an alternative to more good recruits would be more texture in recruits

- create some high school kids with B IQ and a few with A IQ
- add preferences for recruits like - want small school, want big school, want strong academics, want party school, want warm place, want cold place, want urban school, want rural school
- create pipeline effects where having recruited a kid from a school helps recruit next year from the same school or where recruiting from a geographic area helps the next year

texture would create more dimensions of recruiting competition and allow a mid or low DI school to - for example - win better recruits if it had a pipeline and the kid wanted a warm climate and a small school....etc

You guys are definitely onto something with recruit generation and the amount of elite players. There aren't enough good players or players with the potential to be good for lower tier programs to build a serious contender. I'm not against player potential but I feel like it is far too rigid. There are also too many players with low potential. It has made recruiting by far the most important part of this game and taken away coaches ability to mold players how they want. Give us more freedom as coaches. There are too many upperclassman DI players that still suck almost as much as they did as freshmen. 

I would like to see player caps done away with. Once players reach certain thresholds they improve much slower but can still get better with more practice or time. College players rarely can't improve a skill no matter how good they are. I would even like to see ratings go past 100. Why does there have to be a max?

Kelby, I've seen lots of real-life college players not improve skills. The majority of them played for Illinois.

I actually like potential way more than the old system. My beef with the potential system is everybody improves at the same rate. I would love to see late bloomers, something where after "X" amount of practice minutes his improvement begins to sky rocket. I don't think we necessarily need more great recruits. What I think is better is to have more hidden gems. So more guys who start out with 500 ratings that have 5 or 6 hi/hi areas, so they end up in the 800s or 900s. These are the guys that the elite's will likely not recruit and the mid majors can grab and have themself a star in 3 or 4 seasons.

The A+ schools are still going to go after the 5* 700 rated guys, and will occasionaly nab one of these hidden guys, but these type of guys will mostly go to the lower prestige schools. Of course you run the risk that these guys intended for mid major schools end up going to the lower tiered BCS schools, only to make the BCS conferences even stronger. But I think it could work.

I think a sliding scale of minimum level of effort  would be beneficial to the recruiting spectrum.  Something like 10 HV's per star.

That way you're gonna have to spend 20k+ to land a 5 star recruit.  What I don't like about recruiting is that the big boys land multiple 5  stars for so cheap.

Posted by kmasonbx1 on 3/14/2014 11:29:00 AM (view original):
I actually like potential way more than the old system. My beef with the potential system is everybody improves at the same rate. I would love to see late bloomers, something where after "X" amount of practice minutes his improvement begins to sky rocket. I don't think we necessarily need more great recruits. What I think is better is to have more hidden gems. So more guys who start out with 500 ratings that have 5 or 6 hi/hi areas, so they end up in the 800s or 900s. These are the guys that the elite's will likely not recruit and the mid majors can grab and have themself a star in 3 or 4 seasons.

The A+ schools are still going to go after the 5* 700 rated guys, and will occasionaly nab one of these hidden guys, but these type of guys will mostly go to the lower prestige schools. Of course you run the risk that these guys intended for mid major schools end up going to the lower tiered BCS schools, only to make the BCS conferences even stronger. But I think it could work.

another terrific example of the way in which more texture would help

well, low BCS schools have it rough too, kmason. mid majors get the focus but the reality is bottom half BCS schools are MUCH harder to rebuild today than they were before the recruit generation change. of course it can be done, i turned b- south carolina around into a top 5 every year type program, but man - it was NOT trivial. it was by far the hardest bcs turnaround i've had to do. sure, part was the ACC having 20K more. in contrast, with UK at b- in the old engine, i was in the final 4 in my 3rd season, with a worse starting situation (b- means UK is REALLY bad, while south carolina had some decent guys, and the SEC was similarly weak). with colorado i won a title in the 3rd season off a C prestige. to me, the olden days, a great coach could compete for titles right off the bat, at BCS programs, by out thinking, out strategizing, out coaching, the coaches at higher programs. now i don't think thats feasible - in sitemails the advice i give is to look at every 4 year cycle in the BCS conference as an attempt to raise your prestige 1-2 partial grades. that is SO SLOW. it basically took me 10 seasons to get south carolina turned around, that is slow as hell - and thats the hardest ive worked at an HD program in 4 years, including the UK gig, so its not like i just was screwing around. its also the hardest ive ever worked recruiting wise in d1 in my entire career, i mean, i tried really hard when i just started d1 - but i was new, fairly clueless. south carolina is easily the best recruiting job of my d1 career, and it was still tough - no way it should be that much harder than it was in the beginning, when i was new & fairly clueless.

anyway, i think the introduction of more "good" players, guys who start a little better with a little lower potential, as well as the ones kmason mentions, the guys who end high BCS quality but start much lower, is what would restore the balance. of course low end BCS schools and mid majors are going to compete for these guys - but thats how it always was in the olden days - i see no problem with that. with equal coaches and equal prestige, the BCS school has the advantage, and thats fine. but a decently superior coach can close that gap, and it would be a lot easier with more wiggle room on the recruits available to play with. to me, thats how it should be. 

