Once you said it was only his second season I wondered if it was a current D3 coach who created an alias to knock you down.

Have you knocked the same team out of the NT consecutive seasons recently?  Or a few seasons back?  That's where I'd be looking, cause that's just strange.

Posted by ldhmnh on 10/9/2012 10:29:00 AM (view original):
Sounds like some other "issues" going on there.  Did the dude used to be in your conference?  Did you used to beat him down by 45 points a game?  Why else would a D2 school want to go get all of another D3 school's players? 

Considering the D3 has been winning national titles and the D2 was just 0-27, the D3's recruits are probably a big improvement.  I frequently see D2's recruiting, imo, worse players than the ones I'm signing in D3.

I actually think that is a clever strategy.  


Wait to the last minute and take a good team from a Division lower's local recruits.

If you had 5 guys considering you for 4 spots, it's a reasonable assumption you didn't have that much invested in them.   If they're local, he can throw 4 CV's and the DIII team is sunk

Posted by chapelhillne on 10/8/2012 10:25:00 PM (view original):
I am not very happy right now. I have Palm Beach Atlantic and had 5 recruits picked out for 4 spots, going into the 8 PM signing cycle. All had been considering me and never considering any other player, except one had considered a SIM. I come back to see the players I signed, and come to discover that Midget218 at Florida Institute of Technology has jumped on three of the four players. Highly unethical. I can see poaching one, maybe two if he wanted to be a jerk, but 3!!!

Why did you have 5 recruits considering you for 4 open spots?  Were you planning on cutting someone and hadn't done it yet?  I only mention it because that could be a part of why he came after your players.  I think a lot of people, myself included, would take "n+1 considering for n spots" as a sign of weakness.  I'm sure you're aware of that, but I dunno, maybe it played a role.

Dang I've been ninja'd twice now in this thread.

You can't see me coming, it's like poof, I am there.   

Posted by spasticity on 10/9/2012 11:17:00 AM (view original):

Posted by chapelhillne on 10/8/2012 10:25:00 PM (view original):
I am not very happy right now. I have Palm Beach Atlantic and had 5 recruits picked out for 4 spots, going into the 8 PM signing cycle. All had been considering me and never considering any other player, except one had considered a SIM. I come back to see the players I signed, and come to discover that Midget218 at Florida Institute of Technology has jumped on three of the four players. Highly unethical. I can see poaching one, maybe two if he wanted to be a jerk, but 3!!!

Why did you have 5 recruits considering you for 4 open spots?  Were you planning on cutting someone and hadn't done it yet?  I only mention it because that could be a part of why he came after your players.  I think a lot of people, myself included, would take "n+1 considering for n spots" as a sign of weakness.  I'm sure you're aware of that, but I dunno, maybe it played a role.

I had 4 picked out and a ton of cash left, and decided I'd see if I could improve upon one of the players, which I did. I was going to rescind the scholarship of the 5th one, which I did after the 5 PM cycle before signing since I still had 5 guys considering only me. After he poached me, I went ahead and re-offered the scholarship and got the player for $100 - he was a player I was reasonably happy to get. Usually, in my experience at D3, there's not a lot of poaching that goes on from D2 to D3, because usually a good D2 coach can get lower level D1 players to consider them. I figured at the most, I might have one of my players challenged. I've never had more than one player poached in a recruiting period, and never more than one guy from the same team. I just felt like this was a low blow. I would never do that to another coach, even if it could benefit my team, because there are so many choices out there. For example, the PF I ended up signing after getting poached was just about as good as the one he competed against me for. In fact, right now it is a better player by a decent amount, although the one he took has more upside. If I had been in his position, I would have gone after that player instead of competing for multiple players from the same guy.

Posted by ryrun on 10/9/2012 10:53:00 AM (view original):
Once you said it was only his second season I wondered if it was a current D3 coach who created an alias to knock you down.

Have you knocked the same team out of the NT consecutive seasons recently?  Or a few seasons back?  That's where I'd be looking, cause that's just strange.

I do tend to face a lot of the same people in the NT, but I just can't see any of them doing that, although, who knows.

