there has been some discussion on the actual mechanics seble has proposed - but not really a focused one, its more of some comments on mechanics interleaved with a far greater number of comments about generally if this is great, terrible, too big in scope, etc... i would personally really enjoy a discussion that is only about the actual mechanics itself, what we think about them... what is even being proposed (not always clear), how we'd like to see some of it implemented, etc...

a few thoughts:

- the creation of a recruit preference for playing time is one of the things i really like. im assuming this would be tied to promises, not some BS like looking at last season's setup and crap like that. i think this could really help level the playing field, while also adding realism. i'm hopeful seble makes this a real factor - not a 5% meaningless factor like some of the stuff he's put in place - maybe like 20-30% factor. but, i also am a little skeptical. it seems to me folks would just promise a great player to get him, no matter what, and just take the in-season hit if need be, swapping for the NT. for good players, not great ones, i could see top teams being unwilling to do this. but i don't see anyone being unwilling to promise an absolute stud a start and minutes to stay in the game, regardless of the impact on the season. any way to make this better? could hold the promise to the post season as well? i suppose also if you start signing 3-4 guys with starts, its going to hurt you quite a bit... but presumably, only some % of players are going to require these promises and stuff, probably not enough to force big schools to be starting half freshman and stuff like that. 

actually, that makes me think - its got to carry forward, to be real. if you can bench a sophmore, who was a freshman starter, and play him like, zero, for manipulation - thats just not realistic. should promises be enhanced - to make "freshman only" promises, and then, "career long" promises, where you are basically guaranteeing that initial promise level to players for their entire career, at a minimum? that could actually work... i like that a lot better than the post season enforcement of promises (which generally i am against on principle anyway - at least unless freshman studs start getting generated with decent IQ like real life).

- the splitting of the scouting budget from recruiting budget seems horrible to me. i LOVE the tradeoff in recruiting between battling for great players, and finding great players. last season, i spent in the 30Ks at a low d1 team "scouting". i know there are others who in some cases, scout excessively, its a way to diversify... and i think this needs to be beefed up - not pared down. i think recruiting and scouting budgets HAVE to interact in some way. i understand there is basically going to be no recruiting budget at all? so maybe scouting money can be used to "purchase" attention points or something along those lines (with the cap on "attention points" removed, assuming it would follow from the phone calls it is related to now). i really hope seble will expand on attention points and how they relate to contacting players for dropdowns/pulldowns... if that even is a thing anymore... because its hard to wrap my head around having no clue how that entire part of the game, which is in essence the core of d2/d3 recruiting, will work.

- i have a million more but i've already gotten up there in length, so ill stop with this last one. there are some "preferences" seble has proposed on recruits for various things. first, whats the deal - will we know these? nobody here can answer... but should we know these? if so, how? if not, are we just blindly hoping random guys care about random **** that we can offer? that seems... not good :) but anyway, the point i wanted to hit on, is seble has proposed some preferences that relate to how your team actually played last year - like the tempo you played (with an uptempo or whatever preference for the recruit) - the offense/defense you run - the type of scoring (per / lp). i think these are all bad ideas. generally speaking, i see the real life correlation. what i don't see is this being fun for coaches. oh, crap, i can't get that guy because last year i was 8 deep and had to run slowdown, and he likes uptempo... or maybe these are half meaningless, 5% type preferences. in which case they barely matter - so why have them - complexity for complexity sake is bad. i think any of these kinds of preferences seble proposes, should be meaningful, and if its not right to have them be so meaningful, to omit them completely. i am totally against the tempo and type of scoring - coaches should be coaching their team to their team - not to the recruits they've scouted early in the season's "preferences". that is, assuming we can see them at all... im going to assume that's the case until seble says otherwise... because i think it would be incredibly frustrating to have all these invisible factors running the show.

anyway, the only one i could see, maybe getting behind, is the off/def set. this is not something you can tamper with in-season to target recruits next season. also, it would help foster the sets that people think suck... it would be a natural balancing effect. example, in high d1, where its all man, and some press, zone might actually get a much-needed boost. anyway, do you guys think having recruit preferences like tempo should exist, do you think its inherently bad to have preferences exist that would entice coaches to "tailor" their in-season performance to? 

