Is there a D1 guide or bible? I have recently become qualified for some D- prestige D1 jobs and am contemplating a move. 

The game plays the same but recruiting is different. Prestige is more important, there are many more battles and "poaching" is more common.

Don't expect to win right away.

Year 1 - Trim the fat and bring in your guys.  Schedule 10 easy wins in OOC for year 2
Year 2 - Evaluate your recruits and cut any that didn't play out as you expected.  Schedule 8 easy wins for year 3
Year 3 - If you still have bad players, cut them and then start looking to build up your rpi by scheduling tougher OOC.

Also, if you find yourself cutting a lot of players in years 1 and 2.  Don't feel obligated to sign a person for that open slot.  As many have said, its better to have a crappy player for 1 year (the walkon you'd take) than to be stuck with an average/bad player for 4 years.   Once you start winning games, you can start filling your roster with better players when you prestige goes up.   You won't be able to land studs so focus on trying to find guys that will end up excelling in offense or defense  (like a big that is really good at def/rebounding/sb but terrrible at offense).  The big schools don't need those players as they can take players that are far better and more well rounded but they'd be damn good for  D- team thats in rebuild mode.  Again, don't feel obligated to fill all your scholarships.  I'd actually recommend taking at least 2 walkons in the 1st year that way you'll have 2 players that will leave after year 1 and give you 30k for the next season (remember, you're building up and its gonna take a few seasons to get that prestige up). 

Thank you very much for your input, pureh21. Do you think it would be wise to find a school in a state like TX or CA where there are more recruits?

Posted by wdhobden on 1/5/2014 1:36:00 AM (view original):
Thank you very much for your input, pureh21. Do you think it would be wise to find a school in a state like TX or CA where there are more recruits?

I think its all about personal preference really but the one thing about those states is competition.  Texas has a lot of recruits but it also has a lot of DI teams.  Maybe you can check out the local teams and see which are actually human controlled.  Also u want to check the surrounding schools to see who is close to you to see who your main competition will be over the next few years.   Personally i've never coached a DI school in either state.  I'm a Marshall grad and have kept my DI experience to the NE portion of the US (rhode island, marshall, and Dartmouth are my current DI schools). 

For your example..

Texas has 19 D1 schools, 4 of which have a baseline of A/B and 15 are C/D
Cali has 21 DI schools (5 A/B and 16 C/D).

You might have 250 recruits in texas overall for those 19 schools in texas but how many are DI?? half of that?  so you'd have like 125 DI recruits for 19 schools so there's definitely enough to go around but you have to consider neighboring states as well.   Louisiana for example has 13 DI schools but only 1 is an A/B baseline prestige so realistically you could have to include another 13 schools fighting for texas schools as LA usually only has about 50 recruits total and maybe 35 of those are DI?? i haven't really done alot of study on recruit distribution but to me if you were in the eastern part of texas you could potentially be fighting 31 other schools for roughly 150 recruits between TX/LA. 

I just sent my friend a text to have him get on here in the morning and read this post.  he is coaching Rice (i think) in Tark and may have some more insight on recruiting in texas and my brother is in his 1st season at tulsa (D+ prestige) so he's down in that area as well and may know more about the recruits..

Thanks for taking the time to write that. I really appreciate it. You make some really valid points about those big states that I had not considered.