Hi guys, I'm pretty new to HD. I inherited a team last year as a second try at HD, still without knowing a ton about the game. I'm realizing this year I somehow have 8 seniors on my squad. Isn't the maximum 6 in a class? Not only does this seem impossible, but it also appears that it will harm me next season -- obviously I'll need to recruit at max 6 freshman and 2 JUCOs, but I'm reading that:

There is a maximum recruiting budget which is the equivalent of the monies you would receive for having 6 open scholarships.

So next season I'll need to get 8 players with the money for 6. Any thoughts/advice?

There is no class limit when Sim does the recruiting. Although, I think it's nonsense, it's to create more of a balance between human teams and sim teams.

Yeah, you could recruit 6 freshman next year and either take a couple of walkons, which isn't the worst thing, as long as you aren't a FB/FCP team or recruit a couple of JUCO's or transfers to balance it off.

As far as giving you any other advice, it would depends on your goals and what you're trying to accomplish with the team.

There's no rule you have to take 6 freshmen in your situation. You can take a mix of freshmen, JUCO's and transfers and balance out your classes a lot quicker if you choose to go that route.

I hate that SIMs can have more than 6 players in a class because when they all graduate then they'll be AWFUL the following season. If they're in your division then you gotta play a 300+ RPI team twice in a season.

I think you're in a good spot actually in terms of rebuilding. This allows you to get your guys much quicker and get rid of terrible SIMs. I think getting 8 guys with money for 6 is very doable as long as you don't get yourself into too many battles. I'd focus on long term personally so get some stud freshmen first and then round out the class with transfer/JUCOs. You're probably not going to be competing right away so don't be afraid to take a walk on. Better to take the walk on than recruit mediocre players who will be on your team for 4 seasons. My 2 cents.

Thanks for the advice! I'm still getting used to recruiting so I think my worry was that getting 8 guys for the cost of 6 would be difficult, but if having a few walk-ons doesn't cause a huge problem I'll just let these guys leave and see what I can do with the next class! I'm not super worried about competing now, just enjoying learning the game and trying not to make too many stupid mistakes, so I think making sure I don't get stuck with bad players for four years is what I'll shoot for.

I've done 10-11 guys for the cost of 6 several times. Here are a few keys to successfully recruiting a big class:

-- Your freshmen should be from nearby (~300 miles or fewer). You need to save money and recruit cost-effectively and the easiest way to do that is with nearby freshmen. Use FSS and find some good diamonds in the rough. When recruiting 6 freshmen, I always envision them as a starting five with one redshirt. Regardless of your immediate team needs, make sure those freshmen can be a cohesive starting unit when they are seniors.

-- Because JUCOs/transfers are so spread out, it is going to cost more to recruit them. You have a smaller group of recruits, geographically scattered across the country and more teams looking at them (i.e. if I have a team in Ohio, I'm probably not recruiting a freshman PG in California; but if I need a JUCO PG, I am more likely to pursue one that is not geographically nearby). Most of my recruiting battles have come over JUCOs/transfers.

Too often, coaches in this situation kind of throw their hands up about JUCOs/transfers and just take whoever they can get right away. This is a mistake. The difference between a fast rebuild and a slow one will be the quality of those JUCOs. If you nab good JUCO players, you can be a good team by your second season -- you'll have good ex-JUCOs starting and a talented group of sophomores as backups. If you get mediocre/bad JUCO players, it will take an extra 1-2 seasons, until your freshmen class gets really good, for your team to be successful.

One trick I've learned about transfers -- check out the quality of the coach who cut them. My best transfers have always come from a rookie coach who fetishized overall ratings (as opposed to key attribute ratings) or who focused on what a player couldn't do instead of what they could do. If the coach who cut them is an experienced HD coach with a track record of success, I generally stay away. Those guys know what they are doing and generally aren't cutting useful players.

I have a question that relates to this
Does the recruiting budget thing count bonus money? Like if I have 6 open schollies can I not get any bonus money help?

Posted by MonsterTurtl on 3/22/2016 3:33:00 PM (view original):
I have a question that relates to this
Does the recruiting budget thing count bonus money? Like if I have 6 open schollies can I not get any bonus money help?

Yes, you get bonus money. If you are at D3, the max $$ you can receive is $18,000 (6 scholarships x $3,000), plus bonus money.

You can't have carryover if you have 6 open scholarships right

Posted by MonsterTurtl on 3/22/2016 4:49:00 PM (view original):
You can't have carryover if you have 6 open scholarships right

What do you mean? Any money remaining will be carried over, as long as you fill all of the scholarships.

