an interesting point was brought up in a conference discussion a couple days ago, and i was curious what others thought and what experience others have had with this effect. after one conference mate poached another, chapelhillne pointed out in defense of the poacher, the school who was poached was a little extended and also was in michigan - where almost all neighbors were in the big 10. had he been on the border of the big 10, theres a really good chance another big 6 school would have done the same.

i never really considered that the gentleman's rule (where coaches in conference try to avoid poaching each other late, or maybe even after the first few cycles, depending on who you ask) disproportionately favors those who are largely "within the bubble" of their own conference. certain conferences, like the ACC and SEC, will always border a bunch of programs from other conferences. but a school like michigan or school like texas and texas a&m, or maybe some of the northern big east schools, they mostly border schools in their conference. i did coach at a&m for a while, and although i battled a lot with other big 12 schools, it was always battles initiated early on, not late poaching. similarly, i did not poach late. the only school from another conference really was LSU. 

at kentucky and south carolina, my conference mates were the least of my worries. i never poached THEM late and visa versa - but man, the other conference's school poached the **** out of me, and me them.

it seems to me, the schools who predominantly neighbor big 6 schools from their own conference largely benefit from the decreased risk of getting poached. you still have to watch for it and if you extend too far, people will poach you at distance. but it makes it a lot easier to be prepared. on the other hand, your ability to poach other is significantly reduced. however, to me the advantage of being able to poach others is largely derived from the fact that in some areas, if you dont have the large majority of your bankroll left at the end, you are going to get eaten alive - and now you dont want to waste that whole bankroll not poaching someone!

anyway, in conclusion, i never considered the impact of the gentleman's rule on different situations within big 6 conferences, and it seems to benefit some much more than others. that sort of sours me on the gentleman's rule. combined with the gentlemans rule being a rule that most likely (when explicitly stated) would be deemed collusion, but cant because just about everyone follows it, im sort of considering swearing off the gentleman's rule altogether. any opinions on this?

I hadn't really thought of that before, and it is a good point.  I'm still of the opinion that I won't poach a conference mate unless they do it to me first.  I have no problem at all battling, but (like you mention) those are instances where we're both on early.  To be honest, I don't even like poaching outside of my conference either.  It's within the rules and blah blah blah...just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.  

I do think this happens, but you know damn well I don't follow it. HAHA. 

Take this with a grain of salt, as the vast majority of my experience has been in the lower divisions and everything has changed in D1 now.

My D3 conference has one of those gentlemen's rules but we're (mostly) spread over 3 states and I don't remember it ever being an issue.  And at D3, there just isn't any cash to engage in battles of annihilation.  My D2 school was in West Texas, where my biggest competitors were rattlesnakes and Oklahoma schools :)

Now I'm at BYU (Mt. West) and in this last recruiting period just ending (tonight), there were several recruits that had more than one conference school on them in the final day of recruiting.  I can't attest to whether they began early or late, but I don't know if it matters.  The fact is that when and if I decide to pitch a kid who's already considering another school, one of my steps is to look at that school's conference and history to estimate their budget, then the number of players they're after.   I have no problems challenging for a player if I think the other school can't defend him -- when it's happened to me in the past, it was my fault for over-extending.

In one case the other day, an A school in California had 3 or 4 scholarships open but jumped on 19 players immediately out of the starting gate and without a preliminary phone call. As I understand it, this is a common practice for some schools if they have tons of cash and plan to wait and just keep what survives the battles.  I can't believe it would be ungentlemanly for another conference mate to jump on one or two of those players -  at one point, it seemed like every other player I looked at during scouting was already considering that school.  And I'm not even in the PAC10.  So if that A school hit 19 recruits up in anticipation of not keeping all of them, why is it ungentlemanly for others to try to take one of the recruits?

At the same time, I also took a player from a conference mate because that player was only 30 miles from my campus.  I felt it was fair ball to protect my back yard when I have a major distance advantage like that.  He had a full day's worth of cycles to defend the player.  I also apologized to the other coach after signings started and I landed the recruit.  Because I'm a big softie :)

i think that's fair too, ethan. one unrelated comment ill make is that i think people vastly overstate the weakness of a school who goes for that many players. i once had 40 players considering my school after the first cycle and it only made me a few grand weaker. generally speaking, nobody going for that many guys is using visits on any of them. so just be careful in how you perceive that. now, when they have more quality targets than openings, thats a bit different. although again they might not have spent much - sometimes if you can identify their backup options, you can take them away without a fight. its a dangerous game, though.

i do think battles beginning early or late makes all the difference.

