I have been in the habit of dedicating 25 min to offense and defense, and finding that my guys generally hit A+ toward the end of the 4th year, depending on the other variables.

The thing is, I would like my seniors to play their entire season at A+, or at least hit A+ early in the 4th year.   Has anyone experimented with this?    How many minutes in practice would it take for a player to hit A+ in three years?   assuming he does not come into the system knowing my off/def, has at least a 3.0 HS GPA . .

Anything over 25 is diminishing returns and you also start to sacrifice development in player ratings as in your players wouldn't grow at all one bit with the amount needed to get to A+ by the 3rd year.

A+ IQ isn't going to even help that much over A for the amount of negatives that come with it.  The positive isn't even going to help.  The guy with an A IQ is going to have developed more and will be better than the A+ guy with no development.

Read this

It's going to be around 40 minutes at least to get A+ by Jr year, and I don't know how much diminishing returns affect so it could even be 50 minutes.  And thats for high IQ/WE players. leaving you with 50 minutes for player ratings.

I'm really into 20 offense/20 defense. I juggle with everything, decided on this. Sometimes, when the team is Young, I put more into defense, going 25.

Thanks for the responses guys.   I went and re-read Iquana's chart, it's awesome.    I say re-read because it is something I saw long ago and didn't really absorb or even understand.   Now I think i have it.    Onlyis tell me if this seems correct -

The diminishing returns we've heard about don't mean the minutes invested have less value; rather, each grade just takes more minutes to reach.   But according to the chart we get just an much value out of the 25th minute as the 20th.

Interpolating between his 'good' and 'bad' students, we could conclude an 'average' student of 60 WE and 2.85 GPA, who would need to accumulate 2462 minutes of practice to hit an 'A' and 3000 minutes to hit an A+.  (starting from F.)

HIs article seems to suggest that practice continues through the CT but not through the NT?    In any case ~35 per year, so a player's 100th practice will occur at the end of his third year.

Therefore -
25 minutes practice would get them to A at the end of the third year, A+ about half way through the fourth year (practice #120)
30 minutes practice would get them to A+ at the end of their third year

sound right?

practice ends during the CT.  All teams get the same amount of practices (which is 33 or 34 depending on whether there is a bye before conf play begins)
There also was a change after the chart was done which allows a player to generally move from F to D- with 15-20 minutes rather than the 50-75 listed.
That original IQ chart was done using an average 20 minutes per practice

There are diminishing returns with higher practice minutes.  ie. ten practices at 30 minutes won't have the same impact as twenty practices of 15 even though they both use 300 minutes of time.  However the diminishing returns don't really become apparent until you are in the 25+ minute range.


these are ballpark numbers, but hopefully they explain the concept of diminishing returns:

10 minutes x 10 practices
    first 100 minutes = 100% efficiency = 100 minutes growth
OVERALL  100 growth on 100 minutes practiced = 100%

15 minutes x 10 practices
    first 100 minutes = 100% efficiency = 100 minutes growth
    next 50 minutes (minutes 11-15) @ 90% efficiency =     45 minutes growth
OVERALL  145 growth on 150 minutes practiced = 96.7%

20 minutes x 10 practices
    first 100 minutes = 100% efficiency = 100 minutes growth
    next 50 minutes (minutes 11-15) @ 90% efficiency =     45 minutes growth
    next 50 minutes (minutes 16-20) @ 80% efficiency =     40 minutes growth
OVERALL  185 growth on 200 minutes practiced  = 92.5%

25 minutes x 10 practices
    first 100 minutes = 100% efficiency = 100 minutes growth
    next 50 minutes (minutes 11-15) @ 90% efficiency =     45 minutes growth
    next 50 minutes (minutes 16-20) @ 80% efficiency =     40 minutes growth
    next 50 minutes (minutes 21-25) @ 70% efficiency =     35 minutes growth
OVERALL  220 growth on 250 minutes practiced = 88.0%

30 minutes x 10 practices
    first 100 minutes = 100% efficiency = 100 minutes growth
    next 50 minutes (minutes 11-15) @ 90% efficiency =     45 minutes growth
    next 50 minutes (minutes 16-20) @ 80% efficiency =     40 minutes growth
    next 50 minutes (minutes 21-25) @ 70% efficiency =     35 minutes growth
    next 50 minutes (minutes 26-30) @ 50% efficiency =     25 minutes growth
OVERALL  245 growth on 300 minutes practiced = 81.7%

"15 minutes x 10 practices
first 100 minutes = 100% efficiency = 100 minutes growth
next 50 minutes (minutes 11-15) @ 90% efficiency = 45 minutes growth
OVERALL 145 growth on 150 minutes practiced = 96.7%"

oldwarrior, you're suggesting that diminishing returns begin as low as 15 minutes per practice, where everything I have read so far puts it at 20 or above.  Can anyone say which is right, or is this one of those things only seble knows?  Thanks.

anyone running a combo D can test as I did. 20 min on Offense, 15 on one Def and 10 on the second Def.
What I found that the same player going from F to C- took less total practice minutes at 10 minutes, than 15, than 20.

