We're in the midst of recruiting in the Naismith world and signings started last night, so naturally I was scrolling through the teams in my league to see who/what everyone else was bringing in. One of the Sim-AI teams caught my eye.

Kentucky Wesleyan has seven returning scholarship players on roster. The Sim AI currently has SIX players considering the school, meaning it has over-recruited and put resources into one/more players it cannot sign (and did so on the first wave, to boot!).

Is this a relatively normal Sim-AI behavior that I've somehow missed encountering/noticing in my many seasons? I'm used to Sim AI teams under-recruiting by 1-2 scholarships. I've never seen/heard where a first-wave effort by Sim produced more target recruits than said team needed.

Strike anyone else as bizarre? Ticket worthy? Or have I been in my cave of oblivion too long again?

I don't think it's unusual.  I'm on Naismith too, and I ran into more than one human coach who had over-recruited.  I also saw more than one D2 school dip down into the D3 pool (or what appears to be D3 from my B prestige perspective).  Given the mediocre quality of recruits on Naismith this cycle, which increases competition for the good ones, "covering your bets" is a valid strategy. 

If you have the cash and the player's worth it, it's very possible to bump a Sim off of a recruit.  That may be part of the AI strategy as they expect to lose a certain percentage of their recruits.

I have never followed Sim recruiting closely, but this seems to be a first. 

Posted by bscoresby on 9/9/2011 12:21:00 PM (view original):

Is one of the players a JUCO player?      
 

So this guy was ineligible last season, went JUCO after being signed, and now is showing up with considering credits? Makes sense to me.

Posted by ethan66 on 9/9/2011 12:05:00 PM (view original):
I don't think it's unusual.  I'm on Naismith too, and I ran into more than one human coach who had over-recruited.  I also saw more than one D2 school dip down into the D3 pool (or what appears to be D3 from my B prestige perspective).  Given the mediocre quality of recruits on Naismith this cycle, which increases competition for the good ones, "covering your bets" is a valid strategy. 

If you have the cash and the player's worth it, it's very possible to bump a Sim off of a recruit.  That may be part of the AI strategy as they expect to lose a certain percentage of their recruits.

I understand that it's a common human strategy to over-recruit. I've never seen a Sim team do it, much less on the first wave of recruiting effort for Sim schools. Most of the time you see 1+ fewer recruits considering Sim-coached schools than the number of open scholarships available after the Sims have fired off their start-of-recruiting salvo and the human-coached teams begin their efforts. 

My understanding of the Sim AI recruiting process has been that the Sim randomly identifies target recruits to fill the open roster spaces on a one-for-one basis, places those targets into a hierarchy based upon perceived "need," and apportions its first wave pool of recruiting effort accordingly, then basically does likewise on its subsequent wave based upon what was/was not initially filled.

Clearly this can't be the case if a Sim team with five openings has six players considering signing with it and I'm very interested in "knowing my enemy" since he recruits at roughly half the schools in my division.

The only possible theory I can offer that preserves my understanding of the Sim AI recruiting process would be that, in this specific instance, two of the players considering Sim AI are sophomore JUCO's and one is a freshman transfer. The team was human coached last season. Is it possible the previous human coach put SO MUCH effort into signing one (or more) of those three players that the carry-over/residual effort from last recruiting season was enough to have the recruit considering the school when this year's recruiting period opened, without Sim needing to put in any effort this season?

[Edit: Got interrupted by a phone call while typing this post, so bscoresby's and tianyl's posts weren't up when I started...wasn't ignoring your guys' input]

Cool, we all came to the same conclusion.     

Sometimes a kid chooses to consider a school when the school hasn't put in any effort. I absolutely hate that it happens but it does. Usually said players are very bad tho and not worthy of a spot in d3 even.

I had sent a ticket in just to make sure I wasn't in the dark about some hitherto unknown element of Sim recruiting. 

The response was that it "most likely is the result of carry over recruiting effort from an unsigned player the previous season."

So for those following along, there you go. Question answered (and in less than 12 hours I might add...kudos customer service!)

It would be nice id sims recruited more than their scholarships allowed so when people took recruits from them it wouldn't be an auto walk on