Upfront, this is just a thought experiment, not a proposal:  

What if one HD world had no rules about collusion?  Any coach could sitemail any other coach during recruiting about anything, including collusive strategy, and this became the norm.  

First, at some level this would be fun, for the same reason that e.g. RISK or Monopoly are fun.  Wheeling and dealing in the thick of it is fun.  

On the other hand, it would most likely devolve into one or two cabals of strong coaches pushing everyone else around.  What makes RISK and Monopoly fun is that the alliances are fluid (if one player gets too strong the others turn against him) and opportunistic (if collusion makes sense at that moment, you do it, or if you need to maintain your credibility for later in the game).  

What kind of rules, in that HD world, would make collusion something that was fun and dynamic?  

If you could just openly post information about another school. So you could tell your conference something like, "Hey, there's a team coming from out of region to get a good recruit. I battled him for someone else so he's at least $40K poorer because of that."

When Knight first opened, I made it to Boston College very quickly. During one season of recruiting, a very similar thing happened to me. I got tag teamed by two Big East coaches. After I managed to hold off the first one, he posted on his message board that he had used his entire budget going after the PG we were battling for. Of course, that let the other coach know almost exactly what I had to spend to win that battle. Simple math and the second recruit I was battling for was soon playing in the Big East, when before the message was posted the second coach had begun to act like he was wavering and looked like he was going to back off. Dammit.

I accepted the loss of the player but was curious as to whether that constituted collusion because I believed very strongly that it did. Seble, in his infinite Admin wisdom said that since the first coach hadn't posted an actual dollar amount (i.e., not a numerical figure), that the second Big East coach had no way of knowing how much money he had actually spent. Really? Sure, he might have had some carryover, if he HADN'T TAKEN A WALK-ON THE PREVIOUS SEASON. When I pointed this out to Seble and told him he couldn't have had ANY carryover because of the walk-on, and therefore yes he had, in fact, told the other coach exactly what he had spent, Seble refused to budge. I just wanted confirmation, yes or no (I had no desire to see the coaches involved punished, Karma has a way of "evening things out"), but Seble made it into an ego thing and wouldn't give me a straight answer, not wanting to admit that he had made an error, which ironically DID give me the answer I was looking for. So, from many years ago Seble, thanks you told me anyway.

I was really surprised by the first coach, the one who had made the post on their message board. He was a veteran coach and very well-respected, but not by me from that day forward. As more and more people just wandered through reading other message boards out of boredom, that message board, oddly enough, became a very popular one. That coach took a lot of grief for what he had done and eventually ended up quitting HD altogether, apparently tired of trying fruitlessly to defend what he had posted. I'll not mention his name because it might break the hearts of some of the vets of the game who still play, so don't try, I'm not giving him up.

So anyway, yeah, something like that could certainly happen because it already has. To me. In Knight World, a "collusion-free" world. So you can bet your *** it would happen in a collusion world. Guaran-frickin-teed. Have a nice day! And before someone screams fake story, because someone most definitely will, that story is 100% true, no embellishment anywhere, told exactly as it happened. Now unfortunately we're talking about several years ago so I don't have the back-and-forth between Seble and I, so I can't verify it that way. But I know it happened because it happened to me and that's good enough to satisfy ME. Have a nice day....again!

I think any communication of information that isn't public falls within the prohibited collusion/fair play rules as admin has explained them - including the example you gave.

if someone can say during recruiting that he blew his whole budget on XXx or spent a ton on YYY that has big effects on other recruiting battles

that sort of communications are also an invitation to other collusion - unspoken agreements and coordinatied action

Emy knows a thing or two about the law. I bow down to him.

Great idea.

Posted by colonels19 on 1/3/2015 9:46:00 PM (view original):
I think dshook30, ixolabrat, and johnsensing would definitely be down for this world...

man you sure are the sorest of sore losers. if only you had basic comprehension of how recruiting worked, you wouldn't needlessly slander the name of good folks like johnsensing. an a+ coach taking a 4 star or so off a b- mid major is not a reason to suspect collusion, he could have beaten you without even trying, he had zero reason to collude with (whichever of those other two folks is from that same story). just because you are an idiot and decided to battle john's A+ school who had you crushed on every front, and then lost the other battle too, doesn't mean they colluded. and why the hell would an a+ school collude with a C school? where's the gain for him? it makes zero sense. simply, you made a fairly enormous blunder. learn your lesson and move on. i don't remember in detail your whinings on the other but generally all your calls to arms re: collusion were 100% total BS.