maybe it would be good to identify some key areas we really need to know more about... and then try to get seble to elaborate... from my post
- dropdowns - do you know who they are, or need to use an attention point to find out like today?
- expanding on the new dropdown/pulldown regime in general, just some basics so we know enough to intelligently discuss...
- recruit preferences - do we know this stuff? if so, how? also, are these things generally supposed to be meaningful or sort of window-dressing-ish?

it was my understanding that dropdowns will remain in some form and presumably they will continue to inform you that they are currently not interested but might be in the future (some level of scouting data probably? should be low level stuff though, right) and that pulldowns won't exist.

Posted by dacj501 on 9/21/2015 12:30:00 PM (view original):
it was my understanding that dropdowns will remain in some form and presumably they will continue to inform you that they are currently not interested but might be in the future (some level of scouting data probably? should be low level stuff though, right) and that pulldowns won't exist.

i think that's accurate... the dropdowns existing and pulldowns not existing part, at least (i am not a fan of removing pulldowns). but the part, they will continue to inform you - how? from the attention points?

but more importantly, this line from seble "   When each cycle runs (every 3 hours or possibly longer), points are credited for that team/recruit, with modifications for prestige and how recruit preferences match school... Coach can re-allocate points at any time." - particularly the last bit. what? they can be pulled from recruits they are sent to at any time? um... ok. thats really not a phone call-equivalent then, and i don't think we can assume they work similarly. so does that mean there is no response from the recruit when you send one? or every time you allocate one to someone, regardless if you allocated before, do they send a message? i guess it would be helpful if seble would elaborate on this a bit. also, can you re-allocate them away from a recruit who signed with someone else? or am i just thinking about this wrong - that every cycle, you get credit for every allocated attention point? and basically, that credit stays, and you basically get 20 (or whatever) fresh points to re-allocate the following cycle? that, for convenience, are automatically allocated for you, to whomever they had been, but you are free to tweak? i guess thats probably it, not that they have one constant value, that is added and subtracted around - which is how i'd been thinking about it up until now... hmm. that could be interesting. still. thats NOTHING like a phone call. how do we know if a guy is a potential dropdown or not?

I'm not even sure how D2 schools find D1 recruits to hav drop if they are usually found (revealed, whatever) through camps (or D3 find D2...) which I would think would be division specific....

edited to add:

Ok, looks like that could be done during player discovery?

Player Discovery

-          Assistant Coach Player Discovery

·         Coach would specify some criteria
  
  Positions

  Max distance

  HS/JUCO/Transfer

  Area of focus – Offense, Defense, Physical, All-around

   Quantity (number of players to find) – chunks like 5, 10, 20, 50, 100

Posted by gillispie1 on 9/21/2015 12:20:00 PM (view original):
there has been some discussion on the actual mechanics seble has proposed - but not really a focused one, its more of some comments on mechanics interleaved with a far greater number of comments about generally if this is great, terrible, too big in scope, etc... i would personally really enjoy a discussion that is only about the actual mechanics itself, what we think about them... what is even being proposed (not always clear), how we'd like to see some of it implemented, etc...

a few thoughts:

- the creation of a recruit preference for playing time is one of the things i really like. im assuming this would be tied to promises, not some BS like looking at last season's setup and crap like that. i think this could really help level the playing field, while also adding realism. i'm hopeful seble makes this a real factor - not a 5% meaningless factor like some of the stuff he's put in place - maybe like 20-30% factor. but, i also am a little skeptical. it seems to me folks would just promise a great player to get him, no matter what, and just take the in-season hit if need be, swapping for the NT. for good players, not great ones, i could see top teams being unwilling to do this. but i don't see anyone being unwilling to promise an absolute stud a start and minutes to stay in the game, regardless of the impact on the season. any way to make this better? could hold the promise to the post season as well? i suppose also if you start signing 3-4 guys with starts, its going to hurt you quite a bit... but presumably, only some % of players are going to require these promises and stuff, probably not enough to force big schools to be starting half freshman and stuff like that. 

