#2 actually makes FSS sharing very obvious. If a team signs a unscouted player right at signing, that is pretty much guaranteed to be FSS sharing. No coach would take the risk of a player being all low category across the board that early. Generally, this situation should only occur near the end of recruiting, in the last day or even the last few cycles where a coach is desperate and just takes whatever he can get. 

The more I look at this situation, the more it stinks. The CA team has a bunch of TX recruits while the coach, under a diff handle, has a team in Texas. 

Anyone who would cheat at a game like this is a pretty pathetic person as far as I'm concerned..and I'm sure there are many that do, including some of those who would swear on these forums that they don't.

I don't at the moment, but I've had two teams in Allen at various times. It started (like it did for a lot of people) when I wanted to move up from DIII to DII, but still had a desire to keep coaching that original DIII team. Initially I had DII Barton and DIII W Conn State at the same time, though that was long before FSS, so I guess not as big a deal. (The user id's were also daalter and dalter, so I wasn't exactly trying to be sneaky about it, lol.) Since then I've had both a DI and DII team in Allen at different points, although right now I'm just down to UNC.

So I definitely don't see anything wrong with it, unless the schools are in the same division and geographic region. That I don't think should be allowed (come on, there's plenty of open teams, right?) ... and I definitely don't think the guy with five teams should be allowed under any circumstances.

And similar to billyg, when I had both a DI and DII, I literally never recruited a player for my DII team from the DI team's geographic region. So in a funny way, it did hinder me. I would guess there's probably occasional abuse that goes on, but I highly doubt it's anywhere close to being problematic enough to start revamping things, or expending WIS's valuable time and energy concocting various anecdotes. The one thing I do think they should police is having two teams in the same division and geographic region, and simply ask the coach to move one of them to another region (ala VD in the SEC back in the day).

Posted by tianyi7886 on 1/11/2011 1:08:00 AM (view original):
The more I look at this situation, the more it stinks. The CA team has a bunch of TX recruits while the coach, under a diff handle, has a team in Texas. 

This definitely sounds sketchy.

Good lord how can some of you guys afford to scout 15-20 states at DIII?

And I've picked up a JUCO Player that I never scouted. . . THAT  year. . .right at signing before.    But I had scouted him extensively as a freshman the previous year.  IS that somehow suspicious?  I knew his general potentials, even though I hadn't FSS'ed his state - or spent a single scouting report on him that year..

Posted by pjbrankin on 1/11/2011 3:36:00 AM (view original):
Good lord how can some of you guys afford to scout 15-20 states at DIII?

I long distance recruit quite a bit, wait till after signing, then FSS states and it becomes cheaper, since FSS cost is based on # of recruits signed, then I pick up a bunch of small states like MT, SD, ND, AK, AR, HI, etc. $200 a pop. 

Posted by alblack56 on 1/11/2011 5:08:00 AM (view original):

I’ve had two teams in the same division, same world, in adjoining states, for 43 seasons. …..before potential, before FSS, back when every coach could recruit nationally for free.
 

So, I’m against restricting coaches to one team/world. I have too much time and money invested in these programs.   Two teams/world??? I could accept that restriction
 

On occasion, I’ve had  both teams sign players from the same state. But I’m so paranoid about recruiting  that I print my FSS pages after almost every recruiting season. I figure that, if another coach questioned my recruiting, I could fax him the pages.

Once, when I was out of town, friends recruited for me. I forgot to tell them about my other team. When I returned, I discovered that I'd been in a recruiting battle with myself!  Fortunately, I won. LOL
 

I feel solution #2, posting the scouted states AFTER recruiting is finished, is a great idea but it wouldn't eliminate suspicion. I know coaches that never use FSS. Posting their vacant FSS list would make it appear they had another team.

Al, I don't mean to call you out personally here, but your story is a great illustration of one of the problems with coaches having multiple teams.  Here you are, shocked that your teams were battling for the same recruit when that is the natural order of things.  When you are controlling both teams you ensure they do not battle.  If two different players had the two teams and divvied up recruits like that it would be a clear cut case of collusion.

Does that mean multiple teams in a world should be disallowed?  I don't know to be honest.

