Posted by damauler12 on 4/28/2012 4:01:00 PM (view original):
Reid!

GUESS will rate this guy around top 20 at Safety. I have him ranked 4th in my rankings before factoring in potential...so this is not a guy I can just find anywhere...

Posted by slid64er on 4/28/2012 3:42:00 PM (view original):

Posted by grindi on 4/28/2012 12:25:00 PM (view original):
This will be controversial because the guys that do it get indignant about it so I'll just state my point of view and leave it at that.  Any personal attacks, name calling or ungentlemanly behavior in general will reported  I don't intend to answer anything because this is how I view it and you won't change it.  There will be people that agree and people that disagree.  So be it.  No need to get personal about it.  You'll never convince me that there isn't enough talent out there to NOT go after guys that are green.  Battle over guys that come up yellow.  But if another coach has a guy green (he shows up red to you), leave him alone.  Especially in the 1 or 2 cycles before signing.

Point number 1.  When a guy is green on the last day of signing and you go after him, you are poaching or sniping whatever you want to call it.  It is totally unnecessary to go after another coaches recruits.  There is PLENTY of talent out there.  I find most of my STLs AFTER signing is well under way.  Since I have published this certain coaches have made sure to check my guys and my brothers' guys that are green and we regularly get the same guys poaching our recruits which leaves us less money to go after the STLs.  So I KNOW for a fact there are better guys still undecided out there than we have or they want .  Most of the times when they are successful, yea they got a good recruit . but we do well enough it doesn't hurt our teams.  That is not true for everyone.
 
Point 2.  What sniping does is to show me that the other coach(s) are not very talented in their own recruiting.  Here is my reasoning on that.  My brother and I NEVER do it and we have very good teams.  Maybe as one coach put it, it is effective for winning an NC but is that because his team got so much better by sniping or because he weakens his opponents by sniping?   For me it is a detriment to the game.  If I have to screw somebody else over to get my enjoyment out of a GAME?  Well to me it just doesn't compute.  Time to do something else.

Point 3.  There is already so much apathy in this game, that screwing with another coach is like putting one more nail in the coffin.  Look at it from his side.  He works his butt off to get the SIMs off,  He invests a bunch of money in the guy.  He is in that goup of teams struggling to make the playoffs.  He finally has a decent crop of recruits and then the teams with the prestige come in late and snatch them out from under him.  He's low on cash and ends up getting SIM players.  How much of that do you think the guy is going to tolerate before leaving?  And I don't blame him when he goes.  Again,  There are NOT that many human teams per World.  There is MORE than enough talent to go around by picking just undecideds and SIMs.  Look at how good some of the SIM players have gotten to be.  It's because humans have overlooked those guys.  The proof is right under our noses yet certain coaches will defend their right to snipe.  Well true you can but should you?  If you consider yourself a top recruiter there should be no need for it.  It would be different IF the Worlds were full but right now the only readon to do it is to screw up somebody else.  Gino and I have a rating system tweaked from yatzrs but at the end of the recruit I see TOP guys in both yatzrs and ours that go undrafted.  Where is the need to snipe?

So in closing.  I just plain don't do it.  My brother doesn't do it.  Jibe doesn't do it.  Even Gino won't unless somebody screws him first.  Yet look at our teams.  They are top competetive teams.  I just think it is wrong.  Knowing that there are a bunch of STLs out there after signing just amazes me that some coaches go after other teams green players.  To me that is just stupid.  I ALWAYS have 2-4 STLs on my teams.  I've seen time and time on here that people rarely even see them.  Do you think that maybe if you'd start looking at undecideds instead of other coaches Green recruits it might help find them?  Of course you could do what people do to my brother and I and just go through all our green ones just before signing and snag one.  That to me is just wrong and pathetic but that has been happening a lot.  I now put money into guys I don't even want, turn them green cheap, just so these unscrupulous coaches at least have to go through some rags to find my good guys.  It is money spent that could be going for STLs but I still have to have some good recruits.

This whole episode is getting interesting so I thought I'd throw in my .02.  This is not about having a recruit getting turned on the signing cycle where you do no have a chance to fight back.  I find this to be underhanded at best.  This is about a recruit who is turned before the signing cycle, which I find to be perfectly fine, though irritating when it happens to any of us.

1.  If all recruits were equal, I would agree with you.  They aren't.  Just because you cash spam recruits early doesn't mean they're yours.  If you believe what you say and you're finding all these great recruits after signings, don't whine, just move on.  The poachers aren't taking those recruits, you're more than welcome to them.  

2.  I don't think poaching is a sign of a poor recruiter.  I consider myself fairly successful and I've done it many times when a recruit I'm targeting is cash spammed by another coach early in the process.  They may be green to them, but I've also put cash into the recruit.  I see no reason to just chalk it up to wasted recruiting effort if I have excess cash and that recruit will improve my team.  It may weaken the other team, but that's secondary to strengthening my own team. 

