Something needs to be done about drop downs and prestige as well as playing time potential.

First, the Prestige Issue:

When a drop down becomes available to A to A+ range prestige teams and an A to A+ range prestige team starts showing interest and the player reciprocates, the player should never drop further and show up in the B+ to A- range prestige teams recruiting pool. Drop down recruits initially believe they are DI or DII material and logic would flow that unless location or school favorite applies, a drop down would therefore choose the highest prestige program. Never should an A+, B+, C+ school ever have to face a recruiting battle against an A-, B-, C- school for a drop down.

Second, the Playing Potential Factor:

What high school drop down would not demand immediate playing time at a lower div. school? Assuming all other factors are equal (location preference, invested $, etc.) a player would pick the team with more potential for playing time. This should be factored by multiple elements (which is most important is up for debate):

1) How many other players of same position on roster and their year
2) Incoming players ratings compared to ratings of players of same position on the squad
3) HS players knowledge of your school's offensive and defensive system
4) Promised playing time weighted against Coach Loyalty rating

The context from which I realized these issues is that I was forced to battle against an inferior team for an average drop-down. This average team didn't show up until the cycle before signings, my guy said he was for sure gonna sign, then an inferior team has this recruit show up in their pool as a drop down and it has sucked more than an acceptable recruit expense for a recruit of this stature. I have invested more $, have higher prestige, have better playing potential and fit the kids HS system. Player keeps telling me in messages I am the team he wants to play for, etc. But cycle by cycle and dollar by dollar he does not sign. What the heck is wrong, in real life he would have signed $4K ago.

interesting stuff, deac, very interesting...

on the first issue, im not sure i agree. with regards to realism, you may have a good point, but then again, i think real life choices are waaaay more complex than that and would be very difficult to duplicate, even if we wanted to. further...im not sure that chasing realism in this case is even the right goal. i think that recruiting is such a vital issue to the competitive balance of the game, that HD would be better off try to develop the engine in such a way that it helps achieve whatever kind of competitive balance they want to achieve. i just worry that the model you propose only helps the rich get richer and at D2 and d3 especially, i would think this would not be the goal.

on the second issue.. i agree, you make a good point that playing time should prolly be a bigger issue in recruiting, especially in dropdowns or reachups or whatever. that would seem to mimic real life and would lelve the playing field potentially by giving weaker and or more creative teams an advantage. and, there probably should be some bigger penalty for failing to honor promises (if they are made more imporatnt.

I agree with ol' d on the first one. We're not necessarily just chasing realism. That would favor the higher prestige teams way too much.

I agree with you both on the second one. Promised PT should be far and away the factor there (as the other stuff is all marginal ... if you're gonna play the guy, you're gonna play him). The only exception, as you mentioned, would be a coach with a less-than-perfect rep, and in that case I'd discount the promise quite a bit.

And there's no question that promised PT plays far, far too small a role in HD in general.

Quote: Originally Posted By dalter on 11/25/2009
I agree with ol' d on the first one. We're not necessarily just chasing realism. That would favor the higher prestige teams way too much.

I agree with you both on the second one. Promised PT should be far and away the factor there (as the other stuff is all marginal ... if you're gonna play the guy, you're gonna play him). The only exception, as you mentioned, would be a coach with a less-than-perfect rep, and in that case I'd discount the promise quite a bit.

And there's no question that promised PT plays far, far too small a role in HD in general.

I'll echo Dan's comments. Here is an issue with your first suggestion - what is showing interest? For example, at Bryant in Naismith, I have possibly the highest DII A+ prestige, certainly top 3-4. If I'm sitting on numerous open scholarships + a ton of postseason cash, what is to keep me from throwing phone calls to the higest rated players on my DII screen (potential drop downs for everyone else), plus other kids who are potential drop downs. For the cost of 1 open scholarship I could keep 250 kids from dropping to the rest of DII. That makes it way to easy to maintain the power structure in worlds.

On the second point, I wholeheartedly agree - PT should be much more powerful as a recruiting tool, and conversely, the penalties for not meeting promises should be much more severe.

I agree on point #2 anadeau, the ONLY exception is for injuries. I am not sure the engine can handle a guy who is promised 20 min, but breaks his ankle and misses 5-6 games and then only gets 16 minutes a game or something. The injury/promise thing has to be resolved, then I am all for harsh penalties (95% transfer rate or something).

Quote: Originally Posted By reinsel on 11/25/2009
I agree on point #2 anadeau, the ONLY exception is for injuries. I am not sure the engine can handle a guy who is promised 20 min, but breaks his ankle and misses 5-6 games and then only gets 16 minutes a game or something. The injury/promise thing has to be resolved, then I am all for harsh penalties (95% transfer rate or something).

