ok, I am not sure about your argument. first you said NCAA could only schedule 2-3 user games, then you say in Madden you can have the entire league scheduled...
overall yes, there can only be 12 max users in an online Dynasty. however you CAN make it so your entire 12 game schdule is user games if you wanted.
I understand that you can have 32 teams in the NFL online mode.
the main issue you are making though is that with a "great" commish and a "great" league being run you can have a blast. except you say that Madden has serious "potential"... ding ding ding! potential is nothing when compared to actual product. that's the problem, EA for 2 years now has said "we are going to rebuild the online franchise into the greatest thing ever, just not this year because we focused on X instead". so what we get is a madden franchise that rivals Madden97's franchise. no logical trades, no salary cap, no deep stat tracking, no coaching changes, very little draft compatability, no business side of the team you own/coach. basically pick a team and play a season and you are done.
if/when Madden decides to port the offline franchise to online then I will agree with you. until then the fact that NCAA has mirrored their offline to online dynasty puts their online portion head and shoulders above Madden. then you add in the web-based connectivity and you make that separation even greater. yes I only have 7 user games this year because we decided not to rechedule in year 1, but I am competing with all 12 members for recruits all year long. not to mention that I am also having to monitor my coaches goals to remain head coach, scheduling recruit visits, monitoring promises I can make to incoming recruits to keep them happy. oh yeah and playing a User this week. this is all without the use of a "great" commish and "great" league, even though our commish is actually ontop of things and keeps everyone informed via our forum, the web based news reports and PMs.
but yeah, a 32 full user league has "potential" to be greatness oneday when Madden gets it's crap together and quits putting off online franchise upgrades.
even EA is saying 2 seperate things, first they say they don't want to focus on online franchises because no one plays them and then they release a press report saying that NCAA's online dynasty is superbly popular with gamers, that there are 50k active leagues with more than 100k users.