Posted by doogan on 11/4/2022 1:50:00 PM (view original):
It sounds like this Swenske guy was not that successful of a coach. If the Inform of No Redshirt was as valuable as you suggest and he was doing it as much as he was, wouldn't you think he'd be absolutely dominating the game?

And maybe someone will chime in here (or maybe everyones just moved on with their lives) and say that, it doesn't matter how much of advantage it was, it was an advantage and so that's cheating.

Two responses to that:
1. If it was as big an advantage as many have claimed, I imagine I would have reacted very differently to it. That's when I would've been saying, as Topp said, "Geez, something about this is ridiculously powerful." I didn't see it at all as ridiculously powerful. Swenske's lack of success despite using it a massive number of times is a reflection of that.

2. To state again, the level of advantage is similar to other things that people do. If you want to call me a cheater and ban me, then you need to also call anyone who's ever redshirted a senior to gain extra recruiting cash/APs a cheater who should be banned, or anyone who ever promised an ineligible recruit minutes that they knew they wouldn't have to keep.

doogan, couple things.

1) speed is very important in early d1 recruiting, we all know this. any boost to early d1 recruiting speed is significant. i'm not saying its dramatic, an overwhelming advantage, or that you guys were only successful for it. but i think its pretty clear its a significat advantage. i don't know its necessary to debate beyond that. would you at least agree its a significant advantage?

2) redshirting a senior to gain extra recruiting cash was brought up publicly by a number of folks involved. CS has explicitly said they aren't huge fans but that doing it isn't cheating. your premise here seems to be that redshirting a senior is of similar magnitude to the redshirt-noredshirt issue. my argument is, that is largely an irrelevant point. if CS says something is allowable, even if that is the 'wrong' decision, users go off of that and doing so cannot be considered cheating.

I learned that redshirting a Sr lets you use their resources twice AFTER learning that withdrawing a redshirt promise gets you about 1/3 of the way from unlocking a scholarship. This whole episode seems to boil down to no one else knowing about it which before this week I didn't realize.

Dang I just noticed spud mentioned me again. https://youtube.com/shorts/hnrJUJWEXok?feature=share .

yeah, they got a harsh penalty for sending out inform of redshirts, and it was really only because almost all of the rest of us didn’t know that you could use it without using AP. But that decision has been made. Cheating is still a strong word here as well. It was a Weird, silly way that the game gave recruiting credit for. But it was still a recruiting action. I’m still super relieved that no one hacked the game or did anything crazy or anything like that. The integrity of the game is protected

Posted by zemedlin on 11/4/2022 2:02:00 PM (view original):
Yes that’s true. RSing a senior is a much more useful tool at D2 and D3, so you don’t run the risk of an EE. At those levels, it may be easier to take away, because I don’t think people should be using their recruiting money then anyway unless they’re going after players in the same division. Can’t sign them yet until period 2 anyway and a D1 could always snipe you.

You wouldn't do it on a guy who's good enough to go EE. At least I never would have. And it's definitely useful. Just like being able to get 40 free APs on any recruit you want is useful.

The divide between knowledge WAS a big deal though. And it did give an advantage in being able to fill out rosters and also stop recruiting opponents from doing the same. I don’t deny that. Important to note that these guys were far from the only people to get screwed in this whole ordeal. I also feel for the folks that were up against the inform of non redshirt tool and didn’t send out offers because they saw an opponent had already sent an offer. pretty much have agreed with almost all of what Gil has posted, on almost every front, throughout this entire ordeal. Gil, Benis, top, So many good vets around this game. Too many to name

Posted by gillispie on 11/4/2022 2:07:00 PM (view original):

Posted by doogan on 11/4/2022 1:50:00 PM (view original):
It sounds like this Swenske guy was not that successful of a coach. If the Inform of No Redshirt was as valuable as you suggest and he was doing it as much as he was, wouldn't you think he'd be absolutely dominating the game?

And maybe someone will chime in here (or maybe everyones just moved on with their lives) and say that, it doesn't matter how much of advantage it was, it was an advantage and so that's cheating.

Two responses to that:
1. If it was as big an advantage as many have claimed, I imagine I would have reacted very differently to it. That's when I would've been saying, as Topp said, "Geez, something about this is ridiculously powerful." I didn't see it at all as ridiculously powerful. Swenske's lack of success despite using it a massive number of times is a reflection of that.

2. To state again, the level of advantage is similar to other things that people do. If you want to call me a cheater and ban me, then you need to also call anyone who's ever redshirted a senior to gain extra recruiting cash/APs a cheater who should be banned, or anyone who ever promised an ineligible recruit minutes that they knew they wouldn't have to keep.

doogan, couple things.

1) speed is very important in early d1 recruiting, we all know this. any boost to early d1 recruiting speed is significant. i'm not saying its dramatic, an overwhelming advantage, or that you guys were only successful for it. but i think its pretty clear its a significat advantage. i don't know its necessary to debate beyond that. would you at least agree its a significant advantage?

