Posted by reinsel on 11/15/2011 5:22:00 PM (view original):

Posted by kujayhawk on 11/15/2011 4:28:00 PM (view original):
Am I crazy for thinking that "Promises at D1 should carry more weight" would have a nasty cascading effect on D2 teams going after pulldowns?

This would be a step or two removed from the BCS conferences but if a D level program gets into a battle, wouldn't they just need to set aside a sliver of the budget in case they lost and throw a simple 10 minute promise at a ranked player that was looking at a D2 school instead?

Maybe, but shouldn't a player rather play 10 minutes on a D1 team than sign with a D2 team?

How many Human D1 vs. D2 battles are there anyway?  I've got to think its not very many.  Plus most D1 humans wouldn't want to really play the guys they are battling D2 for.  They are probably RS candidates.

Given a decent amount of other types of recruiting efforts, sure they should play D1 ball.  But I wouldn't want a promise to outweigh a number of evals and visits that a D2 school does if the D1 school can skip the expensive effort and just make a promise.

I have to admit it's been a bit since I was in D2 but when I left, many schools were going for pulldowns instead of dropdowns and I'm 99% sure the tendency to go for pulldowns has only increased since I gave up that team.  I really can't speak to the number of battles but there weren't many at the time, I'm not sure how many there are now.  But if you change the equation so that as a D1 team I can recruit a player 1,000 miles away and take him away from a local D2 team by offering a simple promise, I think you'd end up with a lot more poaching.

As to most D1 humans wouldn't really want to play the guys?  I think you might be overstating the talent at D level D1 programs.  I've had a handful of players on my current D3 team over the past half-dozen seasons that would be starters on those type of D1 teams and taking a look at the current top rated players in D2, I think just about every player would play for lower level D1 schools.

BTW, I'm not even sure it would be a bad thing if D2 teams got burned more frequently when the "lost" players they had pulled down.  But it goes without saying that folks are going to freak out if it starts happening regularly.

kujayhawk, a couple of thoughts.  First, I think there are very few (any?) DII programs successfully beating human coached DI teams for recruits if the DI program wants the kid now, so I don't see much impact there frankly.  To me, even if we're talking pull-downs I've always figured if you are fighting a school a division below you for a recruit then your sights are almost certainly set too low as far as recruiting.

Second, at least for me I'm not sure I'd increase the weight of promises for all DI players, only the top ones (4 and 5 star) which again would not be kids DII schools would be after.

And finally, to me I'd like to see breaking promises much more of a risk versus making a huge increase in their weight.  For example, a kid complaining with no reversal of trend on starts or PT might actually be a slight risk to walk off the team completely mid-season and transfer next.  Maybe make the 4 and 5 star kids expect 100% of their promises to be fulfilled, not 80% as seems to be conventional wisdom--that way a 30 mpg promise is just that, not a "I'll promise 30 figuring I can get away with an average of 24 mpg or so" promise... 

I wouldn't make these kinds of changes to every recruit, but for the upper echelons I'd say definitely--that way the elite programs can not simply stack their benches with studs while teams trying to build simply wait for leftovers and hope to scrounge together enough diamonds in the rough to compete.

groomsie -- My main point was simply to bring up unintended consequences.  I don't see it happening all that often but I also see a D2 coach in California raising holy hell if Holy Cross goes across the country to "steal" a recruit from them by simply being able to offer a promise.  The intent of weighting promises is to solve a BCS problem so to the effect a change would impact all of D1, you have that blurry line between the level of recruits that separate low level D1 and high level D2.  Like I said in my last post, I honestly wouldn't have a huge problem with it but D2 coaches might think differently.

I do like the way you frame it and if you set it up that way, I think it works.  If you limit it to the 4 and 5 star kids, it wouldn't impact the D level prestige D1 teams, much less D2.

Essentially, I'm saying that I don't trust WIS making sweeping changes since some of the nuance often gets lost in the process.

As to setting sights too low, you probably are correct in that regard.  (If nothing else, I really don't have the experience to speak on it with any authority.)  At the same time I do find it odd that there are so many players at D2 that look to be leaps and bounds better than what are on low level D1 rosters so maybe at a certain level, those D1 teams should be looking in that direction.

A simple recruiting fix for the top 10 at each position or top 50 overall would be a built-in start and 20 mins. as a minimum to sign one of those players.  when you clicked on the recruit profile it would already be selected, you could go up from there but never less.  seems to be an easy programming situation.  lesser recruit (i.e. top 50-100) would have a built in demand for time but no promised start etc.

maybe an automatic promised start to the top 10 overall but I think the entire top 50 is too many.

In RL, going back to the high school class of LeBron, only one top 10 overall recruit didn't make the NBA.  And only 2 (Hansbrough & Singler) even stayed the full four years in college.

When you look at overall recruits #11-30 it's fewer than half that even get drafted.  For overall #31-50, about 1 in six get drafted. 

Yeah 1-50 is too much to require a promised start.

I'm not sure that it should be hard wired that they ALL demand it - but a large percentage of the top ten should demand a start and say 20 mins.  Like 80%.  A significant percentage of the top 25 should demand a start + 20....maybe 1/3 of them?  40% of them....??

I think these promises for the top talent would need to carry for at least two seasons.  One season is not enough. 

Maybe just adding promises for the sophomore season would be good.  The big dogs won't be able to do it as readily as the little guys.

I don't think promises should be REQUIRED to sign anyone, just make it way more difficult (expensive) to do it without promises.  In RL the top programs don't always start / give big minutes to freshmen.  But make it so a mid-major (or a low-level team in a Big-6 trying to work up) offering a start and 25 mpg to a kid would be very tempting versus sitting at the end of the bench for a loaded team.

It shouldn't carry so much weight that a low-level DI offering a start+30 mpg could cheaply sign a top kid over a mid-major or a top program.

Big time recruits aren't going to a team they aren't play a lot of minutes for. It's either inherently accepted that they are going to have a major role immediately or it's simply stated. Do you think Anthony Davis was going to a school that told him, "you're going to have to come off the bench"? I don't think it's the same in HD because it's impossible for freshman to be among the 10 best players in the country because of the IQ impact and the lack of polish many have. My point is the promise thing isn't really practical for HD because there will be many times when a top 10 recruit just isn't good enough to start on any contending team. And wouldn't even be that big of a help to teams in that 20-40 RPI range.

Posted by l_eustachy on 11/16/2011 9:54:00 PM (view original):
I don't think promises should be REQUIRED to sign anyone, just make it way more difficult (expensive) to do it without promises.  In RL the top programs don't always start / give big minutes to freshmen.  But make it so a mid-major (or a low-level team in a Big-6 trying to work up) offering a start and 25 mpg to a kid would be very tempting versus sitting at the end of the bench for a loaded team.

It shouldn't carry so much weight that a low-level DI offering a start+30 mpg could cheaply sign a top kid over a mid-major or a top program.

I like thinking of this stuff in terms of letter grades, max promise - start and 30 minutes vs no promise, should make a B+ school even with a A+ on the low end, a C+ school even with a A+ school high end, in that range.  My thinking now, it means next to nothing.

One ? I would have for seble or any of you experts out there, is promise's impact vs other recruiting tool's impact proportional to the increase in budget as we go up in divisions?  In other words, if a promise is worth a campus visit, in d3, that is 5 times more impactful in d3 than in d1, where budgets are 5 times larger.