• Win four Bowl Games
• Spend 25 in Tactician
• Spend 25 in Recruiter
• Perk: Bonus XP for each prospect visiting for a win

Architect

• Win four Rivalry games
• Spend 25 in Motivator
• Spend 25 in Tactician 
• Perk: Yearly XP for records held by a player you coached

Program Builder

• Win five Playoff games
• Spend 75 in any tree
• Perk: Bonus XP when a school grade or prestige increases

CEO

• Win two National Championships
• Spend 100 in any tree
• Perk: Additional XP for winning bowl games or National Championships

Which Archetype to Choose in College Football 25

So, which coach archetype tree should you focus on? Again, it highly depends on what type of program you’re going to build; however, we would generally lean toward skills that boost recruiting. That means first going down the Recruiter path while spending enough points in Tactician to unlock Strategist. The reason we’d suggest doing that is that you can unlock an ability to learn a recruit’s devtraits. If you do this, you’ll know how well those recruits will develop, allowing you to spot potential gems much easier. We also think the Talent Developer tree gives good returns for how much you have to spend, making it a solid option if you don’t want to focus entirely on recruiting.

Then, we’d recommend using your assistants to fill in the gaps by either finding coaches who can recruit different positions from you or pure Motivators and Tacticians. Either way, we’d generally avoid putting a ton of points into Program Builder and CEO. There are strong abilities in those two trees, but they don’t seem to have as much value as pure recruiting. You might grab abilities like Strong Roots from the Program Builder tree but don’t spend everything in that tree.

College Football 25 is available now on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.