Thinkings of a very average coach: Many good ideas in this thread that would make things better in DI. I have said before on the forums, and I will repeat my believe here.......there should be a method that does not reward the BCS conferences with NT and PIT appearances with .500 or less records. That is more money for the BCS conference and less money for other mid and lower tiered schools that could be used to help in their recruiting.

I agree lower half BCS schools are a tough road too.  I think they must suck the most because while you get a recruiting advantage because of your conference (prestige/money), the guys you have an advantage going for are not the ones you need to compete in your conference.

I also agree the big BCS schools end up getting far too many good recruits on the cheap.

As a coach who had success in BCS conferences and then decided to leave the BCS conferences to build a couple of mid-majors into contenders, I'll say that the current prestige system in D1 is the single most frustrating aspect of HD to me, by miles and miles.  I went to the tournament for something like a dozen years in a row at Loyola Chicago in Rupp and finally, the last year I was there, managed to push the prestige up to B+.  When I thought about sticking around another dozen years to try to get to A-, it hardly seemed worth it.  I'll probably leave Drake in Smith after this season as well, focusing on my D2 school where I can be at a school I want to coach and still have a legit shot at deep tournament runs.

Yes, I didn't have deep runs in the dance at Loyola, I think I had one or two Sweet 16's and a couple of other second-round appearances... but there is a circular aspect to this.  If you can't recruit 700+ studs then you can't have deep tournament runs, and if you don't have deep tournament runs you can't push up your prestige (unless in a favored, aka BCS, conference), and without high prestige you can't recruit the big studs.  Just how high you can go hinges on a developer's concept of a school's prestige circa 2000.  Lame.

Baseline prestige should be gone.  We're what, about 70 seasons into most worlds now?  What does a reality school's 1944 prestige have to do with how we perceive the school now?  Quick, without using the Google, who were the ten best teams in 1944?  How many of us were even alive then?

Conference influence on prestige should also be gone, or at least minimized to almost nothing.  Is it really prestigious to be in a BCS conference where you go 2-14 every season, except for those seasons when you win even fewer games?

I realize that in reality there are huge differences in conference prestige.  But we also all know that to have a successful game, sometimes reality must be trumped by playability.  In that sense, selling HD as a game that gives coaches the opportunity to "build your dynasty" is misleading at the D1 level; there, you can "build your dynasty if it is at a school we think matters enough."  Lame.  Again.  If a coach can build a team that consistently wins a ton of regular season games, has a top 40 RPI, makes the dance every year, etc... then he shouldn't have to rely on conference mates or a school's real-life situation to build his dynasty there.

Just my two cents.  If WiS wonders why D1 is a dead zone beyond the BCS conferences, well damn.  The reason is impossible to miss.  I have repeatedly asked Seble to change the D1 prestige model to the same is as used at D2 & D3; after all, the algorithm and the code is obviously already there, so how hard could it be?  So far no luck, but I hope it will eventually happen.

Sorry to sound like such a crank, but after a long time beating my head against the prestige wall at Loyola Chicago this is my biggest hot-button issue with the game at the moment.  Let coaches stand on their own two feet, instead of having them rely on an arbitrary baseline rating and the competency of the other human coaches in their conferences to prop them up.

I currently have D1 teams at every spectrum of D1, UNC, ND, and Pepperdine. ND has been a difficult rebuild due to a very difficult location (and me half assing a few seasons). The Big 10 has become the dominant conference in Phelan, and ND is in the middle of Big 10 country so I don't get the luxury of battling conferences with less money, ALL of my battles are with other Big 10 schools, and being at a school like ND this makes it extremely difficult to build up the prestige. Things are pretty easy with UNC for the most part, but when the recruit generation sucks things get really rough because of Duke being right next door, VA and WVU being A+ schools, and for a while SC was A+.

