For some reason, my Oldresorter account has lost posting rights, so here goes with Ryan75, as I am playing up some old credits with an experimental team in Crum.
I think OR caused TBird's consternation, or I did.
funny thing, the player in ? was a hi pot mid 500's guard, that was considering only UConn in Tark, and TBird jumped on him. Which is fine, but I guess my ? would be, should not UConn be allowed to defend itself, for a player I indeed wanted and went hard after, in the FIRST round???
As far as collusion in Tark's Big East, that is almost funny, as that area in Tark (and in general for the game) is brutally competitive, to the point none of us will probably be able to ever win a NT from that region again.
Since player ratings have been lowered, the only way to have a shot at winning year in and year out, is to either get lucky, or have a high % of sims in the high prestige schools in your local market, or have coaches in your area who are purposefully not taking one another's recruits, an implied collusion of sorts.
To that extent, TBird is right on, the new game, with lack of available recruits, has created this 'Implied Collusion' phenomena. It is the only way to survive in a local market long term, using tricks to survive, and allowing those around you to survive too. I read on some board (I think it might have been Tark ACC) where a coach commented something like if I can get two of those guys, I'll be really happy. This is great, until you play a team in the NT who is rated 800 plus with 12 solid players, and obviously is not having to settle for 8 solid ones.
One last thing, I'm pretty sure Seble's main goal in dummying up the game ratings and using EE's was to keep d1 dynasties from dominating. In a sense, it has worked. It is much, much harder to win it all several years in a row or 3 out of 6 or whatever, than it used to be in d1. The change has pulled the middle of the top end of franchises closer to the top five, at the expense of the bottom 75-85% of the franchises. This might be controversial to many, but it has always been my position, that the ratings should not predict who wins, but the coaching, so for me, I want ratings to be somewhat equal, and not the huge swings the game now has.
Overall, ratings have gone up, not down on the top teams by the way. I won a NT with a 12 man Wisconsin Badger roster back in the day, that had a team total of 680. That might barely be a top rated d2 team these days.
TBird, sorry for taking your thread a bit off topic. I will say this for public consumption, on the guard in question, I put 6k on him (enough to strongly consider me) in round 1, then put a couple of k in everyonce in a while to try to shake you off. I did not want him to be open to the post first signings round, so at the end, I put in enough to end the battle.