actually, that makes me think - its got to carry forward, to be real. if you can bench a sophmore, who was a freshman starter, and play him like, zero, for manipulation - thats just not realistic. should promises be enhanced - to make "freshman only" promises, and then, "career long" promises, where you are basically guaranteeing that initial promise level to players for their entire career, at a minimum? that could actually work... i like that a lot better than the post season enforcement of promises (which generally i am against on principle anyway - at least unless freshman studs start getting generated with decent IQ like real life).

- the splitting of the scouting budget from recruiting budget seems horrible to me. i LOVE the tradeoff in recruiting between battling for great players, and finding great players. last season, i spent in the 30Ks at a low d1 team "scouting". i know there are others who in some cases, scout excessively, its a way to diversify... and i think this needs to be beefed up - not pared down. i think recruiting and scouting budgets HAVE to interact in some way. i understand there is basically going to be no recruiting budget at all? so maybe scouting money can be used to "purchase" attention points or something along those lines (with the cap on "attention points" removed, assuming it would follow from the phone calls it is related to now). i really hope seble will expand on attention points and how they relate to contacting players for dropdowns/pulldowns... if that even is a thing anymore... because its hard to wrap my head around having no clue how that entire part of the game, which is in essence the core of d2/d3 recruiting, will work.

- i have a million more but i've already gotten up there in length, so ill stop with this last one. there are some "preferences" seble has proposed on recruits for various things. first, whats the deal - will we know these? nobody here can answer... but should we know these? if so, how? if not, are we just blindly hoping random guys care about random **** that we can offer? that seems... not good :) but anyway, the point i wanted to hit on, is seble has proposed some preferences that relate to how your team actually played last year - like the tempo you played (with an uptempo or whatever preference for the recruit) - the offense/defense you run - the type of scoring (per / lp). i think these are all bad ideas. generally speaking, i see the real life correlation. what i don't see is this being fun for coaches. oh, crap, i can't get that guy because last year i was 8 deep and had to run slowdown, and he likes uptempo... or maybe these are half meaningless, 5% type preferences. in which case they barely matter - so why have them - complexity for complexity sake is bad. i think any of these kinds of preferences seble proposes, should be meaningful, and if its not right to have them be so meaningful, to omit them completely. i am totally against the tempo and type of scoring - coaches should be coaching their team to their team - not to the recruits they've scouted early in the season's "preferences". that is, assuming we can see them at all... im going to assume that's the case until seble says otherwise... because i think it would be incredibly frustrating to have all these invisible factors running the show.

anyway, the only one i could see, maybe getting behind, is the off/def set. this is not something you can tamper with in-season to target recruits next season. also, it would help foster the sets that people think suck... it would be a natural balancing effect. example, in high d1, where its all man, and some press, zone might actually get a much-needed boost. anyway, do you guys think having recruit preferences like tempo should exist, do you think its inherently bad to have preferences exist that would entice coaches to "tailor" their in-season performance to? 

I agree that if recruits have a strong playing time preference, it can change the game for the better and make recruiting fairer to all teams.

The current system is not realistic. In real life, if I have a freshman PG who I recruited to the school by promising him that he would be my starter, he's not going to take it well when I make him a backup during his sophomore year because I recruited someone better. In real life, he is either going to pout or transfer.  And HD should reflect that.  

If we have recruits with varied demands (some guys would rather start and get 25 mpg with a mediocre/bad team while other guys would rather come off the bench for three years for a good team), then starts/minutes promises should be career promises. And if those promises are broken, a player will transfer.  The promises should carry over, even when a new coach takes over -- during the job season, the start/minutes icons would be available for a coach applying for a job to see so they can take that into account when deciding whether to pursue the job. 

