re: This is when I wish they still made the NCAAF games

That's basically what the old games were. You'd have NCAA 2002, and you wouldn't have Eli, you'd have "QB #10," who (in 2002 terms at least) looked like Eli and had attributes that you would expect Eli to have. The issue is that the NCAA wasn't able to prove that these players weren't inherently based on existing people. The only way to have it work currently (not counting the O'Bannon fallout) would be to have all licensed teams on there, but not have any sort of specific players whatsoever. Basically, you'd have a bunch of grey blobs in jerseys that have 50 for every attribute, and the developer wouldn't be able to make it where you can actually recognize any of the players, but users could fix the attributes and share that roster. You just can't have player likeness in a game though.