Posted by coach_billyg on 9/10/2013 11:43:00 AM (view original):
i think that's fair too, ethan. one unrelated comment ill make is that i think people vastly overstate the weakness of a school who goes for that many players. i once had 40 players considering my school after the first cycle and it only made me a few grand weaker. generally speaking, nobody going for that many guys is using visits on any of them. so just be careful in how you perceive that. now, when they have more quality targets than openings, thats a bit different. although again they might not have spent much - sometimes if you can identify their backup options, you can take them away without a fight. its a dangerous game, though.

i do think battles beginning early or late makes all the difference.

I considered that.  If the player's close enough, he could probably get a "consider" for under $1,000.

So it wasn't as though I thought he was broke - by the last day before signings, I just figured he was going to start deciding not to protect some of those 19 players.  If I could get in strong enough and cheap enough on one of them, would he defend?  If not, I win.  It was a gamble like most things in recruiting.

Wow, 40 players?  that makes my head hurt  and I use a highly organized spreadsheet to keep track of my targets! :)

by the day before signings he still had 19?? crazy. you can get many players, regardless of distance, to consider you for 110 dollars. people call it the "$110 special", start + scholarship

Posted by coach_billyg on 9/10/2013 12:08:00 PM (view original):
by the day before signings he still had 19?? crazy. you can get many players, regardless of distance, to consider you for 110 dollars. people call it the "$110 special", start + scholarship

Yeh, but as the day went on, the number began plummeting.

I actually tried the "$110 special" with one guy, but at my prestige it just didn't work.  Maybe if I did it with 40, things would be different. :)

And being honest here, I was trying it on a guy who was already considering someone else.  That might be part of it.  There's no way he would ever have actually started for me (not with my returning seniors) but that wasn't the point of the exercise.

I really have no conference alliances in D1. If I want a player I will try to sign them if possible. I don't just target coaches to poach though - but I will say if the recruit generation looks a bit weak and I need a guy - it shouldn't matter that were in the same conference. I had a situation in the big east once where a coach got upset I took a player from him and commented on the CC about it citing this very rule and all I could say is what do you want me to do? There is no one else to find and you're way overextended with only 2 schollies and a full letter grade lower prestige. It was just a no brainer. Should I make my school worse by not going after a recruit because a conference mate got to him first?

I see late poaching a lot honestly in big 6 conferences against conference makes. Yeah it leaves a sour taste in your mouth, but it's part of the game. Especially in the midwest area to the east coast - there are lots of big schools in that area and between the big 10 and the big east - and the ACC actually... it's just bound to happen sometimes.

I must not be a gentleman. I took Dan Phillips (from chapelhillne by coincidince) at signings my first yr at Columbia.He is my best player. As I explai ed myself via sitmail after, in battles the factors generally are prestige, distance, total effort and timing along withwbatever built in preferences the kid has, some of which are unknown. He had me on prestige. Distance and total budget were a wash, so when the kidwas still not 100% right before signings I went in hard. No regrets.

Posted by ethan66 on 9/10/2013 12:19:00 PM (view original):

Posted by coach_billyg on 9/10/2013 12:08:00 PM (view original):
by the day before signings he still had 19?? crazy. you can get many players, regardless of distance, to consider you for 110 dollars. people call it the "$110 special", start + scholarship

Yeh, but as the day went on, the number began plummeting.

I actually tried the "$110 special" with one guy, but at my prestige it just didn't work.  Maybe if I did it with 40, things would be different. :)

And being honest here, I was trying it on a guy who was already considering someone else.  That might be part of it.  There's no way he would ever have actually started for me (not with my returning seniors) but that wasn't the point of the exercise.

yeah, thats it. a guy will ONLY accept a start if 1) he is considering you or 2) he is considering nobody. he will only accept minutes if he is considering you, and for some reason, i cant remember why, i feel like minutes may even be rejected if he is considering you and someone else and you are way behind.

Posted by reddyred on 9/10/2013 12:25:00 PM (view original):
I really have no conference alliances in D1. If I want a player I will try to sign them if possible. I don't just target coaches to poach though - but I will say if the recruit generation looks a bit weak and I need a guy - it shouldn't matter that were in the same conference. I had a situation in the big east once where a coach got upset I took a player from him and commented on the CC about it citing this very rule and all I could say is what do you want me to do? There is no one else to find and you're way overextended with only 2 schollies and a full letter grade lower prestige. It was just a no brainer. Should I make my school worse by not going after a recruit because a conference mate got to him first?

