Posted by bscoresby on 9/9/2011 10:18:00 PM (view original):

Posted by girt25 on 9/9/2011 4:40:00 PM (view original):
The fact is that low/mid DI teams were extremely successful before recruit generation changed ... and we had the exact same recruiting cash set-up. It's been demonstrated over and over and over and over that isn't a problem. There was far more success from non-BCS teams here than in real life before the change to recruit generation.

dalt,

You always point to the past that the extra recruiting cash is not the problem.  You are right-  the extra recruiting cash amplifies the problem of low/mid major teams competing for recruits that can actually win in the tournament. 

The bottom line is we know that with a more reasonable recruit generation system and the current recruiting cash structure -- non-BCS teams perform extremely well. And that includes deep NT runs and winning the NT.

That speaks for itself.

Posted by nbstowman on 9/10/2011 7:13:00 AM (view original):
It's not about the recruiting pool. There's one team in one of those monster conferences that has won a total of one nt game in 14 years, yet the school still holds a B+, and continues to mooch off the conference in general, getting 40k plus bonus cash each year. I believe that if you can't perform at a big 6 school, after your first 4 years, you should get fired....much quicker than it's happenning.

I know of a case where an A+ baseline school went 20+ seasons without winning an NT game, yet the coach wasn't fired. No question, firings need to be ramped up, with an emphasis on post-season success after the initial honeymoon period is over. That said, firing after a coach's first 4 seasons may be a little quick. Maybe if the coach is taking over an already established program with high prestige, that would be appropriate. But if  you're taking over a C-minus cellar-dweller in a fully populated BCS conference, I think 4 seasons is too quick a trigger. 

One of the problems with the firing logic is that it is based on past seasons without regard to expected performance in upcoming seasons. If a coach butchers recruiting a couple seasons in a row, there is no need to wait for those bad seasons to happen. Similarly, a coach that has set up his team for future success should get some leeway.

I never meant to fire everyone who picks up a big 6 team after 4 years, but if you can't show some kind of improvement, can the coach. Most d1 coaches want a big 6 school, and FAR too many coaches simply get hired to one of the schools, and simply get decent seasons due to the real coaches in the conf. I believe that if more openings were available in big 6 schools: A) Better coaches would pick them up and they would be more competitive B)There would be more incentitive for coaches to move up to d1, with an actual chance to get one of the schools you are a fan of or would enjoy coaching. That being said, it may lead to more Allen worlds, with a few conferences full of competent coaches, and the rest of the world floundering, trying to keep up.

The point is...As an example, in an A+ baseline school, if you pick them up as such and go 3  years with no nt, you should be gone. No questions asked.

nb, I would agree that it's too difficult to get fired.

I think it's a very secondary issue, but still something they can improve upon. (It's a slippery slope, because if you make firings too aggressive, you risk really alienating long-time users.)

The fact that all worlds I'm aware of currently have BCS teams coached by sims tells me that not having openings for low/mid DI coaches to move up to is not a problem right now.

Posted by girt25 on 9/9/2011 4:40:00 PM (view original):
The fact is that low/mid DI teams were extremely successful before recruit generation changed ... and we had the exact same recruiting cash set-up. It's been demonstrated over and over and over and over that isn't a problem. There was far more success from non-BCS teams here than in real life before the change to recruit generation.

Girt, I'm not challenging that at all.  In the past that was the case.  I'm just not sure that pertains to the current situation at D1.  (And it might be pertinent, but I don't that can be simply declared because other things have changed as well as side effects of the change to recruit generation.)

I'm simply asking the question if the consequence of the changes to recruit generation has created additional problems that won't simply be solved by fixing recruit generation.  You can go revert the recruits back to the way they were.  But will that completely fix things?  In version 2.0 of the old structure you'll now have the ACC / Big 10 / Big 12 with tens of thousands of extra recruiting dollars that they wouldn't have had in version 1.0 because they weren't able to dominate the landscape the way they are now due to the recruit generation changes and apathetic coaches at mid-major programs that left.  That a new advantage for the mega conferences that to my knowledge never existed before.  (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe the elite conferences have ever dominated like they are right now.  I wasn't around at the beginning of HD but since no humans were at those schools, I suspect there never was conference domination like is taking place right now.)

