Long term contracts for coaches will add more value to them and kick it up a notch when it comes to franchise management. Ideally you could sign a multiple year deal for all coaches at all levels. and just like players they can be promoted, changed position and demoted. If a team releases a coach they have to eat the salary just like a player.

You could also move coaches from one position to another. Say third base coach promoted to hitting coach with the require salary increase. This also forces owners to have some vision in their budget, not to mention allow them to use the extra that always gets stuck unused because you can't transfer these than 2m.

Adding this type of feature will increase owners strategies on how to get a team to perform. In the game today it is hard for a team to know exactly how much of an impact coaches make. We have different group of coaches with a different group of players each year. It would be nice to lock up your bench, pitching, hitting and fielding coaches for a couple of years and see how a young team will progress. If halfway through the season they can't hit out of a wet paper bag you might think it is time for a change.

Lastly, in all my worlds no one really likes the coach hiring process. Make it more like FA with the functionality you uhave with players and I think owners will really get into it. Taking one of the lame parts of the game into one of the better...

Ps sorry for any typos...first day on the iPad.

Coach hiring is the only part of the game I absolutely detest. It is so asinine, like when a 2 year guy from LoA  is offered a BL contract, or when the 3B coach waits the entire signing period to accept the original offer, or the 88 PC holds out to be the 62 BC, and on and on. This would definitely improve the game and at least make the waiting more interesting.

You seem to have the same thought as most...  I see a lot of people reading the thread.

For anyone that clicks in can you just copy, paste and post one of rankings below?

I think the current way is:

1. Terrible
2. Not Good
3. Don't care
4. Not Bad
5. Great

While most of us would like the opportunity to sign coaches to more than one season(and offer them "promotions" at year's end), there is a downside.   If an owner doesn't now what he's doing, he may sign a crappy coach to a 3 year deal then abandon the team at season's end.   While this is no different than player signings, it's just another way to make a team less attractive to the next guy.   

3.  Don't care.

The current system is inconvenient, but not unbearably so.

I don't mind the current system. I wish it were more fun, but it doesn't take that long and it's possible to score values by signing coaches from the lower levels.

I like the idea someone had once of just having an unsorted pool of coaches, instead of ranking them by level or position sought, and letting the Invisible Hand set their market value. But that would probably be pretty intimidating for n00bs.

I found coach hiring really annoying at first, but it got much easier once I had the same team for 2 or 3 seasons.  I also noticed that coaches will usually stick with you for a few years.  For example, you spend $3M on a good FI,  then he sticks with you the next year for $750K.  So it's basically similar to signing a long term deal but you get team options for future years.

I wouldn't want to have to sign a coach to a 3 year, $10M deal just to find out that I need to shift payroll around next year and I can't because I committed to a coach.

3. Don't care.

Coach hiring was annoying as hell at first, but once they implemented re-hiring, it's gotten pretty simple/easy. Going with long-term coach signings just seems like a way for a new, incompetant, or malicious player to eff up an entire organization for a few years at a time. I don't think anyone's ever going to get particularly excited about it no matter what they do to the process.

Posted by travisg on 4/8/2011 2:34:00 PM (view original):
I don't mind the current system. I wish it were more fun, but it doesn't take that long and it's possible to score values by signing coaches from the lower levels.

I like the idea someone had once of just having an unsorted pool of coaches, instead of ranking them by level or position sought, and letting the Invisible Hand set their market value. But that would probably be pretty intimidating for n00bs.

That was me.  Unsigned coaches are unsigned coaches with no level, position or salary demands.  The market would sort it out.

Unsorted pool would be better.  So long as there was a chart the showed last year's average ratings, by level.  That would let new owners & the rest of know at a glance if we were shooting high or low to try to sign a coach at that level.  Would get rid of the silliness of a coach who wants a AAA job refusing more money to coach at AA.

I wish coaching was like scouting.  Set a budget (or multiple budget) and be done with it.

Can anybody, without looking, come up with the name of a single one of their coaches?

Does anybody look at the schedule and say - cool, coaching hiring starts tomorrow.  I love coach hiring.

Coaching hiring is time consuming & boring.

I've been screwed twice in just a few season by travel (one work, one family emergency) and not being able to log in 6 times a day during coach hiring.  Resulted in crap coaches at some levels. And undoing much of the effort put in trying to be an active owner the other 360 days of the year.

Coach hiring makes as much sense has hiring individual scouts for different levels or different parts of the world.  It could be done.  Once or twice, it might even be fun. But it would add a bigger time commitment and soon become a drag.  Something to get through rather than enjoy.

Instead of investing money fixing coaching hiring, HBD would be a better game if they simplified a very time consuming and boring part of the game and fixed other gaps.

Coach hiring is as only as difficult, boring and time-consuming as you make it.   The process is the same as FA and IFA.   I seldom see anyone griping about those procedures.

I don't think you're alone in that respect.   In fact, I bet I could find dozens of threads filled with owners who do the same.

Good point about no one knowing their coaches.  I have 40 seasons and could name one.   I like the idea of an open pool and letting the market set the values. But  It would only be worth the extra work if I could do multi year contracts...