With all the talk about Elites and the various circumstances surrounding them - achieving an Elite job, keeping an Elite job, Elite advantage, how Elites are determined (static currently), I wanted to put together a thread where we could take a collaborative approach to try to hash out a dynamic Elite system. Such a system was proposed by carpediem33 (Brad, are you out there? If so, your input would be invaluable) many, many seasons ago and I am trying to resurrect the topic. With the game getting an update at some undetermined time in the future, now is the time to get in there and fix things while the hood is up.

Back when carpe proposed his system, I worked with him and wrote some macros to collect the data and score all the teams as a "trial run" for his system. This lead to some tweaks to the system and we came to something fairly agreeable. My aim here is to create another such system that could be proposed to WIS.

If we have a good, fair system that maintains many of the elements that WIS began with and is one that the community can unify behind, I think there's at least a decent chance they'll listen to our input.

So, please begin here and post your ideas about how a dynamic Elite system should/could work. Please keep all posts on-topic. I don't want to have to police the thread, but if this devolves into another mud-slinging contest, I will redline unquestionably. Other than that, all reasonable ideas and proposals will be considered. I'd like this to be an "open source development" style.

I'll have to dig around for my old materials and I'll post more once I've got my thoughts and materials more organized. I'm anxious to hear everyone's thoughts - vet or newbie.

Well, Since they already have a prestige system worked out. They could just rank every program over the last 5-10 (not sure what the best number is here, maybe 7?) seasons and the top 12 are "elite"

NC's count for a lot but also things like # of wins, players selected in the draft, Level 4/5 bowls, CC's etc etc.

I think that would be fairly interesting and they could send out "emails" once it happens

"Hey, coach, it looks like you've built this program into one of the nation's elite"

or, conversely,

"Well, it looks like you've let the program slip. We're just a run of the mill program now."

Granted, the latter should also accompany a pink slip.

It just seems to me like the formulas and inner workings are already there to do "my" system that its just stubbornness that they don't.

Within the pervasive universe of the game, wouldn't it make sense for programs that are true dynasties become elites rather than basing them on successful real life programs.

As such, one or two "decades" of flirting with or gaining BCS bowl bids should establish a program as elite, just as failing to do so for too many seasons in a row could drop a school back to earth.

A real life example is Florida State, which I remember as a force to be reckoned with in the early 1990s, but haven't heard so much as a peep from for the last few years. The Peter Warrick days were unquestionably elite and would have had many of the top recruits automatically considering them. Their performance the last couple years, however, likely works against them as top recruits may not want to play for a program they perceive as on a downward slide.

A true elite system, however, would likely require 32 professional teams being introduced...

I've never played outside of DIII, but it seems once elites are settled, then slight advantages in home games, recruit preferences, and little more recruiting dollars should be given to the elites. Also, maybe a little something that gets them into lvl 4/5 bowl games more readily or improves their rankings artificially, like real life elites. Ie. a 11-2 elite with an SOS of 10 would get more thought than a 12-1 with SOS of 20.

I do think that owners that build up elites into dynasties should be retired after 20-30 seasons. Even Bowden eventually retired. Maybe after a coach is retired, the program takes a minor hit in some way for the incoming coach, such is real life.

Quote: Originally posted by cygnusx1 on 2/22/2010I do think that owners that build up elites into dynasties should be retired after 20-30 seasons. Even Bowden eventually retired. Maybe after a coach is retired, the program takes a minor hit in some way for the incoming coach, such is real life.

In real life people get old and die. If we forced people to retire in GD soon the company would go out of business.

I am going based off a response that I got from WIS. I made a suggestion and they said it was not possible because prestige is a slide scale, you want to raise the prestige bar of a school you move the scale upward, if you want to lower prestige move the bar downwards. If you put forth a suggestion outside of the ability of the game then you will most likely get the same response as I did.

I think the best thing WIS could do now is simply explain how the current system works.

The common perception of the elite system seems so far from the reality right now I think it does the game a disservice. There are plenty of users who think they can't compete at IA without being at an elite.

This is exactly what we need, gt.

Get rid of the elites as we now know them and come up with a better system. I really like what satnightride discussed. I think an elite should first have to be earned and then maintained instead of being able to hold onto elite status forever.