3.  There is apathy in this game because the engine is terrible right now.  And, again, if you're seeing all these top guys after signings start, go ahead and sign them.  It has been very, very rare that i've seen recruits after signings that were better than my initial targets.  Maybe with the worlds as empty as they are now it's more common, but I find that highly unlikely unless your initial targeting is pretty low. 

If you don't want to keep getting poached, I would suggest that you retaliate.  Especially in D2 and D3, it's easy to destroy another coaches class.  If he keeps poaching, make it painful enough for them to quit doing it or to move on to another team.  Sometimes you have to use force to get your point across.  

 

Posted by flipdog0 on 4/28/2012 11:50:00 PM (view original):
If you are good and you are within 200 of me, you are mine

Posted by zedicus on 4/29/2012 7:26:00 AM (view original):
I can see the battling and sniping at DIA as there isn't the wealth of talent up there.  That is another reasob you get more recruiting dollars to start with. Guys aren't grown much.  There isn't a need for even high potential there.  Heck you may sign a guy this season and he leaves for the draft next season.  He could be poor potential and it doesn't matter.  An STL is almost meaningless.as he won't stay long enough to gain his potential.  But there IS plenty of talent at DII and DIII.  Even DIAA.  There is no need to do it.  People who do it there just are doing it to the detriment of the game.

Posted by zedicus on 4/28/2012 5:18:00 PM (view original):

Posted by damauler12 on 4/28/2012 4:01:00 PM (view original):
Reid!

GUESS will rate this guy around top 20 at Safety. I have him ranked 4th in my rankings before factoring in potential...so this is not a guy I can just find anywhere...

Too bad the only way you find these types of guys is by going through other coaches picks.

Posted by hughesjr on 4/29/2012 11:32:00 AM (view original):

Posted by zedicus on 4/28/2012 5:18:00 PM (view original):

Posted by damauler12 on 4/28/2012 4:01:00 PM (view original):
Reid!

GUESS will rate this guy around top 20 at Safety. I have him ranked 4th in my rankings before factoring in potential...so this is not a guy I can just find anywhere...

Too bad the only way you find these types of guys is by going through other coaches picks.

They are NOT other coaches picks.  Until they sign, they are unsigned.  Unsigned players can be recruited.

Why do you think there is a 7 day period to recruit?  If they wanted to make it so you got the player as soon as they turned green, they could have set it up that way.

Some people actually have to work for a living to make money to live.  They are not available every 3 hours to recruit.  They may only get to recruit 1 or 2 times a day.  Why would you think that a person who can recruit every 3 hours should have a built in advantage against someone who can only recruit in the evenings.

Do you think you are the only coach smart enough to determine that someone is a good player.  Do you think anyone is out there going, hey I was not going to even look at that guy ... but he is on zedicus's list now, so I better start looking at him?  NO, of course not.  I (and every other even mediocre coach) has a list of the players they want.  I am supposed to take guys off my list of someone turns them green before I do?  Please, this whole line of reasoning is just plain silly.

The whole point of having recruiting be longer than just turn the guy green and he is yours is to allow for coaches to figure out who they want and then to strategize to get them.

If you want a player, then you need to be able to take them.  If you are over extended, how is that someone else's fault.  If someone takes a player away from you, that is your fault and not theirs.  This is the bottom line.  Save cash for the battle and stop whining.  If you don't have enough cash to sign him then he is NOT yours.

Once upon a time, there was a coach at the top of his conference who convinced his conference mates that it was in their best interest to not fight each other (or him) for recruits. He reasoned that if they didn't waste money battling each other, they would have more money to win more battles with other conferences.  This, he went on, would make the teams in the conference stronger and they'd get more teams in the playoffs.  And with more teams in the playoffs, they'd all get more money.  Win-Win for everyone and they lived happily ever after.

He then went on to win the next 12+ conference championships and this unwritten rule became the first thing veterans taught newcomers.

Look, I understand why grindi and zed are annoyed, to an extent. It costs $135+ to scout a recruit's potential. STLs don't grow on trees so they might have to drop 100 scouting trips to find the 1 or 2 STLs nearby. Thats well over 10k they are spending just to find these guys and, at D2 and especially D3, that is not chump change. Then to feel like guys are using their targets as a list of who's who would just compound the frustration. Because the attacks come late, the boys have already spent a grand chunk of money finding these guys and securing their own targets so it makes defending these recruits very tough in the last cycles before signings begin.  I totally get their annoyance here.

But that's where my understanding ends.  Ultimately, they are spending too much money finding STLs and don't have enough money or time to defend them.  It was working for them when people weren't eyeing their lists but now it seems like a flawed strategy to me.  Sure, if they can convince everyone that sniping/poaching/trying to sign their targets is bad form, then maybe this strategy will continue to work for them.  Some people have already signed on to that line of thinking.  But hopefully, most people are not so gullible as we were in the early days.  Look down on the sniping, hate the poachers, do whatever you want.  The only mantra that matters is this: The recruit is not yours until the player signs.