How to Increase Team Prestige in College Football 25 Dynasty

When you kickoff College Football 25 Dynasty Mode, the first fateful decision will be which existing school and program you'll be working with. Whether you're starting as a coordinator or a head coach, having more team prestige (the school's star rating) will have a positive ripple effect on basically everything you do week to week. This is especially true for recruiting, and we've worked out all the best ways to improve your team prestige in College Football 25.

How to Raise Your School Star Rating in College Football 25

Also known as team prestige, the general star rating given to every school in College Football 25 uses eleven different categories to calculate how you compare to other programs around the nation. A few of these are unchangeable, but several can be improved if you're ready to put in the work.

The biggest impact of increasing team prestige is on recruiting, as every category that goes into this overall star rating will also affect how interested specific recruits are in your school. It'll open up recruits who previously wouldn't even give your program the time of day, and you'll get more recruiting hours every week to use on recruits in Dynasty Mode.

You can check all the categories by opening up the recruiting board and going over to the My School tab. Playing Style and Proximity to Home will impact recruits on a case by case basis, but they don't actually affect your general team prestige. Campus Lifestyle and Academic Prestige cannot be improved over time, so the only way to do better in those areas is to coach at a school that starts with better rating in these categories. If you wanna build on a lower prestige team, Hawaii starts with high Campus Lifestyle and Rice starts with high Academic Prestige.

Here's how each of the other My School categories can be improved:

• Championship Contender: Win and get into the Top 25, it helps to schedule yourself against ranked teams and schools with higher team prestige, but be careful you don't setup a schedule that'll wreck your record.
• Program Tradition: Win National Championships, Playoff Games, Heisman Trophies, Conference Championships, and Bowl Games.
• Stadium Atmosphere: Win home games to improve home winning percentage, home game attendance, and create a home winning streak.
• Pro Potential: Have more players projected to go in earlier rounds of the NFL Draft.
• Brand Exposure: Play and win more National Championship Games, Playoff Games, Games of the Week, National TV Games, and Streaming Games. Getting into the Top 25 and facing ranked opponents makes a big difference.
• Conference Prestige: Have a higher average team prestige rating across your entire conference. You can affect this by using conference realignment for a new save or at the end of a season, but again be careful you don't set your team up for a string of losses by moving to a conference where you can't win.
• Coach Stability: Improve job security, years at the school, and contract years remaining for your Head Coach. Have coordinators with more years at the school. Winning and staying at a program long-term makes the biggest difference.
• Coach Prestige: Increase the prestige rating for your Head Coach and coordinators by hiring higher rated coaches or succeeding throughout the season to improve the prestige for the current staff.
• Athletic Facilities: Increase your overall team prestige star rating.

Many of these are easier said than done, but it's far from impossible. After starting with Hawaii as a 1.5 Star program, in just two seasons we jumped to a 2.5 Star program by making two PAC-12 Championship appearances, one playoff appearance, defeating a few ranked opponents to get onto the Top 25, and winning one bowl game.

Realigning them into a strong PAC-12 with only four conference games per season and setting up the conference championship to pick the teams with the best conference record gave a big boost from the outset, especially if you split the conference into divisions and put yourself on the weaker side. Try to schedule any potential rivalry games if your team has rivals outside of your conference, and use a mix of lower rated teams you trust can be defeated along with some higher prestige opponents where failing to get the upset could still improve your TV exposure.

When setting up your early season schedule, try to find the highest prestige and highest Top 25 ranked team with the lowest overall ratings (for offense and defense, not star rating) then upset them at home. Booking weaker opponents at home that can more reliably be defeated could at least help you improve Stadium Atmosphere, even if you can't beat higher prestige opponents yet. It's all part of a long-term process, but with a little planning and success you can make almost any school become a 5 Star Team Prestige program in College Football 25.