Posted by shoe3 on 5/20/2020 12:12:00 PM (view original):
“once they have their signing cycle hit, they'll sign immediately as soon as there is an eligible team to sign them.”

This is the thing I’m not sure about, and the reason I wasn’t a little stronger in my response to doggg. I am not entirely sure this is true - it might be, but I don’t recall it being disclosed. It might work like this, in fact I think it probably does - ie, a player hits a decision trigger, and from then on, he will sign as soon as a qualifying team has a scholarship offer to him. But it could also be that his trigger resets, such that it might hit after the 3rd signing cycle, but if no qualifying team has an offer out, he goes back to being “whenever”; and maybe it doesn’t hit again until the 15th signing cycle. That’s basically the only hedge I have. I am mostly sure it’s the former, and that yes, whenever guys sign a lot more often on the first cycle of RS2 than late guys. But I’m open to data if anyone has it.

i agree that this is theoretically possible. it also is theoretically possible for the model to be that a player has a gradient, like perhaps a end pd 1 player will sign after 3rd cycle, but only if someone has done 'considerable' effort, whatever that means for that player/level, and otherwise would wait till say the 6th cycle. the old recruiting had this mechanism.

that said, while i really don't have a ton of 3.0 experience, i am almost positive neither of those is the actual model used. i don't have data to support that but i am pretty highly confident. the gradient model would be harder to spot in one respect, but it would be easy to spot when it comes to the signing patterns of very slightly vs very heavily recruiting recruits (the lightly recruited guys would sign later than the heavy ones - or else contested vs uncontested would show a difference) - and in high d1, you get lots of both - i feel like i would have seen that by now. the other model, the one you suggest, you wouldn't see such a high probability of signing later in recruiting, the first cycle an eligible signer was available, but we do see that.

granted, the limited experiences i have puts a cap on my certainty - but i definitely feel like the different models would 'feel' significantly different, and i specifically watched for outcomes in line with what i just described to evaluate which model was in play. i think anybody can watch for those outcomes, although obviously the situations you are in are going to change up how often you see different outcomes - a d3 school may not see many battles, and may struggle to determine if a recruit being contested impacts signing odds. but still - over time, i think most folks could get a good sense of whether competition or level of effort impacts signings, and whether recruits have a cycle after which they sign on, or if its a probability for each cycle, even after they 'hit' their first possible signing cycle.

Posted by shoe3 on 5/20/2020 12:12:00 PM (view original):
“once they have their signing cycle hit, they'll sign immediately as soon as there is an eligible team to sign them.”

This is the thing I’m not sure about, and the reason I wasn’t a little stronger in my response to doggg. I am not entirely sure this is true - it might be, but I don’t recall it being disclosed. It might work like this, in fact I think it probably does - ie, a player hits a decision trigger, and from then on, he will sign as soon as a qualifying team has a scholarship offer to him. But it could also be that his trigger resets, such that it might hit after the 3rd signing cycle, but if no qualifying team has an offer out, he goes back to being “whenever”; and maybe it doesn’t hit again until the 15th signing cycle. That’s basically the only hedge I have. I am mostly sure it’s the former, and that yes, whenever guys sign a lot more often on the first cycle of RS2 than late guys. But I’m open to data if anyone has it.

I actually agree with all of this as a possibility. And I agree with most of gil's stuff here.

Except for "75%". Where did that number come from? And I STRONGLY doubt it's that high. (Saying 75% of whenever signers, sign in RS1). I believe they have a set time to sign as well. Such as "cycle 25 of the 32". With that being said, in order for the 75% thing to be true, that would mean 75% of all whenever players are set to sign in cycle 22 or before that. That's a high number. Why would they implement such a high number in the game?

I once heard whenever's have the same % chance whether they sign first or second session. Is it really 75% rather than 50%?

I honestly can't remember a "whenever" player signing in RS2 for me. It's probably happened once or twice, though. I'm either a statistical anamoly or they frequently sign in RS1.

Posted by topdogggbm on 5/21/2020 4:08:00 PM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 5/20/2020 12:12:00 PM (view original):
“once they have their signing cycle hit, they'll sign immediately as soon as there is an eligible team to sign them.”

This is the thing I’m not sure about, and the reason I wasn’t a little stronger in my response to doggg. I am not entirely sure this is true - it might be, but I don’t recall it being disclosed. It might work like this, in fact I think it probably does - ie, a player hits a decision trigger, and from then on, he will sign as soon as a qualifying team has a scholarship offer to him. But it could also be that his trigger resets, such that it might hit after the 3rd signing cycle, but if no qualifying team has an offer out, he goes back to being “whenever”; and maybe it doesn’t hit again until the 15th signing cycle. That’s basically the only hedge I have. I am mostly sure it’s the former, and that yes, whenever guys sign a lot more often on the first cycle of RS2 than late guys. But I’m open to data if anyone has it.

