I'm in a D3 conference mostly devoid of human coaches and have been for quite some time.  I've been force to schedule extremely difficult OOC games due to the poor performance of the conference teams every season so I decided to look more closely why they perform so poorly every season.

This last recruiting cycle, there were a total of 38 open spots among the 10 SIM controlled teams.  After recruiting was completed, 30 of those spots went to walk-ons .  Of the other 8, 4 were 3yr JUCO players and only 4 were your standard 4yr freshman recruits.

I can't believe that all these teams had their recruiting targets pilfered by other low-end D3 schools (either human controlled or SIM) so what's up with low end D3 schools taking on 6 walk-ons with 6 available spots (3 of the teams took 5 walkons or more).

If this happens every recruiting cycle, how do these teams ever compete?

They dont, which sucks. The only good sim teams happen only when they have an excess amount of seniors or a good coach just left them with great players.

I've been complaining about this for a while now, and it's only gotten worse. I wish they'd set it so that (as an example) 80% of Sim recruiting spots were filled randomly with true D3 prospects who didn't get snapped up by human coaches, and only 20% were walk-ons. Instead, we have the opposite right now, and it only hurts the SOS of human teams in those conferences. More balanced Sim teams would make all of D3 more competitive and interesting.

By the way, buddhagamer, nice job keeping a great SOS even with those Sim dregs in your conf.     

Or at leastmake the walkons just a LITTLE bit less hideous...