I find Pepperdine to actually not be too difficult, all things considered. I'm in the backyard of the Pac-10 but I don't really battle for the same recruits at all. I've been able to build up to a B (it took a while) and this season I have my best team ever coming off a Sweet 16 appearance. ND has been by far the hardest job I've had, so I think rebuilding a bottom level BCS school is the hardest thing to do. I was able to turn WVU into a constant contender but that took a while, and I still have yet to be able to do that with ND. Hopefully I can get it done.

Posted by kmasonbx1 on 3/14/2014 11:29:00 AM (view original):
I actually like potential way more than the old system. My beef with the potential system is everybody improves at the same rate. I would love to see late bloomers, something where after "X" amount of practice minutes his improvement begins to sky rocket. I don't think we necessarily need more great recruits. What I think is better is to have more hidden gems. So more guys who start out with 500 ratings that have 5 or 6 hi/hi areas, so they end up in the 800s or 900s. These are the guys that the elite's will likely not recruit and the mid majors can grab and have themself a star in 3 or 4 seasons.

The A+ schools are still going to go after the 5* 700 rated guys, and will occasionaly nab one of these hidden guys, but these type of guys will mostly go to the lower prestige schools. Of course you run the risk that these guys intended for mid major schools end up going to the lower tiered BCS schools, only to make the BCS conferences even stronger. But I think it could work.

That was my point was as well -- more of what you're referring to as "hidden gems". Guys who don't start out as BCS-caliber, but who have the ability to get there in 3-4 seasons.

Posted by kmasonbx1 on 3/14/2014 1:32:00 PM (view original):
I currently have D1 teams at every spectrum of D1, UNC, ND, and Pepperdine. ND has been a difficult rebuild due to a very difficult location (and me half assing a few seasons). The Big 10 has become the dominant conference in Phelan, and ND is in the middle of Big 10 country so I don't get the luxury of battling conferences with less money, ALL of my battles are with other Big 10 schools, and being at a school like ND this makes it extremely difficult to build up the prestige. Things are pretty easy with UNC for the most part, but when the recruit generation sucks things get really rough because of Duke being right next door, VA and WVU being A+ schools, and for a while SC was A+.

I find Pepperdine to actually not be too difficult, all things considered. I'm in the backyard of the Pac-10 but I don't really battle for the same recruits at all. I've been able to build up to a B (it took a while) and this season I have my best team ever coming off a Sweet 16 appearance. ND has been by far the hardest job I've had, so I think rebuilding a bottom level BCS school is the hardest thing to do. I was able to turn WVU into a constant contender but that took a while, and I still have yet to be able to do that with ND. Hopefully I can get it done.

you have done a fine job at all schools - but i think you do make the point here to some extent. pepperdine, you've got 10 seasons under your belt, and it took you all 10 of them to get your first NT win. that is quite a while, given that you are pretty high on the d1 coaching spectrum. its not that hard to make the NT because of the advantage scheduling wise that mid majors have - thats where they are easier than low BCS schools. but breaking into the realm of getting NT wins regularly, breaking into the S16 and on frequently like you could do easily at a plethora of BCS programs, that is what is so much harder. it shouldn't take a coach of your caliber 10 seasons to get a NT win at a mid major, imagine how hard that makes it for everyone else.

those gems do exist like you've said a number of times (i had some quick success out in CA at a mid major myself, i think that area is better for some reason) - but the thing is, they are just too few and far between. i guess we are in agreement on there needing to be more... i guess i believe a mid major coach who is a great coach but not an experienced high end d1 recruiter should be able to succeed. it just takes too much prowess on the recruiting front to navigate the current mid major situation, IMO. to me it almost forces successful mid major coaches to have gone up the ranks in BCS conferences and circled back (or stayed at a mid major somewhere else), i don't think new d1 coaches have much choice of staying at a mid major they fall in love with, not if they ever want to succeed in d1... and that kind of sucks, to me :) i agree with whomever mentioned the "fun factor", i like the idea of this being "what if sports", and letting people do things outside the realm of normalcy to allow greater enjoyment. 

Posted by mullycj on 3/14/2014 6:19:00 PM (view original):
Dont mean to sound like a crumudgeon......if you don't like the DI prestige system, then play DII or DIII.    Each division has some unigue attributes that make it different from the others.    It's not like your are at a REAL school with a real job.

Im glad seble wont change it to the DII model.    I personally agree the baseline should be able to move, but a smaller sliding scale.

In fact, that is exactly the solution I am choosing.  But I think leaving prestige the way it is guarantees that most D1 conferences will be ghost towns, and it is hard for me to see how that is good for business.

On a personal note: Mully, I know you are glad to see me out of D1 because you are still angry about Mark Staudt.