Recruiting continues to make less sense every season. I can see some guys have figured out the secret sauce but it’s 1,000-island dressing to me. I fail to find any rhyme or reason in it.

Recruited a “late” kid for several rounds in Session 1. Entered Session 2 as “Very High” with one other program. 5 rounds in? No decision, I drop to High while another moves to VH. I take the hint and pivot to another player. Now I look: the player signed with a team that offered forever ago and has been “Very Low” all along.
1) WTAF?!
2) WTF was the kid waiting on?
3) Why pass on 2 VH programs for 5 sessions?
4) How did the final winner get away with sitting and doing nothing all this time when i’ve been pouring points into this kid forever; then i drop off one session, the winner waves a magic wand and gets the kid over 4-5 other offers who were ALL higher rated until the minute he signed? This is BULL ****.
5) Did i mention WTAF?

Do I understand there’s a 12-page dissertation on the subject out here somewhere? Seems stupid to need a doctoral thesis to get good at this but i’ve tried twice to quit and here i am still banging my head against the ******* wall so …

Well, #1, that very low team that signed the player must’ve dropped a bomb on the cycle he signed. You don’t get effort points for targeting a player for the most cycles. As a late signer, he could sign any cycle in RS2. It could be the first or the last. So the 5 cycle he did not sign, it’s just that, he wasn’t programmed to sign on those cycles. The cycle he chose to sign, the other school crept in. In his case (the winning coach), he was likely waiting for other (better) options, and likely lost his better target. So he had to find a backup. When he spent on the player in question, the winning coach caught a nice break and he signed that particular cycle, with him.

On top of that, WHO the player chooses to sign with is random as well. And many other factors play in to it that you did not add to your topic. Let’s say you’re a D2 school and you had 500 AP and 10 HV. As well as the other competing school thru RS1. You two would likely be pretty equal thru the process. Well if the winning school is an A+ D1 school and you didn’t tell us that, it would be easy to see why it happened. An A+ D1 schools effort is way more powerful than yours would be. So a quick steal of a player would not be that difficult in that situation.

a lot more info is needed if you want to be more specific and get to the bottom of it

Think of it as a finish line. If it’s a 500 mile race, and you’re walking, you could start a week earlier than a Ferrari, and still get smoked in the end. The finish line is the only measuring stick. And where things stand at that very moment.

Seems my punishment has been assigned. Just lost out on my 3rd recruit in a single cycle where i was 50+%. Congratulations! Now i will try again to quit.

Remember, also, that a school may be out of scholarships and still show very high.