The old guard here in HD has been extremely helpful to new players, sharing many of their best HD strategies.
"Having said that" (Larry David), there is a *small* portion of the old guard that has a sense of entitlement to recruits and championships that can irritate people.
These things are annoying in HD:
Threads that count titles are pretty annoying... "title number 57 arrived last night like a freshly born colt"...
Threads that belittle titles won via superclasses are annoying... "I'm entitled to championships... and championships must be won within the framework of play that i have rigged and gamed in my favor... and your superclass disturbed that... how dare you... i said good day!"...
Threads that rank quality of titles are annoying... "i won a title coming out of X conference in Y world.... your title sucks because it came out of a ghost town conference..."
Posts that belittle other owners accomplishments in trying to move up... "you clearly need more than 7 NT's to coach at Sacred Heart... in fact anything short of a Sweet -16 should disqualify you from the NEC"... this is annoying because many old guard Div-1 owners qualified by jumping on an A+ Div-2 team and running it into the ground 60 seasons ago.
Threads that give recruiting and player advice to Div-3 owners, from people who haven't coach Div-3 in 55 seasons... "simply send 20 scouting trips and the guy will pull down to you"... or... "I never recruit a guard with less than 140 total for Ath and Speed"... uh, ok... you do realize that D-3 teams get squattrini for recruiting money, so 20 scoutings will destroy their bank account... and that no Div-3 recruit has ever totaled 140... or, no high prestige D-3 team would ever allow a newbie to even get a 140 guy on his consider list...?
Posts that freak out at the use of the term "poaching"... i mean, sheesh... "you have a player lined up to sign, and I'm going to come in at 7:59 and dump $90k without warning on the guy... I'm entitled to the guy because I'm a Big Six team... don't like it?, then earn a place in the Big Six... oh yeah, don't call it poaching you ungrateful little bastard..." i mean, we need a term for this... "advanced cherry-picking?"... "the 7:59 treatment?"... "vulturing?"... "the Vulture Technique?"... someone come up with something, please... "the hyena process"...?
Posts that call out specific teams' supposed undeserved wins or supposed undeserved advancement... a thread that comes to mind was when Hartford made a Final Four... the owner i think was a freakin genius, and gameplanned to perfection... people came on here and trashed him about gimmicky gameplanning and so on... that was annoying... the Hartford owner should be in the HD Hall of Fame.
Now, on the topic of this thread...
I've never played against either of the owners that are part of the discussion. If the accuser wasn't such a loose cannon half the time, his claim might have more strength... but anyway, based on the highly competitive atmosphere in HD, which is a good thing, there is no question that the sort of recruiting technique that this thread describes *does* occur... one guy looks to poach... oops, i mean cherry-pick... at 7:59... a conference-mate runs interference on a different recruit... conference loyalty can run deep around here... it means HD money, prestige, more NT bids...
I mean, all of us are pretty aware of what our conference mates are doing during recruiting... many coaches corners have pages of recruiting re-caps... with admissions of backing-off recruits, etc, etc...
Anyway, HD is a very enjoyable game, and it's much like real life... the posturing, the politicking, the intimidation, the poaching i mean cherry-picking at the last minute, the sense of entitlement from coaches and fanbases... i think the arrogance is good for the sport and good for this game, and I'm enjoying the ride.
And i think i still hold the record for most HD wins or most NT appearances *without* an NT win... 0-8...!
7/19/2015 8:17 AM (edited)