If you have a lot of recruiting cash to spend at DII, it might very well be a smart strategy to find a local coach who is successful at DIII (assuming such can be found in your world) and wait to see who they recruit and then pounce on their guys. If you are as local as they are and have the cash, you can destroy them and figure you've got good recruits (assuming you trust the recruiting ability of the guy you just took the players from).

Then again, the guy might have a bad season of recruiting or might put some effort into guys he doesn't care about just to mess with you, or he might switch jobs and then you're done.

Plus you could lose a battle or two along the way, and you will certainly have to spend more than if you found your own recruits who didn't need to be fought for. It's not without its gambles.

And of course the coach in question will hate you, and they may complain on the forums and others may hate you too.

Risky strategy indeed...

chapel I agree with you, I would definitely never move in on 3 at once like that at D2/D3 unless I was trying to **** someone off for some reason.  To me it sounds like this other coach might just be real inexperienced and doesn't understand that what he did was douchebaggery.

Posted by spasticity on 10/9/2012 11:41:00 AM (view original):
chapel I agree with you, I would definitely never move in on 3 at once like that at D2/D3 unless I was trying to **** someone off for some reason.  To me it sounds like this other coach might just be real inexperienced and doesn't understand that what he did was douchebaggery.

Yeah - I am hoping that is the case. We'll see what happens next year. If it happens again, then it's on. If I was him, I know I could have gotten better players than he ended up getting. They would have been very good D3 players, but for D2, they are average, or somewhat above average, but not the caliber I could have gotten if I was in his position. Especially since there are not all that many coaches in Florida in D2.

You called it unethical in your opening post.  I think that's highly questionable.  If it only happens one time, I wouldn't think twice about it.  Yeah, it sucks.  But if he legitimately looked at the recruiting pool and decided those were the best guys for his program, it makes sense for him to take them if he thinks he can.  If you look at it from his perspective, would you really want to take what you perceived as lesser recruits just because the guys you want all happen to be considering the same school a division below yours?  I wouldn't.  In fact, I have taken 3 recruits from the same school (both D3, but I took advantage of having a few more openings to outspend and take the guys I wanted) in 1 recruiting period in the past.  I would only worry about it if it becomes a problem.  Where I would perceive an issue is if this guy isn't actually FSSing or doing his own scouting, he's taking advantage of you to do his scouting for him and saving the FSS money to win battles for players you're essentially telling him are good.  I don't even think that's against the rules, per se, but I would consider it unethical.  I'm sure seble would have something to say about D2 teams using high-level D3 programs as a farm system/scouting network.  But again, if he scouted the guys and just thought they were the best players he could get, I see nothing wrong with it at all.  I'm really surprised nobody else has said that yet.  We all know recruiting isn't over 'till it's over.

dahs I agree that unethical is a stretch, considering we don't know his thinking/motivation.  But there's no doubt it's a dick move to try to take 3 guys from the same school right at signings, and there's 0 chance that this was his "best" move.  Like chapel said, even bad D2 teams can do better than stealing all their recruits from a D3 team.  Where I would get upset about it is knowing that it wasn't his best move, and that his ignorance to that fact severely inconvenienced me.  And that's giving him the benefit of the doubt that it wasn't anything malicious.

"Where I would perceive an issue is if this guy isn't actually FSSing or doing his own scouting, he's taking advantage of you to do his scouting for him and saving the FSS money to win battles for players you're essentially telling him are good. I don't even think that's against the rules, per se, but I would consider it unethical. I'm sure seble would have something to say about D2 teams using high-level D3 programs as a farm system/scouting network.Where I would perceive an issue is if this guy isn't actually FSSing or doing his own scouting, he's taking advantage of you to do his scouting for him and saving the FSS money to win battles for players you're essentially telling him are good.  I don't even think that's against the rules, per se, but I would consider it unethical.  I'm sure seble would have something to say about D2 teams using high-level D3 programs as a farm system/scouting network."

I don't think that is unethical at all. 

that is a retarded strategy and i dont know what you could possibly be smoking, dahs...

spasticity - why do you consider a coach with n+1 recruits to be weak? what about n+3, n+5, n+10? considering how cheap it is to get considered, i dont see the logic.