With a combination of poor redshirt decisions along with some players that refused to take redshirts, I somehow managed taking a very balanced class structure that was 3-2-3-3-1 (3 seniors, 2 juniors, 3 sophomores, 3 freshmen, 1 redshirt freshmen) and turned it into 3-0-4-4-1.  For purposes of this thread, I'd appreciate not pointing out how silly that was on my part.  Starting next season, I'll be at 0-4-4-4 assuming I fill my three open scholarships.

Now that I'm likely next season to be 0-4-4-4 (0 seniors, 4 juniors, 4 sophomores, 4 freshmen), I'm wondering if it is something I should try to keep or should try to dismantle.  And I'd be curious to know if there are folks who are trying to keep this structure.  I'm weighing the positives and negatives and am struggling to figure out if I stick with what I now have or try to balance things out again, knowing that the balancing would take several seasons to accomplish.

Positives with 0-4-4-4

1. Two out of four seasons I'll have very good teams.  The 4-4-0-4 season would feature eight upperclassmen and the 4-4-4-0 season would be even stronger with no freshmen on the roster.
2. I think this type of structure allows me to fool around with IQ practice much easier than normal.  I could give more minutes to IQ in the 0-4-4-4 season to get the young players up to speed and give less minutes in the 4-4-4-0 season
3. More than most teams, I recruit nationally for D3.  Having a bare minimum of $12,250 each season for recruiting would be really nice since it would help offset FSS costs.  With this team, I've always had at least 2 openings but with just 2 spots it makes FSS tough.  I did FSS with 1 open scholarship when I had a D3 team in Phelan and I felt like I was going into recruiting severely hamstrung.  Spreading FSS costs over 4 scholarships instead of just 1 or 2 is much easier.
4. The full carry-over money from the 0 season is a little cherry on top.  My conference is a very strong one and we're currently having an excellent postseason that is netting each team (thus far) an extra $5,000.  If I could carry that over completely until the next time I recruit, it really is going to make FSS a negligible factor.  It's not impossible to think I would have $20,000+ for four open spots in D3.
5. When my prestige is going to be at its worst, I won't even have to recruit at all.  And when I do recruit the next season, my prestige should be rebounding quite nicely with the 4-4-4-0 season that should in theory be an excellent team.
6. Breaking up the 0-4-4-4 seems like it would be a mess and I'm not sure how I would best accomplish it.  Redshirting one player to go to 0-4-4-3-1 doesn't seem to have much benefit.  Redshirting a freshmen and then the next season redshirting a sophomore so that after two seasons I would be 4-4-2-2 seems better but guaranteeing that I could redshirt a sophomore is impossible.  I could get to 4-4-2-2 by achieving it with walk-ons, but that would result in a very weak set of upperclassmen with I have 2 seniors and 2 juniors that are lacking walk-on seasons.

Negatives with 0-4-4-4

1. The 4-0-4-4 season would be a bit rough although I think you can get by ok with 4 seniors and 4 sophomores.  But the 0-4-4-4 season would be a challenge and I don't see a good way around that.  (I acknowledge that some of you expert coaches can dominate with 0 seniors and "just" 4 juniors but I'm not that quality of a coach.  Those of you that are that good don't need to point it out here.)  I have built a pretty consistent winner at D3 but this class structure means that most likely 1 out of every 4 seasons will be a clunker.
2. The 0-4-4-4 season might impact prestige more negatively than I gain in prestige with the 4-4-4-0 season.
3. No more redshirts.  This seems to be deal-breaker for me.  In order to keep 4-4-4-0, I can't be giving players 5 seasons.  I think the impact of no redshirts can be mitigated by recruiting players with higher work ethic, but that is still a negative in that I'm self imposing a recruiting restriction of avoiding the lower work ethic.
4. Playing time complaints in the 4-4-4-0 season.  The sophomore aren't going to get minutes they want.  I'm hoping that would have a modest drop in work ethic, the bigger drops seem to be for upperclassmen.  And this can perhaps be mitigated by starting them against Sim AI teams in conference play.  (Although with a full conference ....)

Honestly, I'm not too concerned about the competition impacts.  If I'm good, I'm good and if I'm bad, I'll be bad.  That's fine.  For me, it's really a question of always having at least $12,250 for recruiting outweighs the benefits of redshirting.  And I have to admit that for the past 40 days I've been going back and forth on this while the season progresses and still don't have a good answer.  So I figured I'd throw this out to you guys and see what you think.

