I'm assuming that D2 recruiting is similar to D3 and staying within 360 miles is a must.  I'm at Fayetteville St. in southcentral NC so scouting NC and SC is a good starting point, but how much to budget towards FSS?  Is over 10% too much?

i dont think so.  i usually spend anywhere from 10-20% and sometimes even more than that depending on my cash flow and team/area.   just to give you an idea of what i spent on 2 of my d2 teams this past week... 4-5k on each team (which was about 9 states worth).. i dont remember what my starting cash was so i cant tell u the percentage..  keep in mind of the discounts as you add more states, i usually at least get the 15% discount right off the bat.. also, as the recruiting season progresses and recruits sign.. the # of recruits per state drops thus the price drops..

**edited**

i should have mentioned that i had 4-5 open scholarships

It depends. I start with as few as possible, and spend more if I don't find any recruits that meet my standard. But typically I try to stay under 25%. At the DII level though I would disagree with your assumption that staying within 360 miles is a must, it's a plus but you typically have enough budget to go further. For example, at my Seattle team in Allen I have 2 players that were within 360 miles, but when I was coaching at Adams St. (CO) I recruited a lot more local guys because there were more of them. 

http://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?ForumID=30&TopicID=453763&ThreadID=9829131#l_9829131

That is a link to a post that really helped me. It's well written and will help make you successful at DII.

exactly t22u.  when i said i scouted about 9 states, thats clearly going outside 360.. more like 1000.  i'll scout a whole region if i have to (for wv state i did pretty much the whole NE area but i generally check my team needs and then look at ohio/pa/ny and see which of those 2 states has the most to offer me and then choose 1 or 2 of those as my main target area and exclude the others if its too pricey)

I almost always use more than 10%…more like twenty.

I read most of aejones' great post (thanks t22u for the link).  Question now is this:  He states that to do pull/dropdowns he calls coach to gauge player's interest in your school.  If coach says anything positive or says you're a backup, do you then have to call the player?  Or is your interest already inferred since you called his coach?

More card showing...I almost always scout 5 states so I can get the 15% discount.

Posted by rxgambler on 7/21/2013 12:24:00 PM (view original):
I read most of aejones' great post (thanks t22u for the link).  Question now is this:  He states that to do pull/dropdowns he calls coach to gauge player's interest in your school.  If coach says anything positive or says you're a backup, do you then have to call the player?  Or is your interest already inferred since you called his coach?

No need to call the player, you have two options at that point. Either do nothing and wait/hope the player drops to you (he'll call you), or try and pull down the player by sending your SV's.

Thanks guys for taking the time to answer my questions

$14,460 is what it cost me to FSS everything. I'm in Smith (C. Washington) and I scouted the NW states first then, finding nothing available, waited 'till after signings began to FSS the rest. I'm lazy and never put in the effort for drop downs so my teams usually stink. But, sometimes being able to look at every available recruit and setting the search for more than 50 players at a pop can result in finding acceptable recruits. 

Don't forget... FSS cost for a state is based on available recruits. After signings begin the available recruit pool is smaller AND cheaper.

Posted by t22u on 7/21/2013 9:19:00 AM (view original):
It depends. I start with as few as possible, and spend more if I don't find any recruits that meet my standard. But typically I try to stay under 25%. At the DII level though I would disagree with your assumption that staying within 360 miles is a must, it's a plus but you typically have enough budget to go further. For example, at my Seattle team in Allen I have 2 players that were within 360 miles, but when I was coaching at Adams St. (CO) I recruited a lot more local guys because there were more of them. 

http://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?ForumID=30&TopicID=453763&ThreadID=9829131#l_9829131

That is a link to a post that really helped me. It's well written and will help make you successful at DII.

The conventional wisdom rule of <360 miles is not a "must".  It's merely a principle of economics.

At 350 miles, 1x HV runs about $444 and 1x ST about $294.  That's $1.27 and $0.84 per mile, respectively.

At 360 (10 more miles) costs jump to $747 for an HV ($2.09/mile) and $530 ($1.47/mile) for an ST -- or  between 1.5 and 1.8 times the costs of < 350 miles.  The 350/360 mile mark is easily recognizable on a graph showing distance vs cost.  At no other breaking point do costs/mile spike that much.

It's not a requirement.  It's a simple matter of efficiency.  At D2 and D3, not many teams have the budget to try to pull down at long ranges with regularity -- and that's assuming that recruits are as convinceable at long ranges as they are at short range (which doesn't agree with my experience).

Once distance exceeds about 700-750 miles, the per-mile rate drops again, but by that time the problem is total cost more so than cost/mile.

As for total FSS expenditures, I always scout my home state as early as possible.  I build a spreadsheet of all the recruits I've located who have the attributes I'm after and then the spreadsheet totals targets per state - that determines which, if any, additional states I might purchase early on.   I rarely buy additional states until later in the cycles, possibly after signings begin when they're much cheaper, but they're all based on the number of attractive targets I've found in those states.