If I had to guess, with enough seasons to correct things, reverting to the old recruit generation would get things back to the way they were and the "problem" with tourney cash would solve itself.  I guess I'm asking how quick that would actually happen.  In my mind when the mega conferences are getting 2-3x the recruiting budgets of the smaller conferences due to tourney success and they have the prestige benefits that the come with baseline as well as with the recent domination of the worlds, it's going to take an awfully long time to achieve equilibrium again.

Essentially, I'm not sure how making the quality of the #35 SF better is going to fix things all that much as things are *today* because you've got 36-48 teams in the mega conferences that still are likely to have a huge amount of resources to get that recruit over a mid-major school.

Along with what kujayhawk is saying, seble has been pretty adamant in keeping the current recruit types. I think he envisioned a bunch of schools having a stud recruit or two. There were lots of complaints in the past about HD being a coinflip dynasty due to too many loaded teams. I believe seble was trying to fight against that by limiting the number of elite recruits. The problem is that bonus recruiting money enables the schools from one or two conferences to scoop up the top recruits. If we switch back to the old recruit generation, then we risk going back to a coinflip dynasty. Reducing the bonus recruiting money might get us to something better. Is the old way really what we want?

Realistically, reducing bonus money is probably the most direct way to allow mid-majors to compete.  It's possible for a good coach to keep a decent mid-major at a reasonable prestige, but even at similar or better prestige the mid-major often can't compete with schools from the Big 6 because they're too far behind on cash.  That being said, if you make that adjustment you probably help mid-majors somewhat but make it harder to rebuild a cellar-dwelling Big 6 school, which is already challenging enough.  Right now they at least have the advantage of big money.  Take that away and they might end up with mediocre prestige, less of a cash advantage, and a conference schedule loaded with power teams.  I don't think most coaches want to scare people away from taking Big 6 openings any more than might already be happening.  Improving the quality of 2nd- and 3rd-tier recruits helps to solve the mid-major problem without making rebuilding in the Big 6 any tougher than it already is.  Of course, it may push things back in the direction of all the top teams being too close in talent to make coach ability as big a factor in outcomes as some people would like.

I don't see anyone arguing for the old way. I think oldresorter has suggested on numerous occasions that the fix would be pretty easy by tweaking recruits in a certain range. It wouldn't have to be like it was before. I think a change was quite necessary, but (like many things here) they took it too far.

Posted by dahsdebater on 9/9/2011 9:43:00 PM (view original):
zhawks, the reason you don't get extra money for winning the NT Championship is that the whole point is to simulate conference bonus money from postseason play, which is actually based on number of games played.  There isn't another game after that, which means no extra revenue is generated, which means the conference (and team, in the real world) don't get any extra money for their athletic departments.  Although realistically the boosters would probably chip in a ton of extra after a championship.

Sorry you are totally right, colleges don't gain anything from selling national championship merchandise. My bad.

Posted by umpikes on 9/11/2011 6:46:00 AM (view original):
I don't see anyone arguing for the old way. I think oldresorter has suggested on numerous occasions that the fix would be pretty easy by tweaking recruits in a certain range. It wouldn't have to be like it was before. I think a change was quite necessary, but (like many things here) they took it too far.

The difference between the old potential model and the new potential model was that the old one you were able to coach your recruits to be what your team needed, now you must recruit exactly what you need (if you can find it) and choose which category they max out on first. Personally I am in favor of anything that gives coaches the ability to coach their team how they want which is why I prefer molding the old potential with the new potential and would like to see a soft cap. Nothing too drastic but there is an inbetween that could be reached here  Ithink.

It seems like there are two camps here. The people in the Big 6 conferences that have played this game a long time and don't want to lose their advantages, and the people that are stuck in the mid majors that can't advance. I have been in DI for about 7 seasons now under a different name, and I know that I will not be able to take that team on a deep tourney run. It is frustrating, however it's part of the game. I have been thinking of dropping back to DII since things are more level there, the better of a coach you are, the better of a team you will have. In DI, it's more about how long you have been playing. New players will get frustated and either drop out or go back to DII. What's worse? Alienating old timers, or making it to where they are the only ones playing?
As for the "realism" factor... this IS a game. It should be what you make it.

Posted by zhawks on 9/11/2011 8:03:00 PM (view original):

Posted by umpikes on 9/11/2011 6:46:00 AM (view original):
I don't see anyone arguing for the old way. I think oldresorter has suggested on numerous occasions that the fix would be pretty easy by tweaking recruits in a certain range. It wouldn't have to be like it was before. I think a change was quite necessary, but (like many things here) they took it too far.

