There are 12 conferences in the D2 world. These are my opinions on the competitiveness of the conferences. Of the 12 I find 6 that are controlled by a super team and those 6 teams will unlikely never be dethroned as long as wish to stay. Should the present coach leave if the team is picked up by a competent coach the dynasty will continue. In my opinion it is not possible or the very least highly improbably that the some other team can capture the conference title. Here are some stats. In the past 10 seasons those 6 teams have captured 54 of the 60 conference titles. In the last 5 seasons they have captured 29 of 30 titles. Of those 6 teams 4 have captured all 10. What makes these dynasties unbeatable? Vision. They continue to recruit the best talent, supported by the padded budgets from participating deep into the playoffs and then having their players attributes benefit from playing more games. If you play 3 or 4 more games than your conference mates each year it is like having your entire squad redshirted for a season. It really is a rigged game. I see only one way to equal this out. That is by having each school be allowed to recruit from the same pool of players. Season after season my conference mate finishes his recruiting and his list of players is almost completely made up of players out of my vision. Since the implementation of 3.0 player quality appears to be the most important factor for success. No matter what game plan setup is created it can not overcome the advantage of player quality. That is why when decent teams go up against these super teams they end up not being able to run or pass and you end up with the spread being 50, 60, 70 or more points. Before 3.0 there was a lot of comments on the randomness of the game where less teams would pull upsets. That doesn't happen anymore. Now the good news is there are 5 conferences where there is not yet a super team and teams still have an opportunity to be that team then joining the small select group of constant coaches fighting for the National Title. I know that is only 11 conferences. Well, the PSAC is a different animal. Right now I see 2 teams that control the conference and we will see if Mansfield can join in. I don't see WIS making any changes to the recruiting process so good luck if you are mired in one of the closed conferences. I am trying everything I know of without success. These are my opinions, not facts. I am interested in your thoughts.

At least in my experience, GDI has always been this way. You have dynasties that will exist until you knock them off. This is really not a new thing.

I see two things that you need to suceed in my opinion:

1. Be an excellent recruiter. Let's take last recruiting season for example. Not one human team had worse vision than West Alabama...that is a simple fact. Yet, I finished ranked (GD Reports) 39th in Div II. You ranked 30th and I bet you had tons more visions than I had. I am not patting myself on the bask as much as I am pointing out vision is very, very important...but it is not a defining factor with success if you can recruit.

2. Play the game as it is designed. You are running the ball too much, you are not recruiting to a running game and you are not redshirting to a running game. My personal opinion is this engine is designed for the pass and it would take a very special effort to develop a run game. If you are going to run the ball, have a plan to run the ball and recruit to that gameplan. Personally, I would just pass the ball.

I will say that I am very tempted to recruit, redshirt and develop West Alabama into a running team. Based on reading the forums...much better coaches than I have tried that tactic and moved to the pass. I am guessing they discovered something that I will discover...so I am probably going to just skip to a pass game.

Anyway...those are my opinions. Most coaches have better records than I have...so take my comments with a grain of salt and pepper.

Good luck.

It's true that the game is set up such that success breeds success. Depending on your situation, and ability, it can be overcome. At worst, your team should be winning 12-13 games every year without breaking a sweat...depending if you cross conference play narcowin. A couple of playoff wins and you are at 14-15 wins = pretty much at max vision.

The problem you described really hits home when there are a bunch of good teams in your conference. I can't overcome that as witnessed by my 10 years in Rockne Div 2. Not one championship or conference championship. I would never succeed in Warner PSAC


...in fact your history contradicts your post.Not too long ago your team won 12 conference championships in a row. Yet you were dethroned even having all the advantages you listed.