I mean like if I have 6 incoming scholarships, I can't get any carryover from the last season, even if I filled my spots.

Posted by MonsterTurtl on 3/22/2016 5:48:00 PM (view original):
I mean like if I have 6 incoming scholarships, I can't get any carryover from the last season, even if I filled my spots.

carryover isn't determined by the number of openings, unless it's 0.

carryover is determined from the previous season.

you get 25% if you fill all your scholarships so if you have 3 openings and sign 3 guys with 1,000 left, you carry over 250 to next season.

if you take walkons you don't get any carryover no matter how much you have left.

if you have 0 open schollies you will carry over 100% to next season, so if the conference earned 3,000 in bonus money and you have no open scholarships, next season you will have the 3,000 from last season, the money from the open scholarships you have, and then the bonus money for this season. hence why classes like 6-6-0-0 and 6-0-6 are popular.

So carryover counts as bonus money? The whole maximum recruiting budget of what equals 6 open scholarships is what is confusing me.

Posted by MonsterTurtl on 3/22/2016 6:42:00 PM (view original):
So carryover counts as bonus money? The whole maximum recruiting budget of what equals 6 open scholarships is what is confusing me.

there is no maximum budget overall at any level. besides I guess all 12 conference teams advance to the S16, and then every team wins with an all conference E8,F4, NC game.

there is a maximum budget for what you can get in scholarship money.

at D3 you get 3,000 per scholarship so the max you can get is 18,000 since 6x3000 is 18,000

however you get bonus money each season which for some conferences at D3 can hit 5-7,000 extra, so 2 schools with 6 schollies open could have 18,000 in an empty conference compared to 25,000 in a top conference.

carryover is impossible to tell unless a coach mentions it. carryover doesn't count as bonus money, but bonus money can be carried over.

so lets assume we are running a 6-0-6-0 class structure.

so with our 6 man recruiting period we get 18,000 in scholarship money and say we get 3,000 in post season cash, so 21,000 total and we had 0 carryover.

Say we spend 17,000 and have 4,000 left over in bonus cash. which we carry over 1,000.

Next season we have 0 open schollies since we return all 12 players. so we don't get any scholarship money, but we have our 1,000 scholarship money and another 3,000 in post season cash. So there's 4,000 in cash we have, but we aren't going to cut anyone. We carry this over 100%

Our next 6 man recruiting period we have our 100% carryover of 4,000 our 18,000 scholarship money, and another 3,000 in post season cash, so we have 25,000 to recruit 6 scholarships.

Does that make sense?


Lets add in a very cool scenario. So in that last recruiting period we have 25,000 and sign 6 guys for a total of 9,000 and have 16,000 left over. We carry that over 25% which is 4,000.

So we head into next season with 0 scholarships open and 4,000 laying around and say the conference performed well and got 5,000 in bonus cash. So we have 9,000. we aren't going to do anything because we carry it over 100% since we have 0 scholarships open

This is when it gets fun, we now have another 6 man recruiting class and have our 9,000 carryover another 5,000 in bonus cash and our 18,000 in our scholarship money. So we have 6 openings and 32,000 in cash to recruit from.

You can start to see why structuring you're classes can be effective way to overload cash for recruiting.

The best I've done at D3 I believe is 23K for 3 scholarships and probably ~30K for scholarships.

We didn't even talk about running a 6-6-0-0 super class structure and if you have a elite conference you are going to be recruiting with insane money.

Posted by MonsterTurtl on 3/22/2016 6:42:00 PM (view original):
So carryover counts as bonus money? The whole maximum recruiting budget of what equals 6 open scholarships is what is confusing me.

You seem to be getting muddy responses; not all wrong, but muddy. I will try to give a clearer answer:

• Read the Player's Guide on bonus recruiting cash. For each open scholarship a school has (up to 6) it gets $ for that recruiting year plus carryover from the prior year; plus conference bonus cash awarded from the most recent offseason. The carryover & bonus cash are not limited by the number of available scholarships.
• SimAI-coached schools are not subject to the 6 per class limitation that humans are. IMHO, there is no reason that they should be.
• You've got 8 seniors. So, next season you will not receive compensating budget for 2 of those that graduate. What does that suggest you should do now?

Answer: Choose a senior that will complement the 4 that you will return next season, but will not play much this year and is all "red" in remaining potential, and REDSHIRT that player! His Work Ethic rating will go down to 1, but, if he's already developed, it doesn't matter! That way, next season, you will return 5 (a potential starting lineup) and you will lose zero budget for next season's recruiting.