Secondly. I don't believe that two coaches piecing a deal together is definitively collusion. It's more of a gray area, unless it involves two coaches specifically targeting one coach or one conference. However, if it's two coaches in the same conference, that just don't want to battle over an average offensive lineman...I don't see any issue with one coach sitemailing the other a, "how much do you really need him?" message. If two coaches are discussing the scouting report of player, if the amount spent is disclosed before the recruit signs, or if one coach jumps on a recruit with the intent of not signing him so that his buddy can sign him, that's different. Those are clear violations of the fair play guidelines.

In my opinion, that situation clearly violates this:

"Collusive transactions
