I've seen a lot of "drama" over recruiting over the seasons, especially when it comes to last cycle poaching of recruits.  Though I've never done this myself, I often wait to see who other schools are recruiting to make my decisions, often after recruits have been considering another school for say the first full day.  If you don't poach though, and show your hand early in a battle, you leave yourself succeptible to "poaching".

It seems as if the system in fact ENCOURAGES "poaching", as is.  That's why though I hate when it happens, I would never take it personally.
 

So there are 2 main arguments.

1. It's fine how it is.  People are going to go all out in signing cycle, kids change their minds, and it's a smart strategy to do some "poaching" even if it ****** people off.  We're grownups and know the rules.

2.Let's make the game more realistic.  In real life,  if a school has not been paying attention to a kid at all, then the day before signing day goes all out, sometimes a kid will change, but usually they'll stay firm to their commitment.  Considering credit and loyalty, to some extent, matters.     Therefore, if we upped considering credit, it would discourage late "poaching" because it would be much harder and cost a LOT more money to get him to change his mind, especially if he'd say been considering for 2 days of recruiting without considering another school.  Say a strong scaling considering credit over time.

Anyhow, I think both are fine, just wondering what some vets of D-1 thought?

YES!

I definitely feel recruits strongly appreciate the schools who show them the love first. This will also make poaching a little more difficult and reward the coaches who know what level of recruits they should be targeting and for going after them. I think that this would garner a lot of support from any coach who isn't at an A prestige, BCS school. 

I'd stick with number one.  I think it's fine as it is (and I'm not at an A prestige BCS school.  More like a C+ prestige mid-major).

As a small time vet, I only have a small say...

But my biggest issue with this (I don't disagree with the premise) is what happens if I can't recruit until day 3?  I know you can have people cover, etc, but I choose not to, and when life happens (even if life happens until late on day 2), it's tough to be at a bigger disadvantage (which there already is some to recruit late).  But, I do agree with the ideas, but I think the end result is people have to get over it.  Even as a low level school, I've seen people get upset at me "poaching", when they have their scholarships+2 on their considering list, and the guy is 1000 miles away from them.

Last thought (sorry for the randomness), in real life, the big guys are recruiting a lot more guys than they can sign.  The little guys tend to get the guys that the big guys send "Thanks, but no thanks" letters to, and three days isn't enough time to emulate that.  Also in real life, poaching is probably even worse, as you know that teams are being very direct in pointing out the other players a team is considering at their position.

I do not like #2 much due to the points others brought up but I do agree its not realistic.   One of the issues with being poached is you usually do not find out about it until its to late (ie - right before signings a team pops up on the consideration list) when in reality that team could have been pluggining money into the kids for a few days.

I think they need to make recruiting a little more transparent.   (For example - phone calls to the coach may get a response like.   "I Steve has talked very highly about playing for you next year.  Maryland has come by a few times but he is not interested." )   This way you know if the player is being targeted by another school and it's not a total shock when that school finally makes it to the consideration list.   This will also make the coaches continie to throw small amounts (1 phone call per cycle) into the recruit to "stay in touch" up until signings.

Posted by mullycj on 10/29/2011 3:15:00 AM (view original):
I do not like #2 much due to the points others brought up but I do agree its not realistic.   One of the issues with being poached is you usually do not find out about it until its to late (ie - right before signings a team pops up on the consideration list) when in reality that team could have been pluggining money into the kids for a few days.

I think they need to make recruiting a little more transparent.   (For example - phone calls to the coach may get a response like.   "I Steve has talked very highly about playing for you next year.  Maryland has come by a few times but he is not interested." )   This way you know if the player is being targeted by another school and it's not a total shock when that school finally makes it to the consideration list.   This will also make the coaches continie to throw small amounts (1 phone call per cycle) into the recruit to "stay in touch" up until signings.

That's a nice cOmpromise I suppose. Better than the current system for sure.

The consideration credit is almost non-existent in my opinion right now, so I don't think it would hurt to up it a little or more.  A+ schools already have the major prestige advantage so it really won't effect them much, I don't think it should be insurmountable to overcome, but more than what it is now would be nice.

I'm not sure how much the early credit is worth but I suggested this awhile back.

All recruiting effort within the first 24 hours counts the same.  Then have the recruiting effort bring diminished returns for each cycle until signings begin.  I'd suggest the % drop be larger at D1 where the prestige gap appears to play a larger part in recruiting.

For instance, the first 24 hours or 8-9 cycles would all result in the same effort.  A $1000 spent in cycle 1 results in the same effort as $1000 spent during cycle 8.

Then possibly the D1 results drop 3% the next cycle, 4% the cycle after that,... 5%, 6% all the way to a drop of 10% the cycle before signings.

the following table is meant to show the resulting recruiting effort  for $1000 spent for each cycle after the first 24 hours.

	11 pm	2 am	5 am	8 am	11 am	2 pm	5 pm	8 pm
D1 % drop	3%	4%	5%	6%	7%	8%	9%	10%
$ return	970	931	885	832	773	711	647	583
D2 % drop	1.5%	2.0%	2.5%	3.0%	3.5%	4.0%	4.5%	5.0%
$ return	985	965	941	913	881	846	808	767
D3 % drop	.75%	1.00%	1.25%	1.50%	1.75%	2.00%	2.25%	2.50%
$ return	993	983	970	956	939	920	900	877

a D1 team investing $10,000 in a recruit in the early cycles would result in a team with equal prestige/equal distance needing to spend over $17,000 to match the early recruiting effort if their only effort was put in during the final cycle before signings.

