Im qualified for D- prestige jobs in D1 but have a pretty good D2 team returning... Im thinking either way(this season or next) I'm gonna move up to D1 and gonna have to rebuild a team from scratch. Is it better to go this year or wait another season?

I would wait until you're qualified for D+/C- jobs.

Then again, this is what, at least the 5th or 6th thread you've made about moving to D1.  It's pretty obviously where you think you want to be, so maybe go ahead and go for it?

You should just do it! I think your recruiting level is up to par, but your scheduling is not.  Lost Myth (arguably the best coach in the history of the game) once said "I never schedule a game I can't win" (lol something like that) you've been scheduling non-con games you can't win. 

you've won less than 50% of your games in 25 seasons.  i'd suggest you wait until you can consistently build winning teams at D3 and D2

Posted by m4284850 on 6/7/2012 6:12:00 PM (view original):
You should just do it! I think your recruiting level is up to par, but your scheduling is not.  Lost Myth (arguably the best coach in the history of the game) once said "I never schedule a game I can't win" (lol something like that) you've been scheduling non-con games you can't win. 

hmm so SOS is not worth it if you can't win? i mean could easily schedule easier and win a lot more games but SOS helps RPI or does winning help just as much?

I would rather be a team with an SOS of 50-70 and have an RPI of 30-40 then a SOS of 1 - 10 and an RPI of 80-100 if you can't win the games. This is all just an example but You should be going 7-3 or 8-2 in non conference if you are in a really strong conference. If I have a really week conference I know I will go 15-1 or 16-0 then I will schedule a hard non conference and going 5-5 will still put me in a good range to get in the NT

ohh ok i always thought the idea was to schedule the top teams and just take the losses and always play away lol guess i was way off but i decided i am going D1... i figured id give it a shot. worse comes to worse i hate it and go back down to D2 haha 

Well yoijames you have to find an in-between. Don't schedule a bunch of really good human teams but also don't schedule a bunch of weak sim teams. Get a mix of the 2.

Posted by m4284850 on 6/7/2012 9:25:00 PM (view original):
Well yoijames you have to find an in-between. Don't schedule a bunch of really good human teams but also don't schedule a bunch of weak sim teams. Get a mix of the 2.

Ok sounds good, hopefully I figure it out lol

good luck! recruiting from a d- program is a tough thing to do. i recommend all new coaches wait till they can get a team in that D+/C- range that has some decent talent already, especially with how d1 is today, because its so tough to be successful with the bottom end teams, even for coaches that aren't new to d1. anyway, its not impossible or anything, you can do it if you are patient. there are 3 major mistakes made by low level d1 coaches, and if you avoid them, you will probably do well:

mistake 1) recruiting too low. so many new d1 coaches look at the low end d1 players and go, they look good. but you have to have a frame of reference, and with d2 being your only reference, its easy to shoot too low. take the opportunity to look around before recruiting starts, and also at the end of your first season. look at the teams who are around 50th in the country - you have to be shooting to be that good. before recruiting, you don't have rankings, but look in any big 6 conference, find yourself a couple b-/b or so prestige teams who have been like, low end NT, high end PIT type teams, and see how they look. especially, look at underclassmen - you need your players to get to that level! i highly recommend taking 2 walkons a season to allow you a much better dollars to spots you have to fill ratio :)

mistake 2) recruiting too high. as a d-, the top 40 or so players at each position won't even talk to you. but that doesn't matter. why? no chance you can sign any of them, on your prestige (virtually). but in the pool of players you CAN talk to, you want to shoot on the higher end. just know your limitation. you can't battle any school in the BCS unless they are very conflicted and you don't think they can spend much against you. best to submit early, and watch to see if they get out of control elsewhere, and come back in late. anyway, you really can't afford to get in a bunch of battles, but you need to go after a bunch of players you want to get, early. why? its so much easier to grab for players when nobody "has" any of them. once somebody has their name on a player, they are much more likely to fight you for them. so go for some people and hope nobody else goes for them in cycle 1, and with some luck, you will have a good portion of your class lined up when 8:00 rolls around.

mistake 3) not winning enough. i don't mean not being good enough. you need wins. from d- to c- prestige, maybe even c, you can miss the post season every year, its just a matter of where you are in that range. its easy to play really bad sims and win 20-25 games. do it. this will get your prestige up enough for you to recruit players who are good enough to take to the NT (hopefully). also, it will have the INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT side effect of getting your HCA to an a+, which is absolutely and totally vital for all teams who want to be successful in d1.

no coach i've seen has failed to bomb one of his first 2 d1 recruiting classes. bombing 1 class is not the end of the world, and in fact, is just about guaranteed to happen every so often (every so often being, pretty damn often, when you just start out). however, bombing a class is not that big of a deal, as long as you don't get 2 in a row. and remember - signing a bunch of players who cant compete is bombing harder than not signing anybody. your prestige can't really get worse, even if you get it to a d/d+ its not like you have much to lose. better off to take your lumps and try again next year. good luck!

