Here are my thoughts after finally dropping HD after 5 or 6 years. The new engine didn't cause me to quite, so I'll get that out of the way, in fact in my 1 season playing with it (or was it 2?) I had already grown disinterested, to have given it a proper evaluation. On my other account, where I picked up Michigan State for my final season after dropping a long run at Georgetown so I could turn a ready made NT squad to whatever coach wanted to take over there long term, I only bothered to check in 1x once conference play started. Still finished 2nd in my division and made it all the way to the PI finals. The team had some decent pieces, but it wasn't great. Had 1 kid miss the entire 2nd half of the year due to grades, and another miss the postseason due to failing grades. I'm sorry, but w/ no attention paid and 2 gaurds forced to the bench, no team should be making any run in the postseason, PI or NT.
In hindsight, I think potential has been an epic fail for HD. When it was implemented, I thought it had, well potental, no pun intended. I thought it would be good, but looking back, I think it took away from the game. There are/were 3 things that kept me interested in HD right out of the gate. Recruiting was fun and essential. Developing kids was equally important, and setting up a game plan was important, at least that is what I thought at first. It didn't take too long to figure out that coaching alterations made from game to game had far less impact than the actual talent on the roster. Don't get me wrong, there were always coaches who got more out of less, and there were always things that could be done to increase my odds, but if I could nail the first 2, I could coast on gameplanning until the NT hit. So like many coaches, I set a game plan early and outside of a few alterations it remained pretty much the same. No bigge though, I still liked the recruiting and development aspect, and by this time had come to enjoy the conference banter and rivalries.
One of the first things I used to do when getting to work, was to download my roster to excel and figuing out who improved where and how much. I used to enjoy recruiting a SF and developing them into a SG or PF if I thought I could recruit a better SF the next season. Seeing the next year's batch of recruits was as important to my development plan for a new recruit than anything else. I almost always had an idea of who I wanted to recruit a full season a head of time (once that became an option). Having to decide if I should poor 30 minutes into rebounding, or attempting to get some passing and ball handling improvement in my low post players, where always key decisions. Once potential hit, it seemed like all practice plans went out the window. Put minutes into the areas they had high or normal potential, and maintain or ignore those areas where they had low potential. Aside from the day recruits were released, the first day a world rolled over was my favorite day of the year. Finding out which kids made a surprise 8 point jump in PE or 5 in DE was always fun. Once potential hit, a kids future was pretty well set in stone, so I stopped paying attention.
Finally, recruting became a chore. Shifting thru cruddy D3 recruts with no potential and limited FSS funds become mind numbing, and high prestige levels in D1 made recruiting too easy, not that that was always a bad thing, just didn't give me the excitement of so many battles as I worked my way up.
I think in order for this game to get back to where it used to be, potential has to be dropped. Potential has probably made players more balanced across divisions. Sure there were RS seniors on my D3 team back in the day that could be starting on mid-level D1 teams, but who cared. Perhaps it wasn't realistic, but how much on here is really "realistic". However, potential gave me less reason to check in on my team every day, to care if a kid had 12 minutes of practice in shooting, or 15 minutes.