I actually agree with all of this as a possibility. And I agree with most of gil's stuff here.

Except for "75%". Where did that number come from? And I STRONGLY doubt it's that high. (Saying 75% of whenever signers, sign in RS1). I believe they have a set time to sign as well. Such as "cycle 25 of the 32". With that being said, in order for the 75% thing to be true, that would mean 75% of all whenever players are set to sign in cycle 22 or before that. That's a high number. Why would they implement such a high number in the game?

who knows why? they had 4 different levels, they had to provide 4 different curves. its probably harder to see in d2/d3 because you are always waiting till session 2, but in d1, virtually every whenever i go after signs in session 1. we did a study and it wasn't as high as i expected but it was significantly higher than 50/50 (there are 10 signing cycles per session, no need to count the pre-signing cycles), and it was likely we were counting whenevers who couldn't sign in the unsigned total.

my personal experience would suggest the 75% is significantly too low, but i also know there is a sample size thing going on with my relative newness to 3.0.

Posted by Sportsbulls on 5/21/2020 4:16:00 PM (view original):
I once heard whenever's have the same % chance whether they sign first or second session. Is it really 75% rather than 50%?

i can basically guarantee its not 50/50 but i can't really guarantee its 75%. i would guess absolute lowest, its 2:1.

the person you heard that from is likely counting signing cycles and assuming the signing rate is even per cycle. i went in thinking this could be true, but the data showed it absolutely wasn't. it wasn't a huge study, and anyone really can go do it - i'm kind of guessing a lot of people have, its pretty straight forward - but it was big enough to make it very clear there was not an even rate per cycle. i don't think our study was polished enough to share at this point but we did learn enough from it to do such a study... as is often the case, you come up with an approach, then you make mistakes and find limitations, and learn from it. we got enough not to really want to do it again, but if someone else wants to do it, i could kinda explain what we did and where the trouble spots were.

Posted by gillispie1 on 5/21/2020 10:28:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Sportsbulls on 5/21/2020 4:16:00 PM (view original):
I once heard whenever's have the same % chance whether they sign first or second session. Is it really 75% rather than 50%?

i can basically guarantee its not 50/50 but i can't really guarantee its 75%. i would guess absolute lowest, its 2:1.

the person you heard that from is likely counting signing cycles and assuming the signing rate is even per cycle. i went in thinking this could be true, but the data showed it absolutely wasn't. it wasn't a huge study, and anyone really can go do it - i'm kind of guessing a lot of people have, its pretty straight forward - but it was big enough to make it very clear there was not an even rate per cycle. i don't think our study was polished enough to share at this point but we did learn enough from it to do such a study... as is often the case, you come up with an approach, then you make mistakes and find limitations, and learn from it. we got enough not to really want to do it again, but if someone else wants to do it, i could kinda explain what we did and where the trouble spots were.

I'd be down to do it again, but I don't play D1 (and rarely scout my own division, sometimes at D2) and I assume that may be a crucial part of the study.

Posted by Sportsbulls on 5/22/2020 12:43:00 AM (view original):

Posted by gillispie1 on 5/21/2020 10:28:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Sportsbulls on 5/21/2020 4:16:00 PM (view original):
I once heard whenever's have the same % chance whether they sign first or second session. Is it really 75% rather than 50%?

i can basically guarantee its not 50/50 but i can't really guarantee its 75%. i would guess absolute lowest, its 2:1.

the person you heard that from is likely counting signing cycles and assuming the signing rate is even per cycle. i went in thinking this could be true, but the data showed it absolutely wasn't. it wasn't a huge study, and anyone really can go do it - i'm kind of guessing a lot of people have, its pretty straight forward - but it was big enough to make it very clear there was not an even rate per cycle. i don't think our study was polished enough to share at this point but we did learn enough from it to do such a study... as is often the case, you come up with an approach, then you make mistakes and find limitations, and learn from it. we got enough not to really want to do it again, but if someone else wants to do it, i could kinda explain what we did and where the trouble spots were.

I'd be down to do it again, but I don't play D1 (and rarely scout my own division, sometimes at D2) and I assume that may be a crucial part of the study.

There was an update from Seble in Beta where said Whenevers were programmed to have a 50/50 chance of signing in 1st session. I don't think anyone really verified this is actually what happens but that was the intention.

Unless you're recruiting players projected at your own division, your perception of whenever signers is obviously going to be very skewed. Best way to do it (I think) would be to just track the D1 top 100 and see when they sign. Those players will likely be recruited heavily by D1 coaches and will likely have offers in order TO sign in the first place.