Posted by tianyi7886 on 1/10/2011 10:46:00 PM (view original):
I think if you have all those teams in one region, then it is not as bad since you won't be able to pulldown enough recruits within 300 for all those teams. But with teams spread out with 1 in CA, 1 in TX, 1 in IN, 2 in the Northeast, he won't run into a pulldown issue for any team. Then say this is a poor recruiting generating year for the TX region, he can just log into his Northeast team, see the potential of leftover players, and just recruit one for his TX team w/o ever scouting the state with his TX team. THIS is a huge advantage.

the thing is, everybody agrees FSS sharing is cheating. the bottom line is coaches who want to cheat will find away. colluding with other coaches in recruiting is a hundred times bigger of an issue (IMO) than FSS sharing. so what do you do - stop allowing coaches to talk to each other? its just not feasible to make this game cheater-proof. 

the best thing we have going for us is this is a strategy game. people who love the challenge of a strategy game generally cannot take pride in any of their accomplishments or success if they feel its cheating. so to me, the most important thing to do is to make it clear what is cheating and what is not. i am not so naive to say there aren't coaches out there who are sharing FSS data, but i really doubt its the guys competing at a high level. its probably a coach who really struggles and is frustrated enough to try anything to get ahead, and my bet is he quits before he ever does get ahead.

Posted by alblack56 on 1/11/2011 5:08:00 AM (view original):

I’ve had two teams in the same division, same world, in adjoining states, for 43 seasons. …..before potential, before FSS, back when every coach could recruit nationally for free.
 

So, I’m against restricting coaches to one team/world. I have too much time and money invested in these programs.   Two teams/world??? I could accept that restriction
 

On occasion, I’ve had  both teams sign players from the same state. But I’m so paranoid about recruiting  that I print my FSS pages after almost every recruiting season. I figure that, if another coach questioned my recruiting, I could fax him the pages.

Once, when I was out of town, friends recruited for me. I forgot to tell them about my other team. When I returned, I discovered that I'd been in a recruiting battle with myself!  Fortunately, I won. LOL
 

I feel solution #2, posting the scouted states AFTER recruiting is finished, is a great idea but it wouldn't eliminate suspicion. I know coaches that never use FSS. Posting their vacant FSS list would make it appear they had another team.

funny, one time i was recruiting for a buddy of mine who was on vacation, and was shocked to find in the second cycle that i had spent about 10k on the same player with both schools (his, and mine in the same world). man, that sucked :)

Posted by karrmann on 1/11/2011 2:40:00 AM (view original):

So I am an “OFFENDER”?

 

Texas and California have most of the recruits so why wouldn’t you scout them?

 

Tianyi7886 started this entire rant because “This actually might have affected my recruiting since one of his teams went across country and landed one of the recruits that I was about to take a couple of seasons ago.“ His words.

 

In other words he is bitter because I signed a recruit he was interested in.

I purposely did not point out who you were because I did not want to accuse you in public. And no, I am not bitter from the recruit you took from 2 seasons ago in DC. At the time, I just thought it was one heck of a recruiting effort and nice job scouting out long distance, something I do alot when having 3+ scholarships. Now after knowing you have 5 IDs with 2 teams in Northeast, you probably scouted DC with one of those teams, saw Mctigue, and since he wouldn't drop down your NE teams due to prestige, took him with CMHMS when he did drop down to the CMHMS team.

My post was to show that it is indeed possible to affect overall recruiting even by having teams in different geographic regions.

On top of this, Bridgewater and Mount Ida both in MA, doesn't seem very dispersed to me. 

And since you did decide to step up and name himself. You guys be the judge.

He has the following team in Phelan, all D3:

CMHMS under foxbat99
Texas, Dallas dpm1227
Bridgewater under Karrman, previously coached Medgar Evers
Mount Ida under jcraig1227
Wabash from craig 218

And now let's see where the recruits came from:

From what I see, he shares CA, TX, NC recruits among his multiple teams, and fill out the rest of his roster like this after pulldown/initial dropdowns. But hey, that's just me being a suspicious person. 

And thanks for telling me that you won't schedule me in OOC anymore. I feel the same way since I don't like to play against a stacked deck for 1, sometimes, 2 games every season. 

I have a feeling that alot of my recruits in various worlds could be getting poached from random IDs, but that's the risk I'm willing to take by posting this in my real ID as opposed to creating a new one and making it. 

Posted by _hannibal_ on 1/11/2011 9:20:00 AM (view original):

Posted by alblack56 on 1/11/2011 5:08:00 AM (view original):

I’ve had two teams in the same division, same world, in adjoining states, for 43 seasons. …..before potential, before FSS, back when every coach could recruit nationally for free.
 

So, I’m against restricting coaches to one team/world. I have too much time and money invested in these programs.   Two teams/world??? I could accept that restriction
 

On occasion, I’ve had  both teams sign players from the same state. But I’m so paranoid about recruiting  that I print my FSS pages after almost every recruiting season. I figure that, if another coach questioned my recruiting, I could fax him the pages.