This will add a layer of complexity to recruiting and scouting.  If I have a sophomore SG that I promised to have starting and I am looking to recruit another SG, I may take a lesser player who doesn't have any strong minutes demands and is happy coming off the bench over trying to land the stronger player who has some strong playing time demands and is likely to transfer if they aren't met.  This would require coaches to build a true team with good chemistry.

Gillispie1, my one area of disagreement is about enforcing promises during the postseason. Why would a player who is guaranteed a starting role or a certain number of minutes be OK with having that change during the season's biggest games?  Making coaches choose between putting their absolute best team on the floor or making their players happy adds a nice tradeoff that mimics real life.  I don't think that the hit should be any bigger or smaller than a regular season game (i.e. a player who is promised a starting role isn't going to be any angrier if he sits a NT game than he would be for sitting a regular season game), but it should still be there.

grimace - i can see that - treating post season games similarly to the regular season. i guess i have 2 issues. 1) its really late in the season, and a lot of coaches are not hyper-attentive. if you **** the guy off on your last game of the season, and then he quits... thats pretty severe. and 2) that i want to see people fielding their best teams in the NT, that i want to be fielding my best team. its one thing to cater to player emotions but another when the whole season is on the line. small impacts, im fine with, but im concerned with potentially massive stakes on the players staying/leaving coinciding with massive stakes in game play.

i think i'd be fine with some post season ramifications, but the current scheme is mostly quit-or-not and that is a bit too binary for me. maybe if that was enhanced, so it wasn't as extreme around a fine line, i would be fine. that part is not realistic, and i think that makes it hard to make other parts of the same system realistic. i think it would be interesting to have like a "****** off" meter, 0-100, that was a % decrease in a couple key ratings that have some realistic basis. like defense... players who aren't that happy are probably more likely to slack off there... and maybe passing on the other end. and then you can have normal players at 0% ****** off, while players getting less minutes or starts than they expect have a steadily increasing ****** off level, which factors into transferring, but also impacts game play. today there is 0 impact except for slightly lower growth through work ethic... which takes a long time to manifest into anything real... and then the guy stays or goes so its almost all or nothing.

Here's what I'd suggest-

For preferences, we learn them much like we currently learn O/D knowledge - through scouting trips or calls. Whether we learn everything all at once or it'd take a couple calls, I don't know. But basically we could find out if he wants to stay close to home or is expecting to start as a freshmen. For things like distance preference, it'd just be a bonus multiplier of the effort given to the recruit. You could still get a guy to go to your school against his preference but it'd take a little more effort/attention. I'm also not a fan of the tempo thing by the way since it can change so much during the season.

I do think expectations of playing time should basically be promises. So if you know a guy is expecting to start and you recruit him and he plays 5 min a game with only a couple starts, he's going to transfer 90% of the time. It needs to be very clear of his expectations during the recruiting so you don't sign a guy and had no idea he wanted to start. 

I don't think these expectations should be set arbitrarily obviously but how are they decided? For D1, it might be easy based upon the rankings but I'm not even sure how accurate they are anyway. So my thought is it could be determined by how much attention he receives during recruiting and could adjust. This may not work in the end so I'm just gonna throw it out there but I'm thinking that if you got a kid who has 5  schools throwing attention his way, he'd adjust his thinking over how good he is. He might expect to play a lot more since he has so many options. But this could be difficult to execute since you could end up signing a kid who's expectations have exceeded what you're willing to give and then are stuck with an unhappy player.

One more thing I'll add is about the prestige. Maybe some one brought it up before but you should carry around your personal prestige as a coach, not just the school. So if I take over a D3 school that's an A+ prestige, I automatically have a great advantage even though I drove my last school in to the ground. School prestige can count, sure but coaches performance should matter to the recruit.