I think I'm leaning against the 4-4-4-0 structure simply because I am not aware of many folks doing it and I would guess that's for good reason.
Thoughts?  (Is this too long a post to get any thoughts?  If so, I'll delete it after it goes unanswered for a day.)

With the 4-4-4-0 you miss out on a whole session of recruiting, who would want that?

me lol

I really wouldn't worry too much about class structure.  I think it gets overemphasized.  I would just recruit and redshirt as you see fit and only start to worry if you start getting something like 5-5-2-0 or any other clustering of 9+ guys into 2 consecutive classes.

I found the 4-4-4-0 structure irritating.  My team was maxed out at 0-4-4-4 and I couldn't recruit to fix some of my previous recruiting errors.  Thus, I suffered through 3 years of mediocrity and now, my team suffered big time. 

I like to play a 10 men rotation, therefore I think it is better to have a 4-2-4-2 structure so freshmen would not really complain too much about playing time and I would use that year to build up their IQ

You should be able to make the NT with 4 seniors and 4 sophomores, depending on how well you recruited. I was able to do it with all sophs and freshmen last year, although i barely made it in

one problem you may not have considered - the 4-4-4-0 season will likely lead to some sophs and maybe jrs complaining about lack of PT...

If you fill upcoming with a freshman and 2 seniors or 2 walkons you'd have a 2-4-4-2, which leaves you 4 upperclassmen in your worst season...hell, maybe take the opportunity to use all this season's money on 1 great frosh, take the 2 walkons and set it up for the future?

I have a DII team with 1-0-6-5.   We're currently 0-5.  The last 2 seasons we made the NT 2nd round.

Posted by dacj501 on 3/9/2011 3:37:00 AM (view original):
one problem you may not have considered - the 4-4-4-0 season will likely lead to some sophs and maybe jrs complaining about lack of PT...

If you fill upcoming with a freshman and 2 seniors or 2 walkons you'd have a 2-4-4-2, which leaves you 4 upperclassmen in your worst season...hell, maybe take the opportunity to use all this season's money on 1 great frosh, take the 2 walkons and set it up for the future?

I actually did note this at the end of my thread and it was a good part of why I made the post.  I'd really like to hear from folks how much of an issue this might be.  Especially with the post 2/3 update that has lessened fatigue.

As to a couple of the other concerns:

1. I'm perfectly ok missing out on recruiting.  I enjoy it but at the same time I absolutely hate the havoc it plays on my life trying to make all recruiting cycles.  I almost look at missing out on recruiting once every four seasons as a bonus.

2. I really do agree with dahsdebater that class structure is overemphasized as a general rule.  That said, I do think at the D3 level only having one open scholly is a bit of a death sentence.  I might be guilty of using FSS too much but the thought of only having $3k for all of recruiting scares me to death.  So after pretty much ignoring class structure over multiple seasons and finding myself with a 3-0-4-4-1 class, I'm not sure the best way to get out of it.  Maybe I embrace 4-4-4-0.  Or maybe I take multiple walkons as a way to get out of this cycle.  But I really, really don't want to find myself recruiting for just one open spot and if I don't start paying attention to class structure that's going to happen.

Kujay... don't assume that the 0-4-4-4 year would be a clunker. 

I am currently in a 0-4-4-2 in Crum as folows:  0 senior - 4 junior -4 soph -2 eligible freshman - 1 redshirt freshman - 1 walkon.  This was completely unintentional and I am looking to spread it back out to 4-4-2-2 next season when I have the chance.  That said, through a combination of picking a good non-con schedule, luck, and decent gameplanning, I have a solid 18-5 record and 17RPI with 19SOS heading into the final 3 games of the regular season.

I've been pleasently surprised by the steady performance of this team as I was just hoping to scrap in the NT as a 50+ RPI.  I very likely will be a 1 and done in the NT, but I think this season shows that you can have decent success with a young, thin team.

I also, am not in the same class of coach as you, so if I can do it, I have no doubt you can.

P.S.  I will say, it helps to have smart players, as they learn IQ faster and saves practice mintues for individual development.

kujay... i personally don't like the class structure. my reason being, you only ever play 10 men - so if your 11th and 12th men aren't freshman, you are basically wasting them (because it results in a younger team later). my rule of thumb is to try to keep all classes at 2 - although i am pretty bad at maintaining that - for this reason.

i think giving up the redshirts outweights pretty much everything else, and would strongly recommend you don't give up on redshirts.

I usually have a class with 0.   I like it.

If you are going to go with unbalanced class structure, then go with a large class of 5 or 6. When they are SR, you win the NC, next season you recruit with 20k+ in cash and A++ prestige.