I was reading some small conference CC about how a coach didn't like prestige and it sparked an idea for me: Get rid of prestige.  I know what you're thinking: that is a terrible idea.  Hear me out, it's not as silly as it sounds.  

Right now, I think everyone can agree that the big 6 conferences are too good.  With all the postseason money they rake in along with all of their prestiges staying high because of baseline prestige, it is extremely hard to compete with them.  There needs to be some way to even the playing field.

Here is my proposal for recruiting:

-Recruit Generation (which needs to be slightly altered, but I am okay with for now) stay relatively the same
-Post-season money stays the same
-Schools no longer have prestige grades, instead, they have different categories.   
 These categories would consist of:
1) Tradition (This would be similar to our current prestige, although it would go back 20 or 25 seasons instead of just 10 or so, very much like a floating baseline)
2) Recent Performance (How you performed in the last 4 or 5 seasons)
3) Academics-This is something I've always wanted to see have more impact in the game-It would not hold much weight compared to the other two, but the Ivy schools and the Standfords/Vaderbilts/Michigans of the world would have some little help in this area.  Like Tradition and Recent Performance, Academics can change.  Depending on what your players' average GPAs are, your academic performance would go up or down.  

Here's where the big differentiation is that I believe would help smaller schools to compete:  Players have weighted interests in the above 3 categories.  For example, some recruit might value tradition very highly, so he might be more likely to go to a traditional powerhouse.  Some other recruit might not value tradition or recent performance but would value academics highly, so he might end up going to an Ivy league school even if he's above Ivy league talent level.  There may be a player who does not value any of these things, so it would just be a straight up bidding war for him, so he could be the #1 target of a C+ school and they could out-recruit an A- school where he might be option #3.  

I know this could never happen, but it's just an idea I couldn't get out of my head so I had to post it here.  

I like it! I Actually have posted an idea similar to this before.  I like the weighted part, and when going on a campus visit you could choose which category you wanted to emphasize.  I think we should keep prestige though and make it a whole different category and also playing time could be a category.  But why couldnt this actually happen?

need more categories


tradition

recent performance

academics

weather

parties

women

skiing

women

college environment

women

I'm still not 100% buying into the argument that recruit generation is making mid majors uncompetitive.

Look at this team, who made the F4 last season, with 6 SRs that he recruited with at D prestige:

http://whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/History.aspx?tid=4493

Sounds basically like EA college game recruiting

Posted by mjp8 on 3/2/2012 3:24:00 PM (view original):
Sounds basically like EA college game recruiting

Yeah just like NCAA basketball video games basically

I don't think a complete overhaul of the recruiting system is necessary. Fill the mid-major conferences with human coaches, instead of having them mostly sim, and you'd go a long ways towards making them more competitive, thanks to the resulting boost in conference prestige. The A-10, CUSA and MWC have been pretty strong in some worlds where they've filled up.

Offensive and defensive system should be included as well. 

Exactly my thoughts tkimble. I was a proponent of player personalities forever; this is a fantastic idea. I'd like a couple more categories though with playing time being one of them. Every player should know whether they want immediate playing time, it's a huge deal to some high school recruits. 

Posted by tianyi7886 on 3/2/2012 3:15:00 PM (view original):
I'm still not 100% buying into the argument that recruit generation is making mid majors uncompetitive.

Look at this team, who made the F4 last season, with 6 SRs that he recruited with at D prestige:

http://whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/History.aspx?tid=4493

yeah and somehow only went to a B+

I like the academics aspect very much. But it may also need 2 types of recruits: The playahs and the student athletes. Playahs would be the guys who have low academic standards but want to play for a powerhouse, and student athletes would have moer weight on the academic situation. Could be very interesting.

I limited the amount of categories because I didn't want it to be too over complicated.  I also don't like the idea of "pitching" anything to a recruit because then it just becomes EA recruiting.  

How about Fan base?

Posted by tkimble on 3/2/2012 6:26:00 PM (view original):
I limited the amount of categories because I didn't want it to be too over complicated.  I also don't like the idea of "pitching" anything to a recruit because then it just becomes EA recruiting.  

Very true, and that system gets old pretty fast. 

I think getting a job at a mid major is a bit more difficult than it should be.  Especially when they are being coached by a SIM and they suck.  If a coach is consistently over .500 at a lower level school and somebody like UWGB has not had a winning season in a decade why in the world wouldn't the coach be qualified?  If there is more than one coach applying for the job the one with the better credentials would still get the job, but this way you would have more humans at the bigger D1 schools and to take it a step farther more humans in D1 as a whole.