2) redshirting a senior to gain extra recruiting cash was brought up publicly by a number of folks involved. CS has explicitly said they aren't huge fans but that doing it isn't cheating. your premise here seems to be that redshirting a senior is of similar magnitude to the redshirt-noredshirt issue. my argument is, that is largely an irrelevant point. if CS says something is allowable, even if that is the 'wrong' decision, users go off of that and doing so cannot be considered cheating.

1) We're caught up in semantics here. What does "significant" mean. I agree its an advantage. I agree the advantage is in the range of the advantage gained by redshirting a senior. So if you think the advantage gained by redshirting a senior is significant, then I'd would also say the advantage of informing of no redshirt was significant.

2) CS never said it was cheating to inform a player you won't redshirt them. And, since it's an option of thing you can do in the game, it would be logical to assume that it wasn't cheating. I just remembered something about the inform of redshirt thing. A couple times a tried to redshirt a guy who I had informed of no redshirt during recruiting and I would get a message that would say something like, "I'm so mad right now. You specifically told me when you recruited me that would NOT redshirt me." That was further evidence for me that the Inform of No Redshirt was just part of the game. The recruits would also get a "Inform of No Redshirt" thing on their page during recruiting, like the Minutes or Promised Start thing.

Posted by bdashkiwsky on 11/4/2022 2:08:00 PM (view original):
I learned that redshirting a Sr lets you use their resources twice AFTER learning that withdrawing a redshirt promise gets you about 1/3 of the way from unlocking a scholarship. This whole episode seems to boil down to no one else knowing about it which before this week I didn't realize.

No one knowing about it is the important part here. Everyone knows about Sr redshirt and inel stuff. CS talked with the community about it here in the forums with us. I wouldn’t call that a loophole at that stage. Literally 4 guys in the entire community Is not the same. If everyone here was moderately aware of it, everything would be a lot different right now. Either CS would’ve handled it, or we would all be doing it as if it was the new in thing. Or many other outcomes.

And someone asked what do I mean by “together”. CS claimed you together, in their initial post. Family members or something. I didn’t make that up, it’s here to be read

Posted by Benis on 11/4/2022 1:48:00 PM (view original):

Posted by gillispie on 11/4/2022 1:41:00 PM (view original):

Posted by CoachSpud on 11/4/2022 12:56:00 PM (view original):

Posted by trojan4309 on 11/3/2022 1:30:00 PM (view original):
Personally, if I knew damn well I had a steroid-like advantage with recruiting and kept it secret from the HD community for 3+ years while knowing it negatively and unfairly impacted other coaches (including financially), then I would issue an apology. NOT defend my actions which is all I’ve seen from the violators.

That’s egregious.

Bingo. And since part of CS's reasoning about letting these guys return is that they have taken full accountability, it looks like CS is going to have to reevaluate their decision. bdash in his post above this, and especially cimmy and doogan are far from accepting accountability, minimizing what they did, denying that they did anything wrong. Maybe slap their wrists a little harder, since that's all CS seems inclined to do. It's a shame that CS missed an opportunity to uphold the integrity of the game.

And I have to wonder how many more zemedlin's are out there, stirred up like he is to look for every exploit they can find, now that it looks like CS will allow the cheaters to remain on the site.

BTW, can anyone mention a site like WIS but where cheaters are actually kicked out? I'm looking for one.

losing all of your teams is *far* from a slap on the wrist. they not only lost all their teams, but their resumes, too. banning their accounts, the folks in question could just come back the next day under a different account, and its virtually impossible to stop that. in terms of HD, these guys basically got a full ban, because they are starting over as completely new accounts. the only difference is that their baseball leagues, they get to keep.

Agreed. Its effectively an NCAA death sentence..

Spud, you have zero HD teams so what do you care.

"in terms of HD, these guys basically got a full ban"

That would be good if it were true, but unfortunately it isn't. CS did not take the position, "Cheating is out, cheaters are out." They're still here, unrestricted in their future participation, with not even a probationary period as far as I have seen. They are on the forums minimizing what they did, even trying to claim they did nothing wrong. Others are buying into that crap.

As for my own teams, not that it's relevant to the current conversations, but I am on the sidelines watching to see if the cheating gets cleaned up. Looks like I'll be on the sidelines a while longer.

Posted by topdogggbm on 11/4/2022 2:16:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bdashkiwsky on 11/4/2022 2:08:00 PM (view original):
I learned that redshirting a Sr lets you use their resources twice AFTER learning that withdrawing a redshirt promise gets you about 1/3 of the way from unlocking a scholarship. This whole episode seems to boil down to no one else knowing about it which before this week I didn't realize.

