All Black--- I appreciate you looking into the stats and that definetely backs up your position. I agree that trying to relate the real world recruiting time frame to WIS recruiting period is for the most part impossible. Again, I don't consider anything wrong with grabbing a guy late but wanted to put my experiences out there, as it is one of the frustrating parts of the game for newcomers or coaches starting a new team with poor prestige (which I don't see happen too often).
For me, its been a catch 22 of recruiting early to try to get a guy committed or waiting until the end and picking through what is left. I am not in a position where I am going to come from behind and win a battle against better prestiged/more money teams and have learned that lesson the hard way.
Angmar- I definetely think I have made lots of mistakes in recruiting but mostly because I listened to the posts on how to recruit and those are written from a perspective not in line with my (or many weaker teams) situation. I know it is debated on how much effect prestige plays but I would say it is even larger than is often suggested. That means if I am a C team, I have a ton of teams above me that are going to, for the most part, have first dibs on a player even with paying less money (and they probably have more to begin with as well). So, if you are at the bottom or near the bottom of the food chain, it rolls downhill so your targets can be taken by a lot of teams and any of those teams who are "poached" themselves means even more of your targeted guys are going to be recruited away.
That is why often when veteran coaches take on new teams, they don't take extremely low prestige teams (with a few exceptions). I have seen multiple times when a veteran coach takes a low prestige team and 2-3 years later after marginal improvement, they move on. Some of you reading this have to have done that in the past?
So, I look at recruiting from the bottom as extremely difficult because not only do you need to gauge what level of player you are going to be able to get, if any of the teams above you jump on that player, you have to move on. Whereas a B+ prestige team with good money (good conference) might only need to worry about a few teams being interested in and "taking" their targeted player, that lower level team has to deal with a lot more teams that have the ability to "poach" their guys.
The reason so many of my guys were "taken" early on is that I was trying to get guys with the ratings that everyone told me to get and when I did take a player I actually could sign, veterans say "that guy is a piece of s... why did you recruit him-- drop him asap". When newbies ask about their recruits and a few of the jerks (we all know who they are) act like the newbie was a complete idiot to take the player, I have often wanted to say, that is not a good recruit for an A school in a good conference but for your team, you did a pretty good job. Often, that would be closer to the truth than, "you'll never compete with that guy-- what were you thinking?" comments they get. Then they get told to go read the posts on recruiting, which is only going to make them feel worse because they aren't recruiting on a level playing field and either can't get the guys to consider them or have the guys "poached" at some point during recruiting. To me, the question of what level of ratings I can get should not be focused on divisions but more detailed on division/conference/prestige. Yes, I could get a 60 ath, 60 spd guy to talk to me, but no way I am going to sign that guy because 50 teams above me can outbid me if they want.
I don't think there is necessarily anything wrong with the way that works, just that the lack of clarity and the assumption that recruits are "available to all" causes a sharp learning curve to be even sharper.
I think the point of adding some more value to early effort would ultimately help raise the quality of recruits that a "underdog" team could get and therefore make the game more competitive and fun and recruiting easier for newbies. Saying you don't want that part of the game easier for newbies is to me like saying "you'll learn the rules as you go along" and so not really a good answer.
I have also been a bit fearful to throw this out there but this has been a relatively peaceful conversation for the most part so here it goes... I also have noticed that every year I have more and more "acceptable" recruits close to my home. I didn't have a single good guy 10-50 miles from my school for the first two years and now during recruiting, I will have 10 of them. Yes, I agree that part of that is learning good recruits, but trust me when I say there is a noticeable difference. I would suggest that the recruit generation formula includes something about human users and what I experienced is a result of that variable. Veterans wouldn't experience this as much as new users because they know to take previously human-coached teams with higher prestige and do so for the most part. I know I'll get some arguments here but hoping maybe others have experienced the same thing and if so, that should be added into the discussion boards on recruiting with a bad team.
Anyways, sorry to be long winded, hope that makes sense, and another helpful thread. I wish I would have had some of the info a year ago. Have a great Friday everyone and appreciate the tone of this post staying informative and positive rather than going the direction they sometimes do.