It’s officially that time of year again…the dog days of summer are at an all-time boiling high, with sounds of kids playing in the streets, the water hose being sprayed around, the ice cream truck theme song blaring as it is being driven by that ex-convict psychopath who has a hot girlfriend and mosquitoes are sucking the living dickens out of you.

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Alright so maybe things are simple as they appear in those Blue Bell Ice Cream commercials but you know football season is around the corner when the Big Ten network starts flooding their no-brain station with constant “Greatest NCAA Football games ever” and Rivals.com list their “top 119 schools” countdown.

The main motto here is “Big Play Saturday,” from that point it should be pretty secondary for gamers to get the idea of just how this game was going to play. It was going to be full of big plays and a wide-open attacking offense that we see so often in college football. But have they overdone it? After some careful time with this game, I think they just might have.

First off, there are some new additions that have been tacked on such as, the “breakaway engine.” NCAA ‘09 has improved on the controls of its predecessor, making you feel like you’re actually in control of the ball carrier. This year, running the football is about more than mashing the turbo button until you get to the corner, or jerking the juke stick in traffic.

Here me out here. You will be running lanes to get opened up inside, allowing backs to squirm their way to some nice gains. The cutback lanes are also open and if you’re good enough, you can really rip off some big gains. I’ve only played with one elite back (Georgia’s Knowshon Moreno) and was able to see the difference in his ability to a lesser back from another team, say a RB from Iowa. The running game aspect of this game is greatly improved. However, computer teams still don’t run the ball effectively enough to counter-act you. That means you could resolve the whole thing with some minor slider tweaks but it won’t entirely make things much better.

Next up is the passing game of NCAA Football 2009. I wasn’t aware that there were 119 reincarnates of Tom Brady and Peyton Manning in the college ranks, but that appears to be the case. Every team I seemed face had completed nearly 70% of their passing attempts including a ridiculous 22-24 effort by Stanford’s Tavita Pritchard. Also the scrambling quarterbacks seem extremely fast and have jukes and stiff arms beyond belief such as Washington’s Jake Locker and Florida’s Tim Tebow.

But it’s not all bad, you see NCAA Football 2009 is an extremely fun game to play still, it’s just these nuisances that could have been adjusted just kind of stick out like a bad pimple. The game makers did a really good job of delivering the whole “college atmosphere” to perfection. All the stadiums look authentic, there are cheerleaders both male and female and there are tons of players, camera men and other individuals littered across the screen to make the game’s fields look extremely lively. There is just something beautiful about hearing Notre Dame’s theme song in South Bend in the frosty cold or witnessing the cascading sunset glow red all over Neyland Stadium.

There are no real changes made to both the Dynasty and Campus Legend modes, as they remain the two prominent offline modes in NCAA Football. Recruiting is deeper than ever and is a big reason why I prefer NCAA Dynasties to Madden Franchises. For those who might find the recruiting too tedious, Campus Legend allows you to begin a career as a high school player. After combines and workouts, you may get the chance to play for the school of your dreams or settle for a much lesser prospective campus.

The biggest addition was the online dynasty mode which was just sheer geniuses all wrapped into one. Do 10 of your friends have the game? Then run a conference dynasty and every game on your schedule will be against one of your friends and you could schedule out of conference games so we can settle disputes like which conference is the most dominant. Maybe SEC is the best in reality but it’s fun to have a PAC-10 school or someone from the MAC come in and upset no. 1 Georgia or LSU. It’s a blast to play and the online connectivity was pretty smooth with no real traces of lag and not once has the game froze or I was booted out of a game, unless I was arguing with a homer.

NCAA Football 2009 is fun and is a lot more polished than previous incarnations with new animations, a much smoother feeling running game and the online stuff is a total blast. There are some dumb glitches that detract from the overall polish, my copy was warped as the field would soon just start twinkling and green and pink lines would fill up the whole field. I also wasn’t crazy about the passing game which seem far too easy to score the ‘big money plays’. All in all, if you love collegiate pigskin football, NCAA Football 2009 is a winner once again improving instead of regressing from past years’ examples.