Posted by gillispie1 on 9/21/2015 2:06:00 PM (view original):
grimace - i can see that - treating post season games similarly to the regular season. i guess i have 2 issues. 1) its really late in the season, and a lot of coaches are not hyper-attentive. if you **** the guy off on your last game of the season, and then he quits... thats pretty severe. and 2) that i want to see people fielding their best teams in the NT, that i want to be fielding my best team. its one thing to cater to player emotions but another when the whole season is on the line. small impacts, im fine with, but im concerned with potentially massive stakes on the players staying/leaving coinciding with massive stakes in game play.

i think i'd be fine with some post season ramifications, but the current scheme is mostly quit-or-not and that is a bit too binary for me. maybe if that was enhanced, so it wasn't as extreme around a fine line, i would be fine. that part is not realistic, and i think that makes it hard to make other parts of the same system realistic. i think it would be interesting to have like a "****** off" meter, 0-100, that was a % decrease in a couple key ratings that have some realistic basis. like defense... players who aren't that happy are probably more likely to slack off there... and maybe passing on the other end. and then you can have normal players at 0% ****** off, while players getting less minutes or starts than they expect have a steadily increasing ****** off level, which factors into transferring, but also impacts game play. today there is 0 impact except for slightly lower growth through work ethic... which takes a long time to manifest into anything real... and then the guy stays or goes so its almost all or nothing.

I think the key is that a player doesn't quit/transfer in midseason -- they only leave at the end of the season.  So during the NT, the choice a coach will face is: do I put my best five on the floor and risk Player X transferring *after the year is done* or do I start Player X and not have my absolute best team on the floor.

I do agree that a sliding scale, where ticked off players slack off on defense, are more likely to jack bad shots and more turnover prone, would add a nice element to the game. If a coach cures the player's attitude with more playing time, then all is well. And if a coach isn't attentive enough to do that, the problems get worse until the player transfers at the end of the year. And most coaches will try to manage it by letting the player rack up big minutes against SIM teams so they can conserve the minutes to best game-plan against good human teams.

Posted by Benis on 9/21/2015 2:38:00 PM (view original):
Here's what I'd suggest-

For preferences, we learn them much like we currently learn O/D knowledge - through scouting trips or calls. Whether we learn everything all at once or it'd take a couple calls, I don't know. But basically we could find out if he wants to stay close to home or is expecting to start as a freshmen. For things like distance preference, it'd just be a bonus multiplier of the effort given to the recruit. You could still get a guy to go to your school against his preference but it'd take a little more effort/attention. I'm also not a fan of the tempo thing by the way since it can change so much during the season.

I do think expectations of playing time should basically be promises. So if you know a guy is expecting to start and you recruit him and he plays 5 min a game with only a couple starts, he's going to transfer 90% of the time. It needs to be very clear of his expectations during the recruiting so you don't sign a guy and had no idea he wanted to start. 

I don't think these expectations should be set arbitrarily obviously but how are they decided? For D1, it might be easy based upon the rankings but I'm not even sure how accurate they are anyway. So my thought is it could be determined by how much attention he receives during recruiting and could adjust. This may not work in the end so I'm just gonna throw it out there but I'm thinking that if you got a kid who has 5  schools throwing attention his way, he'd adjust his thinking over how good he is. He might expect to play a lot more since he has so many options. But this could be difficult to execute since you could end up signing a kid who's expectations have exceeded what you're willing to give and then are stuck with an unhappy player.

One more thing I'll add is about the prestige. Maybe some one brought it up before but you should carry around your personal prestige as a coach, not just the school. So if I take over a D3 school that's an A+ prestige, I automatically have a great advantage even though I drove my last school in to the ground. School prestige can count, sure but coaches performance should matter to the recruit.

interesting take on prestige. im not sure if seble plans on changing any of that - but he did mention a "coach longevity" preference. he could modify that to be a "coach success" preference, but its also a bit dangerous from the rich get richer standpoint. i would prefer to see a+ d3 schools not take anybody like they do today... but thats a jobs/resume logic issue, which is outside of the scope.

also, phone calls will be gone, at least in seble's current thinking. i believe thats phone calls, letters, and coach calls. that is where a lot of my questioning stems related to pulldowns and discovering things like preferences and iq.