In real life, Boise State could now be considered an elite or at least close and Michigan should drop down as should Florida St.

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unclevic - can you actually find instances of teams like Boise, Kansas, Air Force, Iowa St, Troy St actually winning enough games/championships/high bowls to qualify for elite status? I would be surprised if you find any sort of consistent run of success for those teams in a mature world.


Why does this have to be overcomplicated? All that really needs to be done is to take the elite distinction out of a sliding scale. Make a dynamic prestige system where (and this is just arbitrarily using a scale to 100) a non-BCS school can range anywhere from 30-70, and a BCS school can range anywhere from 55-100 or so. All you need is some overlap to allow for good non-BCS and bad BCS programs, just program in some kind of multiplier to determine non-BCS prestige as compared BCS prestige. No elite distinction needed. It works at all the other levels without an elite distinction; it should be easy as heck to implement at DIA. No need to clarify which schools are elite at which times; just leave it like all the other levels, where owners can figure out who the "elite" programs are by looking at the level of recent success.

Then all you have to do is announce a date when you're switching to the new system (probably something like 3 months, aka 2 seasons, in advance) and say "at that point, DIA will switch over to an elite-free prestige system, and prestige at that point will be computed the same as other divisions, with a .75 multiplier applied to non-BCS schools to determine their prestige." If an elite has been very successful recently, nothing changes; if the elite has been average, they'll be looking at lower prestige. And so on and so forth for non-elites; if someone like Rutgers has 4 conf titles and 3 level 5 bowl wins in the last 5 years they'll probably have a very high status.

Then, you tie firings to prestige in an inverse relationship; the higher the prestige, harder it is to keep a job. WIS creates levels within the prestige (IMO they should be hidden levels, like prestige itself, but that's debatable - you could have an AD send you a message that says something like "due to our recent success, we have very high standards/sky high standards/average standards, etc.) and when the prestige crosses that line the job becomes harder to keep. You can leave the old "prestige doesn't change for first 2/3 years if win total/WIS ranking goes up" or whatever, but clearly the standards in general have to be toughened.

This could be a little tricky; you probably have to judge the coach for hiring/firing based on what prestige was when he got the job (aka a coach starts with 100 prestige, so difficult to keep the job; he has a bad season, prestige falls to 90, suddenly the job is technically easier to keep because prestige has fallen) or you just have to lag the hiring/firing prestige like two seasons behind real prestige (team reaches 100 prestige in season 41, but firing standards don't reach that toughest level in 43 or 44, for example).


So I hope that's clear enough; others can flesh it out or ask questions if it's confusing. Making fluid elite status is easy, because it just means mirroring the other levels; it's making the firing/hiring standards just as fluid that will be tougher.

Quote: Originally posted by da_goat on 2/22/2010This is exactly what we need, gt. Get rid of the elites as we now know them and come up with a better system. I really like what satnightride discussed. I think an elite should first have to be earned and then maintained instead of being able to hold onto elite status forever. In real life, Boise State could now be considered an elite or at least close and Michigan should drop down as should Florida St.

In comparison to GD I think in real life a elite would be a team that would have a chance of winning the national championship. In the current system I don't think Boise St has a chance of winning a National Championship so I would not consider them a elite school. Until they prove otherwise I would consider them a top school. To me its like saying Lebron James is the greatest player to have ever played basketball, he still has a little way to go in my mind.

Fluffery from a rookie coach~ never played in 1A but love AA- II-III. Hate BCS anti-playoffs with 15 max games a season. Elite status in any world should be earned like Vision.

"Dynamic Elite System" sounds like some infomercial about buying some glorified pull up bar for 3 easy payments of $89.99

But yea, you guys should just like totally get your **** together, vacate half the teams cause none of you deserve them and half of you cheat because you have multiple ids. Also, help me recruit, game plan and show me how to pass.

Quote: Originally Posted By unclevic on 2/22/2010Then you'll need to address what to do when elites bunch up in geographical areas and/or conferences, because in the same way that nothing grows where Bambi goes, no other D1A schools will be viable within or near a cluster of elites that floated together

What? Like Penn State, Notre Dame, and Ohio State all in the same division? That would never happen in GD now, right?