The difference between the old potential model and the new potential model was that the old one you were able to coach your recruits to be what your team needed, now you must recruit exactly what you need (if you can find it) and choose which category they max out on first. Personally I am in favor of anything that gives coaches the ability to coach their team how they want which is why I prefer molding the old potential with the new potential and would like to see a soft cap. Nothing too drastic but there is an inbetween that could be reached here  Ithink.

Old potential model really holds very, very little interest for me.   I could live with the soft cap, perhaps.  But really, the "Practice plan dynasty" is not all that entertaining an idea to me, so to speak.

Posted by a_in_the_b on 9/18/2011 7:28:00 AM (view original):

Posted by zhawks on 9/11/2011 8:03:00 PM (view original):

Posted by umpikes on 9/11/2011 6:46:00 AM (view original):
I don't see anyone arguing for the old way. I think oldresorter has suggested on numerous occasions that the fix would be pretty easy by tweaking recruits in a certain range. It wouldn't have to be like it was before. I think a change was quite necessary, but (like many things here) they took it too far.

The difference between the old potential model and the new potential model was that the old one you were able to coach your recruits to be what your team needed, now you must recruit exactly what you need (if you can find it) and choose which category they max out on first. Personally I am in favor of anything that gives coaches the ability to coach their team how they want which is why I prefer molding the old potential with the new potential and would like to see a soft cap. Nothing too drastic but there is an inbetween that could be reached here  Ithink.

Old potential model really holds very, very little interest for me.   I could live with the soft cap, perhaps.  But really, the "Practice plan dynasty" is not all that entertaining an idea to me, so to speak.

Practice plan dynasty would not be interesting to me either.  The issue is about balance, perspective and common sense.  Too much in any given direction throws the equation out of whack. 

But, the game is about more than recruiting or game planning.  I don't know how long you've played, but in the old game, IQ was much more important than it is now, so was stamina, so was rebounding, so was practice planning (which you took exception to) .... for example, if you gameplanned to wear out the other team, you were could win by 60 or 80 even against a pretty good team (one of the reasons most all teams in that era played uptempo / FCP).  Whatever the exact importance of any one issue may or may not be, seems recent changes have swung in the direction of making recruiting more important than it used to be.  So much so,  that nearly everyone is asking for change, either to other elements of the game to compensate for the over correction, or to take the game back more in the direction it used to be.  Many of those who fought for the recruit gen change, are now leading the charge for change to other elements of the game to bring back coaches / competitive balance in d1.

But, to what you said about game planning, the actual assignment of value to game playing functions and importance is a matter of personal taste, to think that yours, mine or anyone's will be the same is an exercise in futility.  Trying to navigate thru and balance all of these issues can't be easy,   On this one, I do not envy Seble.  Although if he wants, I will tell him exactly what needs to be done so the game is exactly how I want it to be - LOL!  

The list of changes needs to address far more than singular changes to prestige, job process, recruit gen, post season money or practice planning.  The challenge is to make all of this stuff work TOGETHER once changed.  I think Seble is now in a position to do that now that he rewrote the engine code, has had a year to read CS suggestions and complaints, as well as a year to just think about the direction he wants to go, will be interesting to see what exactly comes next? 

Posted by grillmaster on 9/18/2011 5:34:00 AM (view original):
It seems like there are two camps here. The people in the Big 6 conferences that have played this game a long time and don't want to lose their advantages, and the people that are stuck in the mid majors that can't advance. I have been in DI for about 7 seasons now under a different name, and I know that I will not be able to take that team on a deep tourney run. It is frustrating, however it's part of the game. I have been thinking of dropping back to DII since things are more level there, the better of a coach you are, the better of a team you will have. In DI, it's more about how long you have been playing. New players will get frustated and either drop out or go back to DII. What's worse? Alienating old timers, or making it to where they are the only ones playing?
As for the "realism" factor... this IS a game. It should be what you make it.

Grill - I think you need to be a little less biased here.  There are plenty of very good coaches that can take mid-majors deep in tourneys right now despite the current advantages that high-major teams have.  

In fact, I  think you're ignoring the third camp of coaches here:  those who think they are entitled to have a quick trip to a high-major school.