What is the penalty for a lateral move during job changes?

A drop in loyalty.

There isn't a penalty unless you have recently moved teams. If you have moved or been moving your loyalty will take a little hit

Posted by hookemhorns7 on 11/28/2012 7:57:00 AM (view original):
There isn't a penalty unless you have recently moved teams. If you have moved or been moving your loyalty will take a little hit

Your loyalty always takes a hit, regardless or whether the move is up, down, or lateral; your loyalty takes a double hit when you move laterally - once for leaving your current school, and again for moving to a school in the same division (and thus in direct competition with your former school).

Our Loyalty (and Reputation) scores are stored as floating point numbers in a database, but are represented to us as letter grades.  The point hit our Loyalty takes when moving to another school is the same, regardless of how good a coach a person is, or how long they've been at the school they're leaving.  However, if you've been at a school for a long time, your loyalty score in the database would be fairly high, and you'd see very little, if any (depending on how long you've been at the school), change in your Loyalty letter grade.

You can also let your team go to sim at the end of the season and pick up a new school (I am under the impression that that cancels out job move penalties (but if you do it at DIA you're gonna get nailed and only be eligible for a DIAA school.)  

As proof... look through my Stagg resume...  outside of Moravian... I have not stayed in one place for more than 2 seasons and my loyalty is A+  WITH lateral moves

There is a opening at a school closer to home. Will the hit in rep affect my recruiting?

Posted by jacore3 on 11/28/2012 5:00:00 PM (view original):
There is a opening at a school closer to home. Will the hit in rep affect my recruiting?

Only your Loyalty will take a hit when you move, and I believe that only affects job changes.  

Your Reb depends on how well you keep any recruiting promises you've made (FR and SO starts and playing time), and how well you distribute playing time and starts among your other players.  Among other things, your Rep factors in (minor) to how easy it is to get a recruit to sign with you.