In recruiting, information is power.  You can spend $400 on an FSS report to find out that a recruit's potentials suck and decide not to pitch him, but it's still cheaper than $1,500 to $2,000 for that initial batch of HVs or STs.

Posted by ethan66 on 7/23/2013 11:08:00 AM (view original):

Posted by t22u on 7/21/2013 9:19:00 AM (view original):
It depends. I start with as few as possible, and spend more if I don't find any recruits that meet my standard. But typically I try to stay under 25%. At the DII level though I would disagree with your assumption that staying within 360 miles is a must, it's a plus but you typically have enough budget to go further. For example, at my Seattle team in Allen I have 2 players that were within 360 miles, but when I was coaching at Adams St. (CO) I recruited a lot more local guys because there were more of them. 

http://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?ForumID=30&TopicID=453763&ThreadID=9829131#l_9829131

That is a link to a post that really helped me. It's well written and will help make you successful at DII.

The conventional wisdom rule of <360 miles is not a "must".  It's merely a principle of economics.

At 350 miles, 1x HV runs about $444 and 1x ST about $294.  That's $1.27 and $0.84 per mile, respectively.

At 360 (10 more miles) costs jump to $747 for an HV ($2.09/mile) and $530 ($1.47/mile) for an ST -- or  between 1.5 and 1.8 times the costs of < 350 miles.  The 350/360 mile mark is easily recognizable on a graph showing distance vs cost.  At no other breaking point do costs/mile spike that much.

It's not a requirement.  It's a simple matter of efficiency.  At D2 and D3, not many teams have the budget to try to pull down at long ranges with regularity -- and that's assuming that recruits are as convinceable at long ranges as they are at short range (which doesn't agree with my experience).

Once distance exceeds about 700-750 miles, the per-mile rate drops again, but by that time the problem is total cost more so than cost/mile.

As for total FSS expenditures, I always scout my home state as early as possible.  I build a spreadsheet of all the recruits I've located who have the attributes I'm after and then the spreadsheet totals targets per state - that determines which, if any, additional states I might purchase early on.   I rarely buy additional states until later in the cycles, possibly after signings begin when they're much cheaper, but they're all based on the number of attractive targets I've found in those states.

In recruiting, information is power.  You can spend $400 on an FSS report to find out that a recruit's potentials suck and decide not to pitch him, but it's still cheaper than $1,500 to $2,000 for that initial batch of HVs or STs.

One bit of info in here is not right and that is that recruits at farther distances might not be as "convinceable" as recruits at closer distances.  Within 70 miles, yes, you may be able to recruit some players that you wouldn't be able to recruit at say, 200 miles, but that's simply because of the 70 mile radius "bonus" that WiS has built into recruiting.  There is no difference, none whatsoever, between trying to pull down a recruit at 200 miles and trying to pull down the same recruit at 2000 miles in regards to how receptive the player will be to your efforts.  I tend to pull down international recruits quite often with my D2 teams, and if distance WAS a factor (again, outside of the magic 70 mile cut-off), then those international recruits would be nearly impossible to recruit.  I'm sorry, but in this instance your experience is incorrect.

Thanks for the clarification but you didn't contradict what I said.  Recruit acceptance *can* depend on distance.

Posted by ethan66 on 7/24/2013 3:29:00 PM (view original):
Thanks for the clarification but you didn't contradict what I said.  Recruit acceptance *can* depend on distance.

Yes, if they're within 70 miles.  Outside of 70 miles, no difference.  Is that what you were trying to say in your above post?  If it was, my apologies for misinterpreting what you meant.  However, after re-reading it, I'm not sure that's what you meant at all. 

Gambler,

I was the previous coach at Fayeteville St. I left for the Heartland conference, but would love to give you advice (although it's not like I'm an elite coach).

I found recruiting in NC/SC to be EXTREMELY tough. That is because there are tons of good teams in the area. The CVAC conference is completely full, all human coached, so they tend to dominate the landscape in North and South Carolina. They also send a ton of teams to the post season every year, so they get some extra cash to recruit with. 

Because of the situation, I started learning that I had to go further out to recruit. Now at Montevallo, its a somewhat similar situation, because my state has a small pool and the two D2 human coached teams in the state are better than me.

I'm not saying you shouldn't scout and go after recruits in the Carolinas or Virginia/Maryland, etc. But, you may find yourself in battles you can't win when going against those big schools with lots of recruiting cash (until you build up your prestige). 

Also, I dont know if you're keeping the defense, but keep in mind that its zone D. The zone will require less stamina and your players can play more minutes, meaning you may be able to get by with a walk on or two. This allows you to drop more cash on a recruit that you may be in a battle for. I chose to also go after some ineligibles with the added flexibility. 

Feel free to sitemail me to bounce off ideas