It's a bit of a novel, but I tried to put some thought into it (maybe too much!)

Keep in mind that I absolutely love recruiting. Unfortunately, if you don't have much carryover, recruiting may only consist of 2 days of preparation (once you get your money you can afford to buy FSS states) and about two days of recruiting efforts (not very realistic). It would be fun to make recruiting (or at least a form of it) possible during the entire season.

I don't know what happens in real life with excess recruiting monies, but anytime someone can save a little money, they should be rewarded to some extent. If a coach doesn't blow his entire wad of cash before he fills all his scholarships, I'd like to see a couple of options for that thrifty coach:

1. Before the money gets cut to the 25% of carryover for the next season, the coach may choose to prepay for FSS like we pay for multiple seasons of Hoops Dynasty. This would essentially fund a FSS account for the school. This could then be used for the upcoming season(s) to scout a little broader area without having to wait for the next season's monies to fund. I don't like having only two days of FSS before recruiting begins.

2. Another even more fun option would enable coaches to do some scouting on their own, but it would require a tweak to when the carryover is cut to 25%. I would propose that player evaluations be allowed during the season. A coach would send his assistant to scout a player, the coach would receive the evaluation notes from the assistant, but there would be no recruiting credit towards that player. Credit would only be given when visits are made during the recruiting period, as is the case now.

A great way for coaches to have the kind of money necessary to pay for a lot of evals during the season would be to delay the carryover cut until the end of the next season, rather than the beginning of the season. For example: Let's say a coach has $4k over after recruits have signed but the recruiting period has not yet ended. In the new system, instead of losing $3k at the end of the recruiting period, the coach would carry over all 4K to be used in evaluation scouting trips and/or FSS during the season. Any unused money would then be cut down to 25% at the end of the season (when the new recruiting budget funding currently occurs). This would give coaches a chance to enjoy some aspects of recruiting without gaining an outrageous advantage over others, and without watching all that cash evaporate for nothing.

I just think it would add a little more spice to what can be a pretty repetitive and sometimes boring regular season. Thoughts?

I understand you put some thought into it, but it has alot of issues.

1) Prepaying for a product you when you don't know what you are getting is a bad idea. You don't even know if the states you are paying for even has quality recruits for your dollar. You could be paying for a state that has nothing to offer.

2) HD recruiting is all about money, that is why the carryover isn't full, so people can't stock up. Prepaying for FSS would be just a way to make the rich richer. In a Big 6 conference, you are going to have more cash (in theory). So you pay some FSS up front and start recruiting, probably still have some carryover. Mids and lows are usually not going to have that luxury and will be tossing their lower carryovers into FSS and having nothing for the next season.

3) I don't know about anyone else, but after day 1 of new recruits, I have my targets picked out. FSS helps me narrow it, but I don't need more than a little bit of time after getting FSS to complete my targeting, so having it all season (if I don't have carryover) isn't a real improvement in that respect. If I have carryover, I'll just pay for it and I'll still be done targeting by the first day.

But my primary issue is #2. I don't see any good coming of circumventing the money structure as it stands. It would certainly really only help the bigger teams.

There are absolutely ways that recruiting can be improved. I just don't see this as one.