Posted by mullycj on 10/31/2013 10:48:00 AM (view original):
In season #30 in Smith Rutgers won the NC with a very average 24-11 team that managed to pull off 4 upsets at the right time. I was in their conference at the time. Again, not sure that would happen in today's engine.
Back in the day we called this coin flip dynasty, for good reason.
hmmm, not to bust your balls on a technicality, but i am pretty sure that term had nothing to do with what you are describing. im also pretty sure coin flip dynasty was coined after season 30 in smith. when OR coined the term "coin flip dynasty" it seemed clear to me that he was describing the ridiculous level of talent in d1, when potential was young (brand new actually) and players would gain +30 in multiple areas just in their freshman year. the game results were pretty decent at the time, as far as i remember, the problem was there were SO many great d1 teams that when you had a great team, it didnt really matter because there were 25 other teams who had 90s in everything, so it was basically a coin flip against all those teams. i dont recall it being that crappy teams went around beating all those great teams. i always hated that phrase anyway, because it seemed to me there was still plenty of room for crafting a better team than your opponents through smart composition. although i have to admit there wasn't much room to surpass other top teams through talent. come to think of it, its not that different than high d1 today - except instead of the top 10-15 teams, it was more. more like 25 or maybe even 40...
that was a pretty critical time for me, as that is basically when i won all my championships, and it was done with a far lesser talent advantage than rails, OR, and LM enjoyed in their great runs. i actually think it was a huge advantage for me, i almost certainly couldn't have pulled off one of the few top d1 and non d1 runs that early in my career, if it hadnt been for all the talent going around. my thing has always been a strong understanding of the sim engine, what makes players and teams great, and how to coach them to take advantage of their strengths, and to minimize their weaknesses. as a rookie d1 recruiter, winning 5/9 is essentially impossible today - you cant get near the talent level of others. but i was able to build as talented teams as other, vastly superior recruiters, because teams were so good in those days. in d1, anyway. and that let my MASSIVE disadvantage on the recruiting front (i wasnt even a top 25 recruiter - and i dont mean in HD. i mean in tark) get dwarfed, allowing my advantages in coaching and team composition to come through. thats the only way, IMO, that pulling off the 5 in 9 championship run was remotely possible for me, as such a young coach (4 lifetime d1 seasons before picking up colorado, 2 to rebuild, then the 5 in 9 hit - had 5 d1 titles in my first 15 seasons).
on the other hand, my top teams were so consistent in performance, i really cant get on board with the concept that the engine was a crap shoot in those days. i'd be by a huge margin, the luckiest coach of all time. my 2 main teams (had a less serious d3 team) go 5 of 9 and 5 of 7 in the same period? while setting the all time consecutive final 4 and elite 8 streaks with my d2 program (not just for d2, but for all of HD)? thats just not possible if the engine is a crap shoot, unless i essentially won the power ball. if i had hundreds and hundreds of seasons, that would be one thing - but this was pretty much inside of 2 years of my coaching career, i had only the 1 d1 account, and i still was on my first d2 program of my career (i had played like 4 seasons as a test at some point, at some other d2 school in tark, not sure if it was during or after, but still). thats too small of a sample size to get that lucky, i feel pretty strongly that the engine was pretty quality at that point in time. that wasn't long after OR's legendary uconn/west conn st runs and rails's legendary west chester pa run - those happened right as i was starting, and are precisely what gave me confidence that the engine had to be way more consistent than i initially assumed, and set me off on the quest to figure out how one could win so ridiculously consistently...
10/31/2013 2:56 PM (edited)