Posted by metsmax on 1/3/2015 9:19:00 AM (view original):
I think any communication of information that isn't public falls within the prohibited collusion/fair play rules as admin has explained them - including the example you gave.

if someone can say during recruiting that he blew his whole budget on XXx or spent a ton on YYY that has big effects on other recruiting battles

that sort of communications are also an invitation to other collusion - unspoken agreements and coordinatied action

i agree with mets, the story from emy, while true, was also pretty long ago. emy, despite your frustration, maybe admin did learn something from your exchange, because it seems like he clearly reversed his stance on that subject some time a few years ago. he has warned people for similar (and lesser, if i remember correctly) offenses that were on the conference board. he did used to say, "anything on the conf board is not collusion because everyone can see it", which is a somewhat insane position, but at least he came around eventually?

to the original question, i think it would be fun at the beginning until, like rick suggested, a couple groups of coaches went around bullying everyone. that would almost definitely happen. i think if you allowed conference chat posting only and discouraged alliances, then maybe you could keep it in that fun phase where things were very fluid and exciting. but somehow i think people would just sitemail and set up drafting boards anyway, and it wouldn't be fun anymore. 

Posted by coach_billyg on 1/4/2015 12:08:00 PM (view original):

Posted by metsmax on 1/3/2015 9:19:00 AM (view original):
I think any communication of information that isn't public falls within the prohibited collusion/fair play rules as admin has explained them - including the example you gave.

if someone can say during recruiting that he blew his whole budget on XXx or spent a ton on YYY that has big effects on other recruiting battles

that sort of communications are also an invitation to other collusion - unspoken agreements and coordinatied action

i agree with mets, the story from emy, while true, was also pretty long ago. emy, despite your frustration, maybe admin did learn something from your exchange, because it seems like he clearly reversed his stance on that subject some time a few years ago. he has warned people for similar (and lesser, if i remember correctly) offenses that were on the conference board. he did used to say, "anything on the conf board is not collusion because everyone can see it", which is a somewhat insane position, but at least he came around eventually?

to the original question, i think it would be fun at the beginning until, like rick suggested, a couple groups of coaches went around bullying everyone. that would almost definitely happen. i think if you allowed conference chat posting only and discouraged alliances, then maybe you could keep it in that fun phase where things were very fluid and exciting. but somehow i think people would just sitemail and set up drafting boards anyway, and it wouldn't be fun anymore. 

Yes, my incident was quite some time ago and if I remember correctly Seble was pretty new in his position also.

Posted by tannermcc on 1/3/2015 8:57:00 PM (view original):
Emy knows a thing or two about the law. I bow down to him.

I thought you were bowing down because I keep wearing you out every time we play. Don't worry grasshopper, you'll have a once in a million RNG night soon enough and finally get that elusive win.

Posted by emy1013 on 1/4/2015 12:42:00 PM (view original):

Posted by tannermcc on 1/3/2015 8:57:00 PM (view original):
Emy knows a thing or two about the law. I bow down to him.

I thought you were bowing down because I keep wearing you out every time we play. Don't worry grasshopper, you'll have a once in a million RNG night soon enough and finally get that elusive win.

Maybe we'll face off in the NT in Tark later on....

Posted by coach_billyg on 1/4/2015 12:11:00 PM (view original):

Posted by colonels19 on 1/3/2015 9:46:00 PM (view original):
I think dshook30, ixolabrat, and johnsensing would definitely be down for this world...

man you sure are the sorest of sore losers. if only you had basic comprehension of how recruiting worked, you wouldn't needlessly slander the name of good folks like johnsensing. an a+ coach taking a 4 star or so off a b- mid major is not a reason to suspect collusion, he could have beaten you without even trying, he had zero reason to collude with (whichever of those other two folks is from that same story). just because you are an idiot and decided to battle john's A+ school who had you crushed on every front, and then lost the other battle too, doesn't mean they colluded. and why the hell would an a+ school collude with a C school? where's the gain for him? it makes zero sense. simply, you made a fairly enormous blunder. learn your lesson and move on. i don't remember in detail your whinings on the other but generally all your calls to arms re: collusion were 100% total BS.

lol....ahhhh shaddap!!!1

Posted by tannermcc1 on 1/4/2015 2:26:00 PM (view original):

Posted by emy1013 on 1/4/2015 12:42:00 PM (view original):

Posted by tannermcc on 1/3/2015 8:57:00 PM (view original):
Emy knows a thing or two about the law. I bow down to him.

I thought you were bowing down because I keep wearing you out every time we play. Don't worry grasshopper, you'll have a once in a million RNG night soon enough and finally get that elusive win.

Maybe we'll face off in the NT in Tark later on....

Nope, I've been eliminated from that tournament already, just like three quarters of the field has. Congrats on your two wins, hope you can finish the run with 4 more. But seriously, do you "really" want to start keeping score like this?