I see late poaching a lot honestly in big 6 conferences against conference makes. Yeah it leaves a sour taste in your mouth, but it's part of the game. Especially in the midwest area to the east coast - there are lots of big schools in that area and between the big 10 and the big east - and the ACC actually... it's just bound to happen sometimes.

i agree, and i think if two coaches EXPLICITLY agree not to poach each other, that has to be considered collusion. under no reading of the way things go around here can i see it being allowed for two coaches to explicitly agree to this. its one thing when its an unspoken courtesy. maybe. but to be like hey you jumped my guy but i thought we agreed not to do this! thats just over the line, IMO. really if the gentleman's rule wasn't in effect for 90% of big 6 coaches, i would think it would be labelled collusion to discuss openly in any form, except from the academic perspective such as is happening in this thread. even saying "i follow the gentlemans rule" when entering a conference, which ive seen happen a hundred times, is suspect - now if the other guys say "so do i/we", you have the explicit agreement that people get so upset about. except when the whole conference does it :) not exactly sure how that makes things better ;)

Posted by reddyred on 9/10/2013 12:25:00 PM (view original):
I really have no conference alliances in D1. If I want a player I will try to sign them if possible. I don't just target coaches to poach though - but I will say if the recruit generation looks a bit weak and I need a guy - it shouldn't matter that were in the same conference. I had a situation in the big east once where a coach got upset I took a player from him and commented on the CC about it citing this very rule and all I could say is what do you want me to do? There is no one else to find and you're way overextended with only 2 schollies and a full letter grade lower prestige. It was just a no brainer. Should I make my school worse by not going after a recruit because a conference mate got to him first?

I see late poaching a lot honestly in big 6 conferences against conference makes. Yeah it leaves a sour taste in your mouth, but it's part of the game. Especially in the midwest area to the east coast - there are lots of big schools in that area and between the big 10 and the big east - and the ACC actually... it's just bound to happen sometimes.

I'm not sure I'd call it a "rule" actually.  A gentleman's agreement is just an agreement by mutual consent.  There can be no punishment for breaking the agreement unless they start giving coaches the ability to ban each other (that'd work out so well).  You might have hard feelings and someone might even quit HD, but that's probably going to happen no matter what you do.

I know this discussion has happened before on this forum.  I may even have started a couple of them.  I was very quickly and definitely informed that there is no such thing as "poaching".  I get that now, and I figure what's good for the goose, etc.   But I also learned to protect myself and keep a budget reserve handy for those ambush battles which always seem to happen.  If I held a grudge and didn't re-examine my own methods, what would it gain?  I made changes to adapt to reality and so those experiences actually benefited me in the long run.

Your point about making your own school worse by not pursuing a recruit has some merit.  If there's nobody else out there you can get with equal ratings, which also happens, then I don't see the problem.  Competition is "survival of the strongest", after all.  Ask me how much I suck at "Wargame: Airland Battle" :)  I'm not going to ask for a gentleman's agreement that the other player can't use artillery on my infantry.  That's why he put artillery into his game deck!

I mentioned how I like to compare HD recruiting to gambling.  You can play it safe and keep your cards close to your chest, but chances are you're only going to hit base runs and not home runs (to mix metaphors).  If you want to win,  you have to gamble but you can make "calculated risk" gambles which will involve going head-to-head with another coach.  I'm still learning that part of the game, even after 20-some seasons.  (I'm a slow learner).

Honestly there isnt any real punishment for most of the rules here in HD. Maybe you get a warning and then something goes out on the CC - As far as I'm concerned, every coach has entered into some gentleman's agreement/rule when signing up for a team to play by the rules. But the poaching thing is just something I see as situational. I won't purposely wait and save my money to target a specific coach (it feels like someone did this when it happens to you)- but if I have limited schollies and there's a guy I think I can get and some conference mate is sitting on him - I will try to sign the guy if it's feasable. Any how - after something like that happens to you a few times, you get to know the coaches who pull that kind of stuff and you learn to defend against it or at least work around it.

I've seen coaches banned for buying multiple accounts on the same world and using one to scout for the other.  I've also heard about warnings issued on collusion.

But yeh, the "rules" are pretty loose.  If this was World of Warcraft and there was a way to hack the game, we'd probably see a few hundred bans every year.  But it's not - there isn't any real money involved (other than subscription cost), so it's not a worthy hacking target.

I get so personally immersed in a team I'm coaching that it was even hard for me to leave my D2 team after 20 seasons.  I don't think I could ever handle more than one team on a world at a time.  It'd feel schizophrenic to me.