No one knowing about it is the important part here. Everyone knows about Sr redshirt and inel stuff. CS talked with the community about it here in the forums with us. I wouldn’t call that a loophole at that stage. Literally 4 guys in the entire community Is not the same. If everyone here was moderately aware of it, everything would be a lot different right now. Either CS would’ve handled it, or we would all be doing it as if it was the new in thing. Or many other outcomes.

And someone asked what do I mean by “together”. CS claimed you together, in their initial post. Family members or something. I didn’t make that up, it’s here to be read

I already addressed the issue of nobody else knowing:

3) It's different because nobody else knew about it. I really don't know what the other coaches all know. I'm not someone who reads or writes things on the forums. Before a couple days ago, I'm not sure I'd looked at a forum in like 15 years aside from when a new update to the game was posted and I imagine I did some forum reading when 3.0 first came around. Like I said, I figured the Inform of No Redshirt was not common knowledge. If you had told me 25% of D1 coaches were doing it, I wouldn't have been surprised. So I never mentioned it in the forums or the chat. I also never said, "Hey everyone, if you redshirt a senior you get their recruiting resources for two years." I didn't know, and still don't know, if that "trick" is common knowledge among HD players. I didn't share the knowledge publicly. I gained an advantage in recruiting by doing it. So is that cheating also? Again, I'm sure there are some who say it is. I'd say no.

Good strategy by doogan here... cook up some completely irrelevant "Sr redshirt" talking point and try to deflect. A+++

Spud, I’m not buying into their crap. I’ve posted there should be no punishment for them ever since it was said what their non-cheating recruiting advantage was. Before they could come to their own defense.

But I don’t make those decisions. What’s done is done. I love this game and I would have hated to be in their shoes. But I also would have hated to be in the shoes of their recruiting opponents as well. So CS reacting harshly I understand. They showed that using recruiting actions is not allowed if a small amount of members of the community know about them. They did this to set a precedent for cheating, because people understandably got mad and thought they were cheating, before it actually came out they were just using the inform recruit of no redshirt button. It is what it is.

"As for my own teams, not that it's relevant to the current conversations, but I am on the sidelines watching to see if the cheating gets cleaned up. Looks like I'll be on the sidelines a while longer."


Pffffffttt. Right. Okay.

Posted by topdogggbm on 11/4/2022 2:16:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bdashkiwsky on 11/4/2022 2:08:00 PM (view original):
I learned that redshirting a Sr lets you use their resources twice AFTER learning that withdrawing a redshirt promise gets you about 1/3 of the way from unlocking a scholarship. This whole episode seems to boil down to no one else knowing about it which before this week I didn't realize.

No one knowing about it is the important part here. Everyone knows about Sr redshirt and inel stuff. CS talked with the community about it here in the forums with us. I wouldn’t call that a loophole at that stage. Literally 4 guys in the entire community Is not the same. If everyone here was moderately aware of it, everything would be a lot different right now. Either CS would’ve handled it, or we would all be doing it as if it was the new in thing. Or many other outcomes.

And someone asked what do I mean by “together”. CS claimed you together, in their initial post. Family members or something. I didn’t make that up, it’s here to be read

As for our real life relationship, I already addressed that also:

Finally to address the relationship between me, Cimmy, and Robinhood. For one, if our goal was to collude and hide our relationships, it wouldn't have made much sense to play in the same conference and play each other twice a season. We all grew up Temple fans and A10 fans, so we eventually ended up there. As Cimmy was building up the St. Joe's program (after I was already established at Temple) we did battle for a couple recruits. But we also did try to steer clear of each other. Is that collusion? I'm sure some would say yes. I don't think so. I try to avoid battles with A+ schools. Cimmy ran Flex and I ran Triangle. If there was a 5-star near Philly with a Flex preference, I would assume Cimmy was going to prioritize him and I would look elsewhere. Duke and North Carolina were often overlapping in my hunting grounds in like Virginia and Maryland. I think I may have battled them a total of once or twice in like 30-some seasons. Those aren't the battles I want to fight. For whatever reason, I did end up in a lot of battles with theword at Boston College. I think he would tell you that, even in the last couple years, he probably beat me out more times than I beat him. Because, again, 40 extra APs were very unlikely to swing those battles. But anyway, if there are real-life friends or fathers/sons out there playing in the same world and level, I would assume they are trying not to battle each other for the same recruits much and I don't think that's collusion.

Now that everyone know about the technique, either let it go on, or remove the redshirt options during recruiting, and just redshirt during season, but don't reinvent the algorithm until it is tested and discussed.

Posted by npb7768 on 11/4/2022 2:22:00 PM (view original):
Good strategy by doogan here... cook up some completely irrelevant "Sr redshirt" talking point and try to deflect. A+++

How is the Sr redshirt thing different from the Inform of Redshirt?

I'm done playing the game so if I wanted to deflect I would just disappear. Which I hope I will do in the next 24 hours or so.