Posted by gillispie1 on 6/8/2012 1:20:00 PM (view original):
good luck! recruiting from a d- program is a tough thing to do. i recommend all new coaches wait till they can get a team in that D+/C- range that has some decent talent already, especially with how d1 is today, because its so tough to be successful with the bottom end teams, even for coaches that aren't new to d1. anyway, its not impossible or anything, you can do it if you are patient. there are 3 major mistakes made by low level d1 coaches, and if you avoid them, you will probably do well:

mistake 1) recruiting too low. so many new d1 coaches look at the low end d1 players and go, they look good. but you have to have a frame of reference, and with d2 being your only reference, its easy to shoot too low. take the opportunity to look around before recruiting starts, and also at the end of your first season. look at the teams who are around 50th in the country - you have to be shooting to be that good. before recruiting, you don't have rankings, but look in any big 6 conference, find yourself a couple b-/b or so prestige teams who have been like, low end NT, high end PIT type teams, and see how they look. especially, look at underclassmen - you need your players to get to that level! i highly recommend taking 2 walkons a season to allow you a much better dollars to spots you have to fill ratio :)

mistake 2) recruiting too high. as a d-, the top 40 or so players at each position won't even talk to you. but that doesn't matter. why? no chance you can sign any of them, on your prestige (virtually). but in the pool of players you CAN talk to, you want to shoot on the higher end. just know your limitation. you can't battle any school in the BCS unless they are very conflicted and you don't think they can spend much against you. best to submit early, and watch to see if they get out of control elsewhere, and come back in late. anyway, you really can't afford to get in a bunch of battles, but you need to go after a bunch of players you want to get, early. why? its so much easier to grab for players when nobody "has" any of them. once somebody has their name on a player, they are much more likely to fight you for them. so go for some people and hope nobody else goes for them in cycle 1, and with some luck, you will have a good portion of your class lined up when 8:00 rolls around.

mistake 3) not winning enough. i don't mean not being good enough. you need wins. from d- to c- prestige, maybe even c, you can miss the post season every year, its just a matter of where you are in that range. its easy to play really bad sims and win 20-25 games. do it. this will get your prestige up enough for you to recruit players who are good enough to take to the NT (hopefully). also, it will have the INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT side effect of getting your HCA to an a+, which is absolutely and totally vital for all teams who want to be successful in d1.

no coach i've seen has failed to bomb one of his first 2 d1 recruiting classes. bombing 1 class is not the end of the world, and in fact, is just about guaranteed to happen every so often (every so often being, pretty damn often, when you just start out). however, bombing a class is not that big of a deal, as long as you don't get 2 in a row. and remember - signing a bunch of players who cant compete is bombing harder than not signing anybody. your prestige can't really get worse, even if you get it to a d/d+ its not like you have much to lose. better off to take your lumps and try again next year. good luck!

thats really good info gillispie1! thanks so your saying to schedule really bad sims? also should for home and away should i go 5&5 or more road games to bump my SOS a little?

james that's a good initial question you posed and similar to what I was looking at prior to last year in Smith. For the first time I qualified for D- jobs but I had a strong team coming back so I decided to play out another year at D2 and took my team to the Final Four. Now if I want to go D1, I hope I'll be qualified for much better entry level gigs. No idea what type of teams I'm looking at above last year, but I expect a significant amount of new options. Vets, please correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm really not trying to sound too harsh here, but with all the basic questions you're asking James, it's seems to me that you could use quite a bit more experience before you move up to D1.  Also, as I have been in a conference with you under my other ID and have seen up close and personal how your team's perform, I'm almost positive that you just aren't ready to succeed at the D1 level (I really hope you prove me wrong though).  Sorry but that's the reality of the situation.

The fact that you're scheduling totally backwards should be enough proof on it's own that you need some more time to figure out the intricacies of the game.  But, like Dahs said, this is about the fourth thread that you've started asking if you should go to D1 or not, so as he said, it's pretty obvious what you want to do.  So, since you want to go to D1, go ahead and do it and good luck to you!

