Posted by vandydave on 9/22/2016 2:48:00 PM (view original):
you know what's going to keep people from wanting to gamble and/or even play the game - losing out on a recruit for no discernible reason, whether it be the dice roll got you, preferences factor in unknowable ways, losing a recruit to an equal prestige school who you have a clear advantage over based upon distance or whatever it may be. plus all the old things people hated about recruiting that didn't change.
all the gambling that may happen is also going to result in teams carrying a lot of walk-ons or filling their rosters with clearly inferior players, if everyone thinks they can sign the 5 stars why bother going for anything less.
There will be lots of new strategies emerging for sure. In this post, you're describing two of them, on the extreme ends. On one hand, the extreme risk averse. If they keep playing, may consistently continue to undershoot, in order to avoid battles because they can't tolerate not winning. Fine, can't make people give up risk aversion if that's just who they are - but it doesn't have to be rewarded.
On the other end of the spectrum, you've got the all in gamblers. The mindset maybe "I've got a chance", and they go after nothing but four and five star players. I doubt that will be a viable strategy for long, because as you say, they'll wind up with many more walk-ons and scrubs, and even if they hit big they'll be susceptible to early entries.
So so you're ignoring the vast expanse of strategic landscape existing in-between those extremes. The best teams are going to be the ones mixing in a few stars with a solid core of very good 4-year players. Of course there will be some feast or famine teams that get lucky and land a bunch of top recruits that stay long enough to put it all together. And some mid-majors are going to rise up, a la Butler and Gonzaga, by owning top local talent and occasionally hitting big on a 5-star.
And to my point about incentivizing risk aversion, as long as people feel they have a chance, there will be battles. So it will be rare to see a top guy go for cheap, which is at the heart of D1's problems.