As is almost always the case, I wound up breaking down and convincing myself I should buy it.
Definitely the most obvious upgrades they've made in several years. The Infinity Engine really improves the gameplay. A few things I noticed right away: Tackles are much more realistic, though there's still work to be done (too many unrealistic big hits delivered by the defense, and several times my runner has been knocked backwards and flat on his back by his own lineman's butt). Defensive backs no longer drop as many sure interceptions, which has been maddening the past couple of years. Running is more realistic; instead of getting hung up on an offensive lineman and running in place, a runningback will realistically bounce off them. Runners seem to take a little too long to get up to speed, but it's still an improvement. Also, defensive backs are much more adept at coverage. With NCAA 13, you could simply run verticals every play and even with difficulty set to Heisman you were guaranteed to connect on a few deep bombs each game. The biggest improvements I noticed are with the quarterback. For years, you had to wait until a receiver made his cut to throw the ball, or else the pass would simply go the direction the receiver was running when the QB released the ball. Now most of the time you can throw the ball early and the QB will anticipate the receiver's cut. Much more realistic. Also, QBs can throw a bit better on the move. In previous years, it was impossible to pass if the QB wasn't set if you were playing on Heisman difficulty.
The recruiting changes in dynasty mode are nice, but at first glance it may make recruiting TOO easy.
They also got rid of the stupid in-game studio updates by Rece Davis, which were extremely irritating in last year's game. Statlines from the current game are constantly flashing on the screen now, which is a huge plus. The addition of the Kinect support for pre-snap audible commands, which made an appearance on last year's Madden, is nice in theory but I haven't had much luck with it. That seems to be the case with anything related to Kinect, though: theoretically great, but poor in practice.
The bad: They took out the schools' traditional field entrance (though I'm not sure that's a huge deal since they couldn't get some of them right anyway...ie, Tennessee running through the T). The same old tired quips and quotes from Herbstreit and Nessler...those things date back to at least 2006 or 2007. No real graphics updates and in some cases there seems to be some regressions. At Red Floyd Stadium, for example, the C-USA logo on the field appears to have been drawn in 1985. There's still a LOT that EA could do from a realism standpoint to recreate the gameday atmosphere in various stadiums, and I'm not sure why they don't do that...all I can figure is that they must be waiting for the next-gen consoles to make significant updates to the franchise.
