But then it just is someone with more money beating someone with less.  And early or late, its just going to happen.  If you aren't comparing teams with equal resources, of course the team with more will win, and early or late it doesn't matter.

Your grab vs. UConn was a classic poach where the strong (A+ 150k?) took from the weak (A+ 100k?).  What's to see?  You want to prevent that?

Posted by reinsel on 6/15/2012 12:27:00 PM (view original):

But then it just is someone with more money beating someone with less.  And early or late, its just going to happen.  If you aren't comparing teams with equal resources, of course the team with more will win, and early or late it doesn't matter.

Your grab vs. UConn was a classic poach where the strong (A+ 150k?) took from the weak (A+ 100k?).  What's to see?  You want to prevent that?

Posted by jcfreder on 6/15/2012 12:41:00 PM (view original):
I like the idea of considering credit because it does make sense intuitively --- IRL you hear quotes all the time from recruits who at least pay lip service to the idea that being on a guy early is a good thing.  Plus, putting money into a guy for more than one cycle feels more like you are actually "recruiting" the guy rather than buying him at the last minute.

The idea about giving extra credit for a coach who spends *every* cycle makes sense if the recruiting season lasted weeks, but not with the current system that is only a matter of days.  I don't want to have to set an alarm to get up at 1 am just to put in my effort for that cycle.  Not to mention all the cycles that people miss for all kinds of other reasons.

With regard to the comment that RL recruits "decommit" more than HD recruits, I think the flaw with the current system is that there are not *enough* battles.  And I mean that in the sense of multiple schools being all over a guy from day one, not in the sense of there not being enough "poaching."  There is probably too much of a sense of "entitlement" that people get about "their guys" because the system has evolved to the point where the vast majority of recruits are not battled for.  And the reason there are so few battles are because (1) coaches generally keep their powder dry for their top options; and (2) coaches don't want to look vulnerable by having 10 guys considering them.

The system could be better by not rewarding coaches for only having 1 target, which is pretty far removed from real life.  You could probably make things better by giving teams a certain number of absolutely free effort.  If each team could get 5 guys to consider without actually blowing the budget, you'd end up seeing a lot more battling.  But then again, I tend to be more of a "real-lifer" than a total "whatif every school was completely even" person.

Posted by tedlukacs on 6/16/2012 10:18:00 AM (view original):
Had heard from a long-time coach that early money had a multiplier effect after a certain period--end of 1st day, whatever.  Maybe that is a myth, along with the theory that a sim spends 75% of their money the first cycle.  But it does mean a "poacher" has somewhat more effort to put in if they start late.  BTW, to me, the term, "poach" only applies to those that jump a conference mate.  I try to get in early, and get my targets "considering" me in the first few cycles, but then have to worry about just how much continuing effort to put in later to keep them.  Sometimes hard to tell if other schools are sniffing around..  Since HD has made more of an effort to upgrade sims, they are latching on to more of my targets than previously, with no distance penalty (unfair),  prompting me to think about grabbing a recruit from some school outside my conference that is involved in a battle or two.  The dumbing down of recruits has made life more difficult along the recruiting trail.  Decent low D1 players that sometimes would sign with a high prestige D2 school are now being totally snarky.  Supposedly HD has done this deliberately to encourage more battles (and more "poaching"), so we will have to live with it.  Personally, don't like to grab a recruit from another coach, but this is the New Reality in HD.