Backboy, the short/easy answer also looks to be money...if you have 900+ available teams in a tiered system as opposed to 324 d1 teams, you have 600 more chances per season at $12.95. Obviously many worlds are a lot less than full, but i think some/many also have more than 324 participants.

I have argued your point in the past, asking for a d1 only world...i think its a great concept that ties into the push button video games that exist today. I suggested that there be some kind of minimum season buy-in for the world...10 seasons i believe. If one were created id certainly join, but with that said i thoroughly enjoy d2 and think its the best division in the game.

The real question is the opportunity cost sufficient. I'm guessing the added storage space for having about 200% more teams doesn't quite offset the potential for additional revenue by having the additional divisions.

Posted by kmasonbx on 4/29/2012 9:50:00 AM (view original):
The real question is the opportunity cost sufficient. I'm guessing the added storage space for having about 200% more teams doesn't quite offset the potential for additional revenue by having the additional divisions.

Really?!? Very possible that you know more about what storage space costs than I do, but I have a hard time imagining that's the case. If so, it would seem they have a fairly untenable business model.

I like the insulation the D3/D2/D1 structure gives. Consider: 

-- If D1 is all that exists, what's to stop the first-time player from popping in, offering booster gifts left and right in an attempt to land the stud players. If I fail..oh well...I'll pick up some other team and try again until I succeed. We hear people on the forums now who say they'll drop teams rather than live with the consequences if they get caught for booster gifts and that's after they've presumably had to work up to D1. There'd be little disincentive to NOT try them if you could jump straight into D1. 

-- Being able to start immediately in D1 means I don't have to think about the future. Maybe I want to screw around and see what a team of 12 point guards can do. I pop in, recruit to that desire, lose miserably and leave, sticking the next owner to clean up my experimental mess. Or I could blow my recruiting bankroll going after all the elite recruits. If I miss, oh well, I'll just change teams and try again at a different program next year. Since D1 is both the entry level and the pinnacle level, there's no "demotion" possible to work as a check and balance against extreme behavior.  

-- In a D1-only world, how do firings work? Clearly, if I ante up for a 10-pack and then run Duke into the ground with 1-26, 0-27, 0-27 via my incompetence, you're not going to fire me and refund seven seasons of cash. HD may have a messed up business model, but even they aren't THAT messed up. 

-- We all hate ghost-shipped teams. I don't think that's a phenomenon that D1 has to worry about very often at the present. I'm sure it's probably happened, but I don't think I've ever heard an instance of it. If D1 is all there is though, then those folks who buy multiple seasons and decide they don't like the game/don't have time for the game....those teams are now running rudderless.

If you're going after a genuine feel for D1, none of these are good for the overall game. 

Everyone has had some great points in this thread, and I have only played D3 up to this point (one season of D2 now under my belt, trying to move up to D1 in that world), so D3 is basically all I know and I love it. With that being said, a bunch of guys said that they wouldn't play this game if the lower divisions didn't exist, but if they never existed you wouldn't know any better.

Rednu, good points... as for the booster gifts, maybe WIS could eliminate them to avoid that type of situation and alter other things accordingly to try to ensure that someone doesn't run a team into the ground. I disagree with the "no 'demotion'" point you brought up... you obviously wouldn't be able to start at a Big Six school, let alone a mid-major, but at a school in the MEAC or Sun Belt or any other true low-major. Yes, you could ruin things at that school but then you'd jump to another equivalently unheralded school. If you want to experiment in D3 and don't like how things are going, you can leave for another school... it'd be like that.

Maybe you and I are envisioning slightly different things, backboy. If you're proposing keeping some of the job requirements to claim a Big Six coaching position, then, yes, nobody could start a career there. But if you keep the signup process the way it is now in D3 (which is how I interpreted things), when someone signing up gets their choice of any unclaimed team, then realize that in my four worlds there's between 5 and 12 Big Six jobs laying open in each world that anyone signing up could jump on. If you're creating that insulation that exists in the D3/D2/D1 structure by superimposing it into a low/mid/high major sort of arrangement solely within D1, then I'll grant that many of my concerns fade. 

I definitely wouldn't shed a tear over the loss of booster gifts from the game.

As someone who graduated from a D3 and attended grad school at a D2, I'm glad those teams are around as it allows me to recreate and relive some great gymnasium memories from my younger years in a raucous student section. 

Didn't realize that about signups... I guess they would make it so that you can only sign up for the low major jobs to begin

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