I'm not sure if I count as one of those established players or not, but if I have any advantages I'm not aware of them... I finally got an A+ baseline prestige team, just in time for floating prestige to partially negate the advantage of an A+ baseline team. Despite being mentored by gill the last 3 seasons I still can't get **** done.
In Tark a while back I spent 17 seasons at Alabama. The SEC was a middle of the road BCS conference. We had a couple big time coaches (gillispie, johnsensing, probably others I'm forgetting - no offense y'all) but never were the dominant conference. I think I am maybe one of those A- coaches gill mentions - Bama had been simai for 4 seasons and was a B- when I took over. We fell to C+ my first 2 seasons, going 5-22 (3-13) and then 15-14 (7-9, PIT 1st). From that 2nd season through the 17th I never missed the postseason, with 6 PIT bids (3 championship game appearances, no titles) and 9 NTs. In the 9 NT appearances we won a total of 3 games, 1 2nd rd, 1 sweet 16 and had 8 players drafted, with 2 1st rounders my 9th season... highest prestige attained was A- (the S16 season - also only time finishing ranked (#23)) with most others being B+.
Other, better coaches than me could probably have turned the corner. I have no idea if my experience indicates a problem with the game limiting my advancement and success or is simply a reflection that I am not as good at this as some others. If the latter I guess I don't want the game changed to make it easier just for me, but if there is something inherently broken with the whole deal lets fix it - thing is I'm not sure what that is.
gill talks about recruit generation changes, and yeah, maybe that needs some love, but what exists now is way better IMHO than when every decent BCS team had 10-12 players with 100 in every core ability. If all the players on all the teams are all the same it really becomes Random Number Generator what if...
(I know gill isn't advocating a return to that - at least I think I know that - just want to warn against the possibility of over-correction).