Fair enough - I honestly don't think/worry about injuries in this game at all, depending on how they update the importance of DU I may need to rethink that. Maybe they could evaluate promises based only on games when the player had 90+ health.

I would agree with a high transfer rate, and would also like to see the power of promises lessened. Players talk to each other, and if a player says to a recruit - "I got promised 15 minutes last season, but only got 8" then the recruit isn't going to trust you. This is also a step towards making coaching personality an impact in recruiting.

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Quote: Originally Posted By deaconsport3 on 11/25/2009
The context from which I realized these issues is that I was forced to battle against an inferior team for an average drop-down. This average team didn't show up until the cycle before signings, my guy said he was for sure gonna sign, then an inferior team has this recruit show up in their pool as a drop down and it has sucked more than an acceptable recruit expense for a recruit of this stature. I have invested more $, have higher prestige, have better playing potential and fit the kids HS system. Player keeps telling me in messages I am the team he wants to play for, etc. But cycle by cycle and dollar by dollar he does not sign. What the heck is wrong, in real life he would have signed $4K ago.

Forgot to comment on this part:

-How do you know you invested more money? (Also, it's not money, it's effort, so if the other guy has a distance advantage, that can make up for quite alot.)

-He is essentially telling you that you're his favorite right now. A mistake that I made when I first started was taking those messages too literally. You definitely shouldn't do that, they're not meant to be literal at all. And aside from that, it's only the scholarship messages that matter. If you call a player, his response is not relevant. Just follow the schollie messages.

I now have second hand knowledge of the comings and goings of a d1 program from my son, I don't think promised starts / time are the role some of you guys think. I am fine with the way they are, don't know if anyone posted this, but promises hold much more relative value in d3 than d1 in this game, since the total pool of effort (or money) is so much smaller in d3, yet starts have a fixed value of effort.

I also was told by two of the kids I coached last summer, both of whom made all conf in d3 as frosh, that they received no promise of time or starts - they both started day one. Another one of my players has a d2 offer for this upcoming year, he too has no promise of time as a frosh, but is hearing things from d3 coaches like all american by his senior year.

What I would like to see is a priority system, where one's top priority might makes ones offer worth the equiv of an extra grade of prestige, some of the details would have to get worked out, and I have never submitted this to CS, but this would curtail the ability of a top school to just blitz everyone on every recruit.

A similar idea, would be to have the threshhold for a 'lock' in the fss to be 12-18k of local effort (essentially one scholy worth), rather than 6-9k where it now is, this would make the schools recruiting 5 5 star players either have to put more money into each recruit to show on the fss locked, or be vulnerable for some recruits. this is a very easy fix, but somehow or other seble did not like this when I submitted it. this could be throttled back in d2 and d3, based on a scholy worth of local effort.

don't know if the new coaches are following this, money and effort are related to one another by the distance away, but 10k of money spent from 100 miles away may triple the EFFORT of 10k from 1000 miles away (plane tickets and hotels replaced car round trips is the concept)

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If that's all the effort you put into a recruit, you simply can't be mad if you lose him. That's a minimal amount of recruting effort.

Since you're fond of real life: If a better program showed a passing interest in a kid (enough to offer a schollie, but the recruit felt a bit like an afterthought), and another, lesser program pulled out all the stops, rolled out the red carpet and made the kid feel like he was Michael Jordan, you think there's a chance the kid would go to school #2? I certainly do.

More importantly, your suggestion would simply be too rigid and make it too easy for high prestige schools to lock up the best talent with minimal effort and little-to-no competition. It would be bad for the game.

Ok, he ended up signing with me after I pumped in over 7K. However, at the DII level I have consistently been able to get drop downs or higher rated DII players for under 2.5K. To me dropping 5K leading up to the first signing cycle should be enough to ensure a schollie as that matches the amt per schollie given.

Has anyone developed a spreadsheet or formula to assess how much $ it takes to sign a given recruit?

Again, you've gotta make sure to look at it as recruiting effort, not amount of money. If you don't have any competition, it takes roughly the same amount for any recruit (as long as we're not talking about a pulldown). There may be slight variances based on prestige and level of the player, but not much. A spreadsheet would really be superfluous.

And you can't compare what you signed a guy for w. on battle vs. what it takes to sign a guy when another school is involved. It's apples and oranges, to say the least. You can certainly sign a guy uncontested for the effort you posted previously. But if you're in a battle, ithat was a minimal amount.

Deacon, there was a great thread about a month ago discussing recruiting effort required to sign a player. Here is the link.

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