I don't agree that preferences to play should be like promises. I believe that they should be recruiting factors that give extra boost to schools that offer promises (and possibly schools that have light depth charts at the position--not sure how hard that'd be to code, but it'd be awesome to see recruits look at the current depth chart regarding their preferences), and this boost should be significant, but it should be possible to overcome without offering promises. Difficult, but possible. 

Also, I do agree with the option of career-long promises, and I think penalties for broken promises could be ramped up (although penalties for not playing a guy because he was injured are stupid and should be toned down bigtime). 

Posted by gillispie1 on 9/21/2015 2:43:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Benis on 9/21/2015 2:38:00 PM (view original):
Here's what I'd suggest-

For preferences, we learn them much like we currently learn O/D knowledge - through scouting trips or calls. Whether we learn everything all at once or it'd take a couple calls, I don't know. But basically we could find out if he wants to stay close to home or is expecting to start as a freshmen. For things like distance preference, it'd just be a bonus multiplier of the effort given to the recruit. You could still get a guy to go to your school against his preference but it'd take a little more effort/attention. I'm also not a fan of the tempo thing by the way since it can change so much during the season.

I do think expectations of playing time should basically be promises. So if you know a guy is expecting to start and you recruit him and he plays 5 min a game with only a couple starts, he's going to transfer 90% of the time. It needs to be very clear of his expectations during the recruiting so you don't sign a guy and had no idea he wanted to start. 

I don't think these expectations should be set arbitrarily obviously but how are they decided? For D1, it might be easy based upon the rankings but I'm not even sure how accurate they are anyway. So my thought is it could be determined by how much attention he receives during recruiting and could adjust. This may not work in the end so I'm just gonna throw it out there but I'm thinking that if you got a kid who has 5  schools throwing attention his way, he'd adjust his thinking over how good he is. He might expect to play a lot more since he has so many options. But this could be difficult to execute since you could end up signing a kid who's expectations have exceeded what you're willing to give and then are stuck with an unhappy player.

One more thing I'll add is about the prestige. Maybe some one brought it up before but you should carry around your personal prestige as a coach, not just the school. So if I take over a D3 school that's an A+ prestige, I automatically have a great advantage even though I drove my last school in to the ground. School prestige can count, sure but coaches performance should matter to the recruit.

interesting take on prestige. im not sure if seble plans on changing any of that - but he did mention a "coach longevity" preference. he could modify that to be a "coach success" preference, but its also a bit dangerous from the rich get richer standpoint. i would prefer to see a+ d3 schools not take anybody like they do today... but thats a jobs/resume logic issue, which is outside of the scope.

also, phone calls will be gone, at least in seble's current thinking. i believe thats phone calls, letters, and coach calls. that is where a lot of my questioning stems related to pulldowns and discovering things like preferences and iq.

We know that Seble isn't addressing jobs/resume stuff, but here is what I would like to see:

Coaching reputation: How often do you switch jobs? Are most of your moves upward moves or lateral moves (rep goes down for laterals)? Do you keep your recruiting promises? How often do players transfer because you don't live up to your word?

Coaching success: How many seasons have you coached? What is your winning percentage? How many PT/NT trips do you have? How many Final Fours and championships? All of these stats would be weighted to favor current accomplishments (i.e. a Final Four from last year is worth more than one from 3 years ago which is worth more than one from 10 seasons ago).

School success: Many of the same factors from coaching success are in play here, with the same weighting system where recent success is worth more.

In the recruiting world, all three of these factors would be merged to create a recruiting prestige profile (i.e. a coach with a A+ rep and B+ success at a A- prestige school would have a recruiting prestige grade of A-). 

For jobs, the coach rep and coach success grades would be averaged.  A school will not hire a coach that has an average coach grade that is more than one full letter grade lower than its own grade.  For example, if a D3 school had an A+ success grade, it would only hire coaches that have an average grade of A+, A, A- and B+. It would not consider a B coach; this way, inexperienced D3 coaches could not poach the best schools.

There would be a slight reduction in grade when being considered by a higher division (i.e. a D2 school would value a B+ coach at the D2 level more highly than a B+ D3 coach because the D2 coach has proven they can succeed at that level).

