This is a question I've never even considered in my many years of coaching - but it has come up. 

If you break a "promised starts" promise, and the player leaves at the end of the year, does your decreased reputation hurt your ability to recruit in any way? I have no intention of changing teams or looking for new jobs with the team that i'm considering doing this with, so that's not a concern of mine.

Normally I would not break a promise - but the one I made was incredibly stupid in retrospect, and I couldn't care less if said player bails at the end of the year. Yes, you have now seen the cold-hearted side of coach bbunch. 

According the knowledge base (article 238) it does affect recruiting......I don't think it is very much though, my reputation is very rarely an A+ and haven't really seen the effects of that.

My take on this is reputation would only affect the value of promises given in recruiting (i.e. reducing the weighting of minutes/starts given out in recruiting).

True your reputation takes a hit, but not your prestige, so I don't think it has any affect at all in recruiting. Would only hurt you in job applications.  So if you;re not planning on moving up divisions I don't think it matters.
I've promised starts that I was planning on breaking in order to get cheap players that will leave after a season and I can get scholarship money back.  Mostly I'll do it on players late and blind.  If I know their potentials and their bad, then it's a waste, but if if I don't know their potentials like for internationals I've offered starts to not spend money and then when they show up and I see their potentials I decide if I want to keep them and start them or not.  It's not a strategy I use going into recruiting but I've done it 3 or 4 times.  You can find bad players with better starting numbers than walkons, so if you don't care about the reputation hit why not.

Posted by dan2044 on 1/31/2015 7:56:00 PM (view original):
True your reputation takes a hit, but not your prestige, so I don't think it has any affect at all in recruiting. Would only hurt you in job applications.  So if you;re not planning on moving up divisions I don't think it matters.
I've promised starts that I was planning on breaking in order to get cheap players that will leave after a season and I can get scholarship money back.  Mostly I'll do it on players late and blind.  If I know their potentials and their bad, then it's a waste, but if if I don't know their potentials like for internationals I've offered starts to not spend money and then when they show up and I see their potentials I decide if I want to keep them and start them or not.  It's not a strategy I use going into recruiting but I've done it 3 or 4 times.  You can find bad players with better starting numbers than walkons, so if you don't care about the reputation hit why not.

So if the player leaves angry, you still get the scholarship money back? If so, I'm all in for this. What you described was exactly the situation I got into with this recruit. 

If he decides to leave, you get the scholarship. if you cut him, you get nothing.