I'm afraid, however, that going to a D- prestige school and trying to recruit with that prestige, combined with the fact that you've still got a lot to learn about the game, is gonna result in your first attempt at D1 being an unmitigated disaster.  I hope I'm wrong, I really, truly do since you seem like a good kid but I've just got a real bad feeling.  Again, not trying to sound harsh or mean and I really hope you do well if you do decide to move up, but I think you could probably use a lot more time in D2 to learn more about the finer points of the game.  Whatever you decide to do, good luck to you though!!

I agree 100% with gillespie1. I do wish at times I would have waited for an higher prestige team but tis been fun so far.

 In smith, I took Loyola Maramount at D- and after 5 seasons we're at B-. As gillespie1 mentioned earlier, you need wins. My strategy is I'm not worried about SOS but RPI. For example last season, we went 25-5, RPI 46, SOS 148. My first two seasons, I wanted to test myself and scheduled tougher teams. The only thing I accomplished was I lost more games and had no chance at an NT berth. If you rack up wins, you have a chance of quailfying for an NT bid. Also our HCA is A+.

Its going to take a patience and a little luck with recruiting. As for luck, our center is 1st team All American this season as a senior. We were a C- prestige when we signed him. I believe he wasnt ranked overall but was the 85 ranked center. Last season recruiting as an C+, we landed the a Top 20 recruiting class and two stud guards that our scout rated as future NBA players.

Good luck and remember to have fun.

Posted by yoijames on 6/8/2012 2:30:00 PM (view original):

Posted by gillispie1 on 6/8/2012 1:20:00 PM (view original):
good luck! recruiting from a d- program is a tough thing to do. i recommend all new coaches wait till they can get a team in that D+/C- range that has some decent talent already, especially with how d1 is today, because its so tough to be successful with the bottom end teams, even for coaches that aren't new to d1. anyway, its not impossible or anything, you can do it if you are patient. there are 3 major mistakes made by low level d1 coaches, and if you avoid them, you will probably do well:

mistake 1) recruiting too low. so many new d1 coaches look at the low end d1 players and go, they look good. but you have to have a frame of reference, and with d2 being your only reference, its easy to shoot too low. take the opportunity to look around before recruiting starts, and also at the end of your first season. look at the teams who are around 50th in the country - you have to be shooting to be that good. before recruiting, you don't have rankings, but look in any big 6 conference, find yourself a couple b-/b or so prestige teams who have been like, low end NT, high end PIT type teams, and see how they look. especially, look at underclassmen - you need your players to get to that level! i highly recommend taking 2 walkons a season to allow you a much better dollars to spots you have to fill ratio :)

mistake 2) recruiting too high. as a d-, the top 40 or so players at each position won't even talk to you. but that doesn't matter. why? no chance you can sign any of them, on your prestige (virtually). but in the pool of players you CAN talk to, you want to shoot on the higher end. just know your limitation. you can't battle any school in the BCS unless they are very conflicted and you don't think they can spend much against you. best to submit early, and watch to see if they get out of control elsewhere, and come back in late. anyway, you really can't afford to get in a bunch of battles, but you need to go after a bunch of players you want to get, early. why? its so much easier to grab for players when nobody "has" any of them. once somebody has their name on a player, they are much more likely to fight you for them. so go for some people and hope nobody else goes for them in cycle 1, and with some luck, you will have a good portion of your class lined up when 8:00 rolls around.

mistake 3) not winning enough. i don't mean not being good enough. you need wins. from d- to c- prestige, maybe even c, you can miss the post season every year, its just a matter of where you are in that range. its easy to play really bad sims and win 20-25 games. do it. this will get your prestige up enough for you to recruit players who are good enough to take to the NT (hopefully). also, it will have the INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT side effect of getting your HCA to an a+, which is absolutely and totally vital for all teams who want to be successful in d1.

no coach i've seen has failed to bomb one of his first 2 d1 recruiting classes. bombing 1 class is not the end of the world, and in fact, is just about guaranteed to happen every so often (every so often being, pretty damn often, when you just start out). however, bombing a class is not that big of a deal, as long as you don't get 2 in a row. and remember - signing a bunch of players who cant compete is bombing harder than not signing anybody. your prestige can't really get worse, even if you get it to a d/d+ its not like you have much to lose. better off to take your lumps and try again next year. good luck!

thats really good info gillispie1! thanks so your saying to schedule really bad sims? also should for home and away should i go 5&5 or more road games to bump my SOS a little?

if i'm low level D1, i would schedule games so i go 10-0.