First let me say I appreciate your comments nitros. To your second point first. It might be that I don't have a specific plan. I look to get the best players possible. Can you move back and forth from run to pass? Look at Quincy last season. They had been a passing team that switched to a heavy run team and then in one year back to passing. I may not grasp the best way to set up the game plan with running or passing or recognize how to best utilize the players I have. When you see how lyonsfan destroyed me with the pass this past game I can see why passing may be the way to go. Then again nacorwin has destroyed me with the running game. And to be honest I passed the ball more than I ran it this season. To your first point I am not sure that is valid. I had only 7 openings this year and 2 of those 7 were provided by the AD. I am not complaining about my situation with recruiting as it is my choice to be at Northern but it is a unique and difficult place to recruit. I think recruiting may be the best part of my game. I very seldom have a recruit within my 100 mile radius and not that many within my 250 mile radius. And most of those that are in the radius are not worth recruiting. Half the recruits I will look at are 1000 miles away so I have to really be conservative with my budget. For instance, last season I was battling for a DL from Iowa with ESUP. After the initial signings the battle continued. For me losing him was not an option. He was ranked number 17 by the Guess reports. The only DL in my vision rated above him was Curtis Kim. He was ranked 16. ESUP lost that battle. I don't know if it was a big deal but I can tell you he had 18 recruits that I could see in my D1AA list that were committed to him. Most of those were not in my D2 vision. Now my thought process for the post was once a team reaches super status can they be dethroned. You are in one of the 6 conferences I don't see that happening. I would love for you to prove me wrong. That would give hope I could hold. Good nitros.

Realist, again let me say I appreciate your response. Let me say some of what you say is true but you are not looking at the whole picture. It is true that nacorwin had to surpass me. As I mentioned the change was when we went from 2.0 to 3.0. I handled that very poorly. I did not recognize what was important. Then I did not recognize my vision dropped and I had a bad recruiting session. I don't think I ever recovered. I use to run all formations, passing and running out of all. I had success. So much so I built my team from scratch and dethroned vick12. If you were not around at the time he was one of the most successful coaches here at Warner d2. I can beat the sims but that means a low SOS which hurts positioning. Playing top teams and I have to break more than a sweat to win 13 games. Wins are also not the only factor in vision. Conference Championships and playoff wins contribute to your vision. As far as max vision read above as I am so far from max vision it is pathetic. You are right when you have to fight a lot of teams in your conference. The PSAC is really unique. They have 5-6 teams rated and in the playoffs each season. That brings in a lot of cash. Then have you noticed Pennsylvania has recruits like dandelions in the spring. They are all over the place. I feel so blessed I got one out of there last season. I will be interested to see if you will continue to control your conference. I think you will.

I think there are a few things going on with vision. Before one has max vision, there are a lot of good players. When I was building up my team, I increased my vision the first few years. But, I could always find players I liked that were in the lower vision. There is a big difference between second best vision to best vision. I'll try to say why below.

The jump from me from second best vision to top vision was a combination of luck and skill. My first conference title occurred with an inferior team. Ranger and I joked (although he might not have found it funny) because there were a few years in a row where he had a ton of turnovers in the title game against me. My first title cam because of fumbles. Then there were a few years where his QB only threw int's against me. 4 interceptions against me and non the rest of the time. I also got a nice draw in the tournament and had a freak game in the round of 8 against a much better team where I came back from 13 down in the last 2 minutes with a kickoff return, a fumble and a long TD as the game ended. I was in the game - I think - because of a great game plan. But, luck played a huge part.

Once I had top vision, recruiting was helped in two ways. First, access to better players. Second, if I lost a battle, there was a pool of really good players that I could get late as a backup plan because only 4 teams could see them. I lost top vision a few seasons ago. Now, if I lose a battle, my backups are not as good and lots of people are going after them.This means I have to save more money for the end which hurts my battles. Ranger just fights. This means he wins some, but also means he takes sims sometimes. We can argue which is a better strategy, but the vision plays a major role.

All that said, I think that it should stay the way it is. I know I can get back to top vision if I can get an upset or two. If I could change anything, it would be the WIS ranking algorithm. I wish the seeding was a little more representative of the actual talent level of the teams.

Nacorwin is being humble. He put together a great plan and deserves the success he has had. That being said I believe it should change. It won't.

When I started with University of Wisconsin-Platteville in season 82 dessasdad and indiansrck owned the WIAC. UWP hadn't had a human coach in 20 years. I won 3 CCs in 5 years and 2 national titles in 8 years. Starting from scratch and at bottom vision.

Moving to Quincy, I wanted St. Joseph's but dawdled and ended up at Quincy who had been a Sim for 30 of the last 35 years. Lane had won 40 of 41 CCs in a row. ChampOU had won 2 of the last 5 national titles. In my 6th season I beat champ and ended up beating him 6 of 7 times after that, winning 12 of 13 CCs. With bottom vision.

My point? Dynasties are not invincible. Recruiting is the key. The rest of the game combined is less important than recruiting. If you can recruit well (my best strength) and understand the strengths of the engine (less my strength) you will create your own dynasty.

My post was sort of a reply to nitros and realist. One can build up. However, you have to be both good and lucky.

