I've had a few sitemails asking a few questions and hopefully this answers some of them.
I've used the iguana username since season 1 in Allen.
The oldwarrior name was created by my brother and after a couple seasons he basically lost interest in the game.
I picked up his team and finished out the 5 seasons he had purchased.
I don't think I ever tried to hide the identity that I had multiple usernames and dozens of coaches knew me by both user accounts.
That final fifth season I actually had two D2 teams in Allen and was intrigued by the prospect of moving to D1 but also really had a soft spot for the Delta State team.
Ironically the Delta State team wasn't as successful as the Hillsdale team under the oldwarrior name. Hillsdale was coming off a Final Four and the recruiting class was strong enough to lead the subsequent coach to the NT championship game.
So I moved to D1 with the iguana username, and the oldwarrior username got the Delta State team. It could just as easily been oldwarrior moving to D1 and Iguana staying at Delta State.
About 15 seasons later I was moving from BYU to Marquette. It was a strong Horizon conf with myself, oldresorter, majresorter, dogget and a few other solid coaches. Back in those days it wasn't unusual for us to send 4-5 teams to the NT and for those 8-10 seasons the Horizon was as strong as any mid-major. Majresorter won a NT with Cleveland State, other reached the Final Four or Elite 8.
Potential rolled out and I actually asked Customer Service if there was an issue with my having two teams in the same world, in different divisions. No problem at all, they were 700 miles apart. They mentioned the distance, I didn't. I thought there maybe was an unspoken 700 mile rule.
Reacting to the changes made in recruit generation, I moved to Michigan State about 30 seasons ago.
Now faced with the option of dropping my Delta State team after 60+ seasons, or moving from A+ Michigan State to a B- prestige team (which was the best open D1 team 1000+ miles from Delta State). If I did not make a choice, I would be removed at season end.
* Could they transfer my resume? No.
* Nothing they could do? I had almost a combined 100 seasons invested in these two teams.
* I asked if I could take the Arizona job if it opened (which was 1000+ miles from Delta) even though some of the Arizona FSS states would obviously help Delta. Yes, Arizona would be fine.
* Did they forsee this rule possibly changing to another arbitrary distance in the future?
* In the future, how much of a reality is free scouting of all states as they've mentioned? There are recruiting changes in the future but they wouldn't disclose what those could be.
After that song and dance, and not knowing if the current arbitrary distance of 1000 miles could be changed on a whim to 2000 or 700 next week or next year, I just decided to pack it in.
I do regret throwing in the towel on my Delta State team last season. I think they had a 56 season stretch of making the NT and that final ghost team went 5-22, also having the prestige drop from A+ to B-. Even had to remove a redshirt on a potential 820+ player to be able to transfer a season to Rupp.
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I'd also like to touch on my b*stard-like "stealing" of a recruit by Michigan State from Henderson State (which is in the Gulf South Conf with my Delta State team).
First, the player was pretty good. Ended up with a 840 rating, starting two seasons at MSU and made second team all conference. Probably 90% of the D1 teams would have taken him if they knew the potentials.
So it wasn't a discussion on whether the player was D1 worthy.
How did I choose that recruit? The morning of signings I had one open scholarship and over $80,000 in recruiting. I scouted 11 additional states looking for a PF/C.
sent out about $10,000 in a first wave of evaluations. I then targeted four recruits for additional scouting.
This recruit was one of them. Word on the Street said he was leaning to Oral Roberts.
After a few more evaluations he and about 3 other recruits were considering me.
This guy had 7 high-high potentials. I offered a scholarship, went into the lead, and he signed after a campus visit.
I never realized that Henderson State (barretchap), was recruiting this guy against a human D1 team until after he signed.
I don't know if Henderson St could have beaten out Oral Roberts. Possibly, as I don't know how much Oral Roberts was willing to dump on this guy.
Maybe Henderson State had dumped a bunch of cash into the guy after the Word on the Street came out and Oral Roberts wasn't leading.
I also don't know if Oral Roberts or Henderson State backed off when MSU showed up on the recruit that morning.
I apologized to barretchap, and he said he was sorry it was even brought up in the forums.
There really wasn't much I could do at that point.
I offered to provide a screen shot of MSU's FSS screen to show I wasn't using Delta State scouting information.
I even offered to rescind the guy after the next season.
I've been overly cautious to avoid this since then. I no longer scouted the nation looking for hidden gems with MSU. The last roster I had didn't have a guy more than 200 miles from Lansing.
I even held off on what looked like a sleeper 40 miles from MSU because a D2 conference mate (elmossle at Lincoln Memorial) was battling another D2 team for him. I kicked myself for that one as D1 Mississippi came in and took him from the two D2's.