I won my first D1 championship, woohoo!

In the season in which I won, I had three seniors, two walkons, and three EEs. I went all in on three players and heavily invested in two more, getting four VHs and one H. I won just one of the five coinflips.

So, coming off a national title, I'll only have five scholarship players.

This isn't really a complain post, because I was battling other A-prestige teams, and I have no problem with them winning the coin flips. It's just kinda amusing (in a morbid way) to finally make my all-time deepest run and see it followed by my worst recruiting session since moving to 3.0

tarvolon, I certainly appreciate your stiff upper lip and non-victim mentality... but this is so exactly why I dumped my 2 D1 teams. It's absolutely dumb to have your team decimated like that, especially after winning the title. Your prestige will take a big hit next year and it will probably take 2-3 seasons to recover. That's essentially why I quit D1. D2 and D3 are actually a little different, since there are so many options to recruit and it's all about AP rather than maxed out recruiting effort. I have maintained interest in my D3 teams and at this point plan to play them at least until I run out of credits.

Congrats on your first D1 title, well deserved.

We are still in that early phase where the best teams still have players from classes that were much better than most people will be able to get in 3.0, without getting very lucky. The strategic team-building choice is going to be whether to shoot the moon, and go purely for those 4-5 star superclasses, or go for a more balanced team mixing long term players with a few potential early entry candidates. In 2 or 3 seasons, once we're dealing with all 3.0 classes, there will be fewer collapses. I think you probably understand this, and understood it when you were recruiting the team that would win you your first title. I doubt you have any regrets, and I don't think you'll have any problem rising back to the top in the new structure.

must have backups in place in 3.0

Posted by fd343ny on 1/2/2017 9:35:00 PM (view original):
must have backups in place in 3.0

On one hand, true.

On the other hand, it can be very difficult (depending on how many human coaches are around) to get a recruit worth a crap without maxing out effort, and it's hard to have backup plans when you're maxing out

Posted by brianxavier on 1/2/2017 7:02:00 PM (view original):
tarvolon, I certainly appreciate your stiff upper lip and non-victim mentality... but this is so exactly why I dumped my 2 D1 teams. It's absolutely dumb to have your team decimated like that, especially after winning the title. Your prestige will take a big hit next year and it will probably take 2-3 seasons to recover. That's essentially why I quit D1. D2 and D3 are actually a little different, since there are so many options to recruit and it's all about AP rather than maxed out recruiting effort. I have maintained interest in my D3 teams and at this point plan to play them at least until I run out of credits.

Yeah, I'm trying to think of what I would tweak to make it less like this. I like the fact that the game encourages battles among top teams, and the fact that those battles ran me clean out of cash (in a losing effort) is part of the game. On the other hand, the season before the title, I maxed out effort on a couple guys while fighting a B- prestige low-major, and it wasn't enough money to knock him down to moderate (despite a preference advantage). I think maybe amping up the effect of the prestige difference to allow high-D1 schools to have realistic backup plans without having to max out when fighting lower prestige schools might help? I dunno, that's really the only thought I have.

I do agree about D2 and D3

Posted by tarvolon on 1/2/2017 6:49:00 PM (view original):
I won my first D1 championship, woohoo!

In the season in which I won, I had three seniors, two walkons, and three EEs. I went all in on three players and heavily invested in two more, getting four VHs and one H. I won just one of the five coinflips.

So, coming off a national title, I'll only have five scholarship players.

This isn't really a complain post, because I was battling other A-prestige teams, and I have no problem with them winning the coin flips. It's just kinda amusing (in a morbid way) to finally make my all-time deepest run and see it followed by my worst recruiting session since moving to 3.0

Congrats!

Posted by pkoopman on 1/2/2017 8:44:00 PM (view original):
Congrats on your first D1 title, well deserved.

We are still in that early phase where the best teams still have players from classes that were much better than most people will be able to get in 3.0, without getting very lucky. The strategic team-building choice is going to be whether to shoot the moon, and go purely for those 4-5 star superclasses, or go for a more balanced team mixing long term players with a few potential early entry candidates. In 2 or 3 seasons, once we're dealing with all 3.0 classes, there will be fewer collapses. I think you probably understand this, and understood it when you were recruiting the team that would win you your first title. I doubt you have any regrets, and I don't think you'll have any problem rising back to the top in the new structure.

The one complicating factor to this analysis is that EEs declare in part based on tourney success. So winning a title almost certainly means losing a few, even if you don't have any of those total studs near the top of the board (two of the three I lost were outside the top 40, one was outside the top 80). I still think extra APs for teams with EEs or something like that would be a good idea (although this means a little less now that there's an AP cap)

The increased number of battles is a fantastic change in 3.0. But the ease of finding/competing for fallback options could use tweaking. It seems significantly more difficult to find JUCOs/transfers in 3.0, and the whole "transfers show as F" thing is really misguided. If anything, all transfers should jump right to stage 2 or 3 of scouting. Everyone has tape on those guys.

yep, where you run into near-insurmountable problems is if you have zero or one open scholarship then get hit with an EE bomb after a deep run, losing a couple guys who were "likely staying" or not even on the big board...you really just can't possibly plan for that when you only have 20 or 40 AP to throw around.

jcfreder's transfer idea/point is a good one.

Posted by tarvolon on 1/2/2017 11:14:00 PM (view original):

Posted by fd343ny on 1/2/2017 9:35:00 PM (view original):
must have backups in place in 3.0

On one hand, true.

On the other hand, it can be very difficult (depending on how many human coaches are around) to get a recruit worth a crap without maxing out effort, and it's hard to have backup plans when you're maxing out

When backups are most needed (small classes) are the times they are the hardest to have.

Success shouldn't come easy.

Posted by MikeT23 on 1/3/2017 11:52:00 AM (view original):
Success shouldn't come easy.

Nor should it be guaranteed. However, success should also help continued success be easier.

Isn't that what prestige is all about?

All things being equal, if D1 A+ puts in same effort as D1 B-, D1 A+ has the advantage?

Posted by MikeT23 on 1/3/2017 12:13:00 PM (view original):
Isn't that what prestige is all about?

All things being equal, if D1 A+ puts in same effort as D1 B-, D1 A+ has the advantage?

Without opening the rabbit hole, sure you're somewhat right, but the best teams with the highest prestige also lose the most players early which also means they miss out on any recruiting interaction during the most important time (period 1). Based on what I've seen this has only made the EE scholarship filling much more difficult.