At the D1 level, schools might require X seasons at a certain grade (i.e. a low major might require a D1/D2 coach to have had at least 3 seasons at a B level, a bad midmajor might require 5 seasons at B, a good midmajor might require 5 seasons at B+, etc.).  

I'm working on a big prestige project for fun as well as presenting it on the forums, im maybe 40% done, but I can say this about a few teams thats pretty clear at least on terms of regular season success:

Boston College, Georgia Tech, Wake Forest are the most "overrated" schools all being A- prestige in game.  When in real life all 3 are outside the top 100(again regular season success only atm)  These are the most overranked prestige wise in HD.  BC also benefits a lot from its location, and Wake Forest also suffers beause of its location in HD.  Georgia Tech benefits as well

Memphis and Gonzaga are the 2 best mid-majors and are on part (regular season) with Michigan St, Louisville, better than Syracuse, Florida.  However lack the conference prestige but they look more like B+/A- baselines, both suffer from location however in HD

San Diego St and BYU are the next 2 best mid majors outperforming teams in the regular season such as Arizona, UConn, UCLA

Ohio State is the biggest underranked Big 6 schools with its regular season success at #4 atm only behind Duke, Kansas, UNC.  Probably an A, could very well make a case for A+

VCU is the best performer D school with current formula for reguar season success pegging then at #20 overall.

Other "overranked" schools include Indiana, NC State, Stanford, and Cincy based on regular season performance are all outside the top 50 but are A- baseline

The worst A+ prestige school is Illinois sitting at 41 right now

2 D schools in the top 50, VCU already mentioned at #20 and Utah State at #45.

I haven't finished so the rankings will fluctuate but I figured now that baseline came up I should post a few quick statements.

Another thing is that depending on recruit generation or just how recruiting looks, team location needs to be a slight less factor as a lot of the top schools are not in the best HD location or don't have elite benefits like others do.  The OH,KY,MI,NC,VA region is very talented as well as Cali area, not a lot of northeastern or midwest schools are that strong outside the big brand names.

Posted by tarvolon on 9/21/2015 2:46:00 PM (view original):
I don't agree that preferences to play should be like promises. I believe that they should be recruiting factors that give extra boost to schools that offer promises (and possibly schools that have light depth charts at the position--not sure how hard that'd be to code, but it'd be awesome to see recruits look at the current depth chart regarding their preferences), and this boost should be significant, but it should be possible to overcome without offering promises. Difficult, but possible. 

Also, I do agree with the option of career-long promises, and I think penalties for broken promises could be ramped up (although penalties for not playing a guy because he was injured are stupid and should be toned down bigtime). 

I don't think the preferences should be like promises either.  Maybe we should think of it as promises to play/start become more powerful for certain players.

Player A is a guy who wants to play at least 20 minutes a game and start.  Offering a promise to start has a lot of power on him -- enough that it can overcome prestige hurdles (a B- team offering a start might be more attractive than a A- team that doesn't offer, all else being equal).  It might even be enough to make him dropdown/pulldown (he's rather be a stud starter on a D3 team than a bench guy on a D2 team).

Player B is a guy who doesn't care about minutes/starts right away.  Offering him a promise to start is nice, but doesn't move the needle that much. He'd rather be a cog for a good D2 team than a stud for a bad D2/great D3 team.

Posted by tarvolon on 9/21/2015 2:46:00 PM (view original):
I don't agree that preferences to play should be like promises. I believe that they should be recruiting factors that give extra boost to schools that offer promises (and possibly schools that have light depth charts at the position--not sure how hard that'd be to code, but it'd be awesome to see recruits look at the current depth chart regarding their preferences), and this boost should be significant, but it should be possible to overcome without offering promises. Difficult, but possible. 

Also, I do agree with the option of career-long promises, and I think penalties for broken promises could be ramped up (although penalties for not playing a guy because he was injured are stupid and should be toned down bigtime). 

i think we were saying they should be based off promises. if you don't promise, and still sign, the preference doesn't mean jack. only the promise(s) made.