Has anyone seen selbe mention making a change to recruit distribution logic? If selbe is planning on making a change to recruit distribution, then my point is moot. However, if recruit distribution remains the same, I can foresee a potential flaw to the new recruiting system that may have an impact greater than the designed intent.
Here are my thoughts:
Private camps - Each school can hold a private camp, attendance numbers set by the coach. That is fine for schools that are in major population centers but not as helpful to geographically isolated schools. Georgetown's private camp, because of the vast number of DI schools in the NE, will have most participants (selbe says attendace will favor players who are local to camp location) be kids within close distance to the school. However, Hawaii, Alaska, and large parts of the mountain west, regardless of division, don't generate even the minimum 50 recruits locally to make this an even allocation of cost by comparison. If I'm in Hawaii, I'll get info on the 12 island recruits but the other 38 recruits will be from where? Wherever they are from, that info will be of limited value but at the same cost as compared to Georgetown.
Regional camps - Where will these be held? I assume there will be one in each region of the country rather than all camps in a fixed location like Orlando or New York. But, the location of the regional camps will be key. Regardless of where they are, regional camps will still favor schools in major population centers over geographically isolated schools. The regional NE camp, whether in Philly, DC, Boston, Baltimore, etc. (again selbe says attendance will favor players who are local to camp location) will benefit the NE schools much more that the regional West camp will benefit the schools in the mountain west. The sheer volume of recruits in heavily populated areas will reveal to those schools additional nearby recruits that are not possible in sparsely (school) populated areas. In short, a "regional" camp in DC is effectively a second "local" camp for Georgetown.
Finally, if the public camps are in fixed locations per region, campuses that are equidistant between two regional camps (maybe Pittsburgh being roughly in the middle of both the NE and great lakes camp?) will get an added bonus. I could even triangulate a few locations that could benefit from a NE, great lakes and SE camp...maybe somewhere in Tennessee or western Carolina. None of this would be the case for schools west of Kansas City or so.
As long as recruit generation (distribution) is dependent on how many schools, per division, are located in a specific state, the camp system may have unintended consequences, not just for the Montana States or Hawaii's of the universe but for BCS schools like K-State, Oklahoma, Colorado, Arizona, etc. Obviously, I have not seen anything in a testing environment, but I hope this has been brought up and thought through by the developers. IMHO, the camp system essentially needs random recruit distribution to work as a means of leveling the playing field. I don't think keeping the existing distribution pattern and overlaying it with this new signing process if going to be effective.
What do you say?
3/7/2016 5:17 PM (edited)