Bry, I agree with some of what you wrote. I also think that D3 is much different than D2. Talent is much more equally spread out. Also, players are not as good so they develop much more. I can be a top 15 team only recruiting within 360 miles at D3. I can't be a top 25 team only recruiting within 500 miles at my current spot.

All that said, I think one needs to recruit well. Once one has top 15 talent, I think game planning and smartly setting up training matters. It gives one the best chance at the important upset or two that can gain you top vision.

I agree nacorwin that d3 and d2 are two completely different animals completely. D3 is really more of a player development sim because battling is virtually impossible there - so you get what you get and you live with it.

Though recruiting is probably the most important part of this game, I think that game planning really does mean a lot. I've had troubles with teams that I've definitely had more talent than and blown out teams that I either didn't have much of an edge on or were equal to. I continue to mostly get creamed by top talent and my team's talent is starting to get close to some of those teams so I'd think those games would be closer. I honestly think I'm just getting out-witted, as much as I hate to admit it. The problem is you can only figure out so much from studying the game by looking at other coaches tactics. I think the biggest thing you have to do is be willing to try a lot of different, sometimes crazy plans and ideas just to see what works best against some seemingly unstoppable forces. Lots and lots of trial and error. That's tough to do when you only have so many games to do so each season without scheduling a monster ooc every year. To me, when a team that really shouldn't beat my team just based on talent or vice versa me doing it to another team, that proves that it's possible to take down such dynasties. You also have to keep in mind that there really aren't a lot of coaches willing to stick around all that long to dedicate the time to study, keep studying and make the commitment of taking down these dynasties. Just my two cents. Believe me, I'm very frustrated as well while I can't figure out how to stop these all passing attacks when other teams are stopping mine just fine. Learning takes a lot of time and patience unfortunately.

If you think vision is unfair, which I don't, BTW, you should move up to D1A, where all the teams can see all the players.

The biggest problem with recruiting is not vision, but all the sims. Look at the recruits as if there were no sims. How many recruits do you not even look at because of sims. Distance recruiting was a lot more prevalent, because there were no sims.

Back in the day, when the worlds were full, recruiting was a lot more fair, there were no runaway teams, and making the playoffs meant something more than it does now.

In terms of top vision, there's only a couple of teams that have it. Maybe 4 a season. Not every player that is in the top vision is better than the players that are in the vision of more teams. It's all sorted by overall rating, so if they have high durability, the player isn't really worth it. When you're in that next group down, which has about 10 teams or so, you can collect some very high quality players, difference makers. But, I will say that there are players that I pass on that would be good fits for other teams, and they don't get signed. If you have engaged coaches at the top, its hard at D2. You need some good fortune. I was lucky that Slippery Rock went zombie. D1AA, for example, has downward pressure from the D1A teams that you don't get from the D1AA teams down to D2 as it stands now. It makes for more interesting recruiting and more challenging, but it helps to close the gap, based on how you recruit.

It has been proven that a good coach can take a team from dead last to competing for conference and national championships in 7-8 seasons, the better the starting talent and vision the less time that it takes. To go from all Sim to consistently winning usually takes four seasons, time enough to clear out all of the Sim recruits, it is roster alignment and depth charts that take the most time to adjust into a dynasty caliber winning team. Most new coaches do not have the patience to build a team from scratch, in order to do that you must make sacrifices that make winning early very hard if not impossible. Thus the tendency is to take over programs that have already been built, then all that you have to do is maintain them to win games. The problem with this is that by taking this shortcut it makes it a lot harder to learn the fundamentals of what makes a good team, without this basic knowledge and understanding the program that they took over begins to suffer and become weaker, at some point that coach will probably opt to take over another program and abandon the struggling team. This will go on until that coach learns enough to maintain a team at a high enough level to win occasional championships. There are only a handful of coaches in this game who have put in the time, efforts and sacrifices that it takes to build a dynasty from nothing and dominate the competition with it, and they could do it with any team in any world at any time, because they have done what it takes to understand how the game works and what it takes to win, and they would win their share of championships even if they started at the very bottom in a conference that was held captive by a reigning dynasty. The game does as you say, favor the winner. But the door is always open to the patient and the knowledgeable! My advice is not to always try and find a shortcut to winning, instead read the available material in the forums and on web sites and learn how to build a winning team from nothing, When you can go from zero to hero in eight seasons or less, that's two complete change outs of players on your roster, then you will be ready to play and win anywhere against any opponent in the game.