Of course at D1 that $7000 or 70% disadvantage could easily be offset by prestige or distance.

It's absolutely realistic for poaching to occur in real life. In WIS, most of the rectruiting is done over a 3 day span. So in real life, each day is basically a year of being recruited for a HS player. Not uncommon at all for a school to not start recruiting a player until his junior or senior seasons and be able to sign him, especially if they have a prestige advantage over the other schools. Kentucky, for example, makes a living off of this in real life.

Does anyone have any idea how much considering credit is worth?

i agree completely (with the OP). frankly, i prefer if someone is going to fight me, they do it at signings, not early - because of the reasons you described - it can cascade into several lost players.

i think changing considering credit would be my preferred solution (and i don't think its fair to say all but A prestige BCS schools would agree, by the way - that is absolutely not true in my experience - as an a+ prestige bcs school coach, i serve as an obvious counter example, but i think really high prestige BCS schools have just as much of a problem with this aspect of the system as anyone else). but i don't think you can do it in a vacuum. i would propose the following:

1) change the signing system. there are two options. first, you could bump signings out a day - for many of us, the last two days are annoying and a complete waste of time. second, my preferred solution (but its harder from an HD standpoint - but its what i'd do if i built my own sim from scratch) would be to allow recruits to sign when they do now, in sort of an "early signing period" sort of way - where many kids would not. for example, if you have a kid with 20k into them from one school, and only one school, sure, he can sign then. but if the school has 5k into him, he should wait. this would eliminate the cliff built into recruiting where you can poach at 7:59 and only have people find out about it after your entire class signs. it would also have other beneficial effects, helping to reduce the advantage of high prestige schools. promises could be included in this in a big way.

2) create a considering credit system that is not only more important than the system today, but different. the schools can each have a "loyalty bonus" which is a %. this would not increase considering credit directly, like i think it does today, but would serve as a multiplier. so, if you have 10k in the whole way, your loyalty bonus might rise to 20% after some time. the bonus would not kick in until 24 hours into recruiting for the folks who don't have immediate access (but if you don't have access for multiple days, you are going to be behind, which is already the case today). anyway, today you would only have 2k extra bonus, and then when you put like 50k more in later when someone jumps, i don't think you get a benefit on that 50k. to me, you should.

3) delayed recruiting information - i would eliminate the considering list updating regularly. it can update with WOTS. this is solving a different problem than the OPs in a way, but its related. i would prefer NOT to see who is considering who in the first cycle. today, you can't do any research into the player if hes decently high end, to decide who to focus on - the system is so entrenched in first-cycle actions being of the utmost importance. i'd prefer not to see an update at 2am either, wait until the 2nd day sometime. this allows people to get into recruits, do some exploration into their hidden qualities (you sort of have to do things like, make some guys care about promises more, care about different schools differently via mechanisms like distance preference and favorite schools, which could be more than 1 but maybe a list of several with varying importances or something, basically to make more variance in the recruits so there was more to figure out than just high high potentials, otherwise this time would kind of be a waste). once the first update came out, presumably, you'd have several people who had shown some interest in a given recruit. this would ESPECIALLY be true if there were true preferences like some guys might prefer dramatically to play away from home (enough to make up for distance advantage in money), or if some guys really needed starting promises and such - basically to bring more uncertainty into which recruits are going to which schools, and to open the possibility for a given recruit, as to which schools he might go to. today, you look at a guy, and its like ok, that guy is going to school A or school B, and you can often say that with 98% certainty. or worse, you can say, that guy is going to school A, with 95% certainty. that is totally unrealistic and i think its bad for recruiting in the game, too. that is the fundamental weakness in our current style of recruiting, IMO.

anyway, if you put those all together, it would bring more to recruiting than just the first couple cycles and the time around signings, which i think would be a very good thing. with updates to lists coming only ever 12 hours or so, it would make it a lot less demanding on coaches, to be checking in every cycle, which i think is a very good thing, too. it would increase competition for top recruits by opening them up to more schools. and it would force top schools to spend more on top recruits if they wanted to sign them ASAP, which would reduce their ability to poach considerably. those with strategies built around poaching, would be unable to sign all their guys right at signings, which would get rid of that aspect that so many of us don't like, where the game makes poaching SUCH a strong strategy, that it forces many to build their strategy around it + first cycle moves. i think the above changes would allow a much greater level of variety in recruiting strategy, which would be a very good thing. of course, recruit generation as it exists would still gum up the works considerably, but that is a bit of a different issue.

those are the positives i see... what are the negatives? i am never that good in seeing the negatives in a system i am overall fond of, which i guess is true for most people, but its definitely true for me.

I like the current system

Posted by alblack56 on 10/12/2014 2:26:00 PM (view original):
I like the current system

i should have said i really only meant all those changes for d1... i dont think doing all that makes sense in the lower divisions. i know you weren't directly responding to me but it made me realize i neglected to say that, which is all in all, a pretty important point.

I like the current system. But when you consider DIII, poaching is really annoying and it happens all the time. When you are about to sign your players, they get poached and you end up with no money to go after new recruits. It needs to be adressed, if not in DII and DI, but in DIII, it can destroy teams because of the lack of money teams get.

Second, I think it's time guaranteed starter gives teams a lot more upside. And make sure that promise can't be broken... A player in D1 would often prefer to play a role on a mid-market than sit on the bench all year or be redshirted on a top market. In the NCAA, it happens all the time. It's not fixed in our game which gives too much credit to major markets.

If you bump up promises impact, which I do agree with, I think that if you break your promises, the next time you promise a recruit, it shouldn't have the same impact.