So I jump in on the #7 SG in the country vs. a Power 5 program (which i am not). The kid has no preference and will sign before the end of P1. The big school drops to Low as soon as i push visits and points and go to Very High. I’m feeling pretty good but i know this is too easy. It stays like this right up until the 2nd offer session.

I get AD notification that the kid signed. YES! But then i see that i was High and the “big” was Very High (68/32 in his favor). I thought there was a renewed emphasis on no owner(s) having an unfair advantage. If one/some/many know EXACTLY when a kid is going to sign and others don’t, how is this anything resembling a level playing field?

I understand the top jobs are coveted and must be earned, and that the majors get most of the top talent. Cool, but the deck is already ridiculously stacked to the Power 5s with the huge drop-off in talent (both quality and quantity) after the top players, most of whom are Strong Conference.

Is there a secret handshake to get into the Cool Kids Club? NO ONE should have that inside info. Unless you’re going to sell mid-major teams at 50% off or charge a premium to the top owners (who play for free/cheap every season with their tourney discount anyway), how is this equitable?

Signed,
Give Cinderella at least One Shoe

If it's end of period 1, no one knows when exactly he will sign, unless it's the last cycle of period 1 and he's still not signed yet - then he's going to sign obviously, if he has qualified offers. Chances for signing increase with every cycle for those guys. With "early" guys, they are higher upfront - but still increase the farther you go. So the smarter play is sometimes to let things play out on battles and see where they shake out, where you'll need to do visits after the first cycle, then invest your visits after other guys have shown their hand. It's kind of a gamble - it's sort of rare, but it is possible that end of period 1 guys sign that first cycle. My guess is this guy had a few different battles they were tracking, and wanted to see what everyone was doing before making a decision on all those visits.

The only time you know for sure what cycle a guy is going to sign is when it's an early or EOP1 guy who didn't have any qualified teams at his level offer him a scholarship, so he only had lower level teams, sitting at moderate at the end of period 1. You KNOW that guy will sign first cycle period 2, if he has offers. Same story for D1 guys with only D3 teams on them 24 hours before recruiting ends, at the 11PM EST cycle (very rarely, late or whenever guys might still hold out past this).

agree with shoe, its most likely a coincidence. i don't think there is a way to know when recruits sign and have never heard differently (even if there is such a way, its not like the big 6 school would know because he's a big 6 school, it would be because he knows something none of the rest of us do, so sort of that whole premise about it being about even playing field, doesn't make any sense in this context).

when you say 2nd offer session - do you mean 11pm on the day of signings, 6 hours after the 5pm first signings? or do you mean, first cycle of the RS2 session that happens after the NT? if the latter - this would be a super normal situation - the big school would probably have gotten money from an EE and would dump it on the guy at that time, just in the natural flow of things.

A lot of high-major teams wait until the 11 pm session after signings start to spend on EOP1 guys. They have an extremely low chance (<5%) to sign at 5pm, and it allows them to have added flexibility since a lot of poachers spend at 5 pm. If I am worried I might get poached on a guy for whatever reason, I wait until 11pm to spend on my EOP1 targets at A+ prestige as well. They just got lucky, and that was the cycle he signed. But even if he didn't sign immediately, did it even matter? Did you have more visits to put on?

I recommend you upgrade your recruiting techniques to thinking about what *other* people are doing as well. Low with an offer means someone is really interested in the player. You should have checked all of their other targets to figure out their situation and see if they had money left to battle you.

It was 11 pm on the first day of signings.

Then yeah, my post above is what happened. This was Phelan, right? Was it Stanford by any chance IIRC? I think they had 6 openings and were targeting an international guy who signed at 5pm?

Posted by cubcub113 on 7/25/2023 2:46:00 PM (view original):
A lot of high-major teams wait until the 11 pm session after signings start to spend on EOP1 guys. They have an extremely low chance (<5%) to sign at 5pm, and it allows them to have added flexibility since a lot of poachers spend at 5 pm. If I am worried I might get poached on a guy for whatever reason, I wait until 11pm to spend on my EOP1 targets at A+ prestige as well. They just got lucky, and that was the cycle he signed. But even if he didn't sign immediately, did it even matter? Did you have more visits to put on?

I recommend you upgrade your recruiting techniques to thinking about what *other* people are doing as well. Low with an offer means someone is really interested in the player. You should have checked all of their other targets to figure out their situation and see if they had money left to battle you.

great advice!

cinderella has like, at least 6-7 shoes, so i would definitely be looking along the lines of cub's thinking above, more so than blaming the system for favoring BCS schools - for literally anything you could possibly blame BCS school advantages for. this is sort of super obvious if you pay attention, but a small piece of evidence - in tark, we have 2 strong low-major conferences - meaning the D or D+ baseline conferences, not A10, CUSA, MWC, etc. - currently 3 and 8 in the rpi (so not insanely strong, but strong), and a really strong non-BCS school or two otherwise. in the face of that competition, the 6 BCS conferences have combined for 2 of the last 12 titles. there's nothing wrong with our BCS conferences, or the coaches in them, d1 Tark has plenty of good coaches in those spots. BCS advantages are just pretty close to nothing these days - and far, far closer to nothing than they ever were earlier in HD history.

We need to be clear though - the small conferences in Tark that act like mid-power conferences (MEAC and Big Sky) are not just your average small conference with 3-4 human coaches sitting in them. They are highly coordinated, long-term conferences, and in MEAC's case has been full for a number of real life years. Those teams have advantages that aren't available to all small schools, and won't be available to small schools even if their coaches can find a way to fill or mostly fill their conferences. They act like real power conferences, with average conference prestige sitting at or near B- most of the time. And functional prestige is what matters, of course. You *can* get there from here, but it will take a lot of time and commitment from a lot of experienced people.

This is generally one of my pet peeves. I think the potential recruit's level of interest should reflect an accumulation of AP points almost as much as HVs and campus visits. If a team is piling on APs every cycle and otherwise would be attractive to the recruit, the lowest level of interest the recruit should have is moderate, regardless of campus visits etc.