tarvalon, i think this is pretty good. i agree with much of it.
on the distance recruiting, i have one other major concern. we almost need like, 1 thread, per topic here, so we can get into this crap deep. anyway... the concern is the time spent looking for players. this is similar to what people mentioned with teh scouting system, but different. in the olden days, before potential, you could recruit nationally. distance advantages were there - but the scouting fees were not. distance alone was not enough to stop top coaches from having to scour nationally. with potentially, my d2 time to prepare for the start of recruiting, went down from something like 10 hours of pre-work, to 1. those 10 hours were brutal. reducing that was a MAJOR success of potential.
now, we are talking about a flip case almost. the scouting fees will be there, and apparently somehow tailored locally - but not exclusively. maybe you can effectively scout in a big way at distance, that isn't exactly clear. but, the distance advantage, which is a big part (in tandem with FSS) in reducing the scope of who d2/d3 schools, and low-mid d1 schools at well, have to consider (did i ever mention its not unusual for me to spent 30K, yes thats 30, scouting with a low d1 school? mostly evals). having to consider the whole nation is such a brutal grind, i really don't want to go back to that! im afraid we might. it has to be considered. i thought the idea was to remove distance advantage for TOP players, to increase competition between top schools for said players. not to do distance for everyone.
one other reason that is scary as hell - which you do mention - but which i want to talk about a little too. today, distance actually protects the small boys. it means the guy with the a+ and the biggest budget doesnt have first pick over everyone, it means that in d2, a school with 6 openings, regardless of prestige, can't just totally trounce all the 4 and under opening schools. this is valuable. distance advantage has a place - i dont think it should be an all or nothing deal. this is one of my biggest concerns in the core of the scouting/recruiting changes proposed (outside of the stuff im trying to get out of scope altogether). i don't honestly know what to predict, i think i have pretty good predictive powers here... but the scouting system is such an unknown, its hard to say with confidence. but i would definitely wager schools with smaller wallets are going to be suffering for distance to some degree. now, that 1 CV per player thing, that definitely plays in to, to help protect. maybe the answer is the close / far from home preference. make close to home like a sliding scale from 30% for really close down to 10% for pretty close, and actually have like half of all players have that preference. or make it not a binary - close to home preference, yes or no - but maybe make it like slight, moderate, and large. i could definitely see that compensating in the ways we want, to protect locals in some respect. there really has to be some protection, i believe.
one other topic that is completely missed and really missed by just about everyone, but i think its massively important -
seble is proposing removing the existing tradeoff, the tradeoff that did more for recruiting strategy than anything in my tenure, the tradeoff between spending money to find players, versus spending money to battle for them. because scounting is so rudimentary and because coaches in general are slow to adapt, i know its not a HUGE amount of coaches who are spending like 1-2 more scholarships of moeny scouting than other coaches. but there are some of us, with some of our teams. and its raelly great, having that key strategic tradeoff. you awnt to get away from auction style? give a key tradeoff on how to spend your money, thats a great way. i can't see why we'd take this away, except to make it easier for seble to balance.
now, the biggest limitation in that tradeoff today is, theres only so much you can spend, and the system is rudimentary so not a lot of coaches really look at that tradeoff. i have literally spent about 40k in one particular season scouting, i probably scouted 20 internationals, in d1... but very few folks are doing that. seble's scouting enhancements would be GREAT for helping to improve the meaningfullness of this great strategic recruiting money tradeoff. but hes totally split the budget. im 100% against that, thats a major step back. i udnerstand its hard to balance - so i think the easiest way to do it, is have two budgets - but let coaches, at any time, as often as they want - convert money from scouting budget to recruiting (not the reverse) - but at a penalty. maybe even an 80% penalty, only getting 20 dollars on the 100. this has real life precedent - coaches have restrictions on things they can do, effort and money they can expend, but they find ways around it - often getting inefficient use of resources to do so - but its still an edge for them. if you have 30k for scouting, some coaches might only use 5k, and convert 5k to recruiting, while some might use all 30k - in my version. thats awesome, assuming 5k is meaningful. the rule of thumb ill propose is that the difference between a heavy scouter and a light scouter should be allowed to be AT LEAST 1 full scholarship of funds. maybe up to 1.5 scholarships. 2 scholarships is pushing it. i think t his tradeoff should go on the list, its a huge change hes making, and it could be flipped around - from really taking away from recruiting strategy - to really adding to it.