It's subtle, but I believe it exists. Maybe only one practice per season between 10 and 15 minutes and another between 15 and 20.

The previous Admin says you notice diminishing returns around 25 minutes, and it became a forum fact that there was no loss under 25. But that's not what was said.

Aha!  Thanks for explaining that.  Those pesky ol' forum facts pop up everywhere, don't they?

Posted by the0nlyis on 11/26/2015 4:33:00 PM (view original):
Anything over 25 is diminishing returns and you also start to sacrifice development in player ratings as in your players wouldn't grow at all one bit with the amount needed to get to A+ by the 3rd year.

A+ IQ isn't going to even help that much over A for the amount of negatives that come with it.  The positive isn't even going to help.  The guy with an A IQ is going to have developed more and will be better than the A+ guy with no development.

Read this

It's going to be around 40 minutes at least to get A+ by Jr year, and I don't know how much diminishing returns affect so it could even be 50 minutes.  And thats for high IQ/WE players. leaving you with 50 minutes for player ratings.

I understand what you're saying, that the difference between A and A+ might not be that much (actually I'm not sure of ghe boost), but for low end Div-1 schools with weaker prestige, it's important to look under rocks and in dusty attics for every bit of intangibles and advantages. So i wouldn't outright dismiss the uptick.

A factor that needs to be considered in this analysis is how much potential your players have remaining.  If your practice chart is awash in blue that is one thing.  If you have several guys red all the way across it may make sense to spend more time on IQ

Posted by npb7768 on 11/28/2015 10:56:00 AM (view original):

Posted by the0nlyis on 11/26/2015 4:33:00 PM (view original):
Anything over 25 is diminishing returns and you also start to sacrifice development in player ratings as in your players wouldn't grow at all one bit with the amount needed to get to A+ by the 3rd year.

A+ IQ isn't going to even help that much over A for the amount of negatives that come with it.  The positive isn't even going to help.  The guy with an A IQ is going to have developed more and will be better than the A+ guy with no development.

Read this

It's going to be around 40 minutes at least to get A+ by Jr year, and I don't know how much diminishing returns affect so it could even be 50 minutes.  And thats for high IQ/WE players. leaving you with 50 minutes for player ratings.

I understand what you're saying, that the difference between A and A+ might not be that much (actually I'm not sure of ghe boost), but for low end Div-1 schools with weaker prestige, it's important to look under rocks and in dusty attics for every bit of intangibles and advantages. So i wouldn't outright dismiss the uptick.

Yes but if to get to that A+ IQ sooner most players are going to be sacrificing their development in heir actually ratings.

I'm all for high IQ's most of my players graduate with A+ IQ's, it just doesn't seem plausible to try and speed up the process to A+ for the sacrifices you make in player development.

Posted by oldwarrior on 11/27/2015 6:46:00 PM (view original):
anyone running a combo D can test as I did. 20 min on Offense, 15 on one Def and 10 on the second Def.
What I found that the same player going from F to C- took less total practice minutes at 10 minutes, than 15, than 20.

It's subtle, but I believe it exists. Maybe only one practice per season between 10 and 15 minutes and another between 15 and 20.

The previous Admin says you notice diminishing returns around 25 minutes, and it became a forum fact that there was no loss under 25. But that's not what was said.

as OW says, diminishing returns kick in very early. it might be even lower than 10. no way you get as much out of 20m for 10 practices as 10m for 20. i do think the 1 practice per season figure is a bit low, thats only 2 from 10m to 20m, i think its higher than that.

i've ran 30m for a number of seasons. does it help over 25? yeah, its not a ton though, its going to get your guys to a+ a handful of games earlier, but thats probably all you will get. going from 15-20 is probably double the boon of 25 to 30. i think 30 made sense at some points in this game - the large majority of times i ran it were during early potential era when players were often maxing by end of fr year, or at least end of so year. in today's game, my opinion is there is no place for 30m in a single off/def, not in any corner of any division. it just is not worth the loss of individual practice.

the thing to remember about individual practice is, at the low range of minutes, the marginal value of minutes is actually very high - you spend a bunch of minute just to break even, and with 30m in two sets, you have very few minutes left to use to actually grow, after all the break even minutes are spent. once you have a lot of practice minutes, there is less valuable stuff to put them in, but from 30->25 those are high value minutes, on the practice side, and low value on the IQ side. its extremely difficult (at best) to find a situation where you can justify that trade.