Once, when I was out of town, friends recruited for me. I forgot to tell them about my other team. When I returned, I discovered that I'd been in a recruiting battle with myself!  Fortunately, I won. LOL
 

I feel solution #2, posting the scouted states AFTER recruiting is finished, is a great idea but it wouldn't eliminate suspicion. I know coaches that never use FSS. Posting their vacant FSS list would make it appear they had another team.

Al, I don't mean to call you out personally here, but your story is a great illustration of one of the problems with coaches having multiple teams.  Here you are, shocked that your teams were battling for the same recruit when that is the natural order of things.  When you are controlling both teams you ensure they do not battle.  If two different players had the two teams and divvied up recruits like that it would be a clear cut case of collusion.

Does that mean multiple teams in a world should be disallowed?  I don't know to be honest.

i agree hannibal, this is in my opinion the great challenge of multiple teams in 1 world. how do you make sure you aren't giving yourself an unintended advantage?

when i have 2 teams in the same division in the same world, i feel like it would be unfair to recruit players from the same area - the reason being, i should naturally battle myself, but i won't. is this that big of an advantage? it depends, if one school is an A prestige d1 school and one is a C, then no. but if they are on level playing fields, then i think the answer is yes. so what i do is, only recruit players from states i've scouted, and never scout the same state with both schools. this artificial restriction means the two schools could never battle, and i can't see how that helps them - it restricts the pool of recruits available to me. i think any other two schools could make this arrangement, with 2 different coaches, and i'd be 100% fine with it. even if they were in adjacent states - it would hurt them significantly.

i think al's case is probably the most complicated i've seen. i am only comfortable talking about it because i feel like nobody would ever accuse al of cheating. if al had picked up that 2nd school during FSS, i would argue it was unfair and he should have to drop it. the reason being, i feel like schools on level playing fields, same division, that close, can't truly play 100% fairly. it would cripple the two schools to segregate the states like i mentioned above, so they are probably recruiting the same area, and they should battle sometimes - but they won't. that is an advantage over everyone else.

however, its not black and white, there are almost always shades of grey. al had that team back when people recruited nationally all the time - new coaches might struggle to believe it really was that national, because the costs on visits were the same as today - but honestly as a coach in that time, i was virtually as likely to sign a quality player 1500 miles away as 10. so i have absolutely 0 problem with what al was doing then. and i think its a bigger slight to make him give up one of those teams because the game changed than whatever small advantage his schools may garner by not battling each other, which honestly, is not that big. think about 2 conference rivals. i have conference rivals who are among the elite schools in the world, and so is mine - we are close together, but we NEVER battle each other. sometimes, we go after the same player, but one always defers to the other. we never go all out against each other. so i really feel like al is not gaining a major advantage there at all, its tangible, but very slight. and d2/d3 are much better in this way than d1, where competition for recruits is dramatically higher.

to me, the bigger issue would be the potential to battle another school with both of his at the same time. that would obviously be totally messed up. im sure al takes great care not to advantage himself in that way. and by doing so, he is giving himself a disadvantage - through the natural flow of the game, there would be cases where he would want to battle the same school with both, and he cannot do so because he knows it wouldn't feel right to the other coach involved. i wouldn't be surprised if that ends up hurting him more than potentially not battling himself.

so all in all, i have no problem with what al is doing, and that is one of the most sticky cases i can recall hearing. but i think it is very important to have these kind of discussions, what is going on in this thread. i am sure some people with multiple teams are more aware of some potential issues, and will take more care not to advantage themselves as a result. the care i take is partly because of previous conversations like this one.

and hopefully, some people against multiple teams in a world are also more aware of how we get to these situations, and it won't bother them as much because they realize many of these cases are legitimate. people want to take over their old schools all the time, and even if it gives them the slightest of advantages, what you are giving up by not allowing it cannot be ignored. in my case, i took over my d2 school as i moved up, a school i love way more than any other - as a result, when the conf was on the downslope 10 seasons later, i did everything i could to build the conference, to keep it active, and i helped a lot of coaches along the way. its now one of the elite conferences of all time, but that is not what makes it so great - its the community spirit and the active CC that make it so great. maybe not all, but many coaches who are there are more active in the game as a whole because of their experience there. i know its true for me and a few others, and anyone in a truly great conference will attest it makes their passion for the game as a whole much higher (in all honesty, i probably would have stopped playing about a year ago if not for my attachment to that conference - the thousand questions i've answered in the forums since would have all been lost, as well as dynasty rankings, and the people i mentored in the last year would have lost that too). maybe mine is an extreme case, but even in the normal case, there is no way that good does not compensate for potentially giving yourself a minute advantage somewhere. people who are passionate enough about 2 teams to really want to keep both end up doing something beneficial as a result, just being there and being active and engaged is a good thing for the game, and i just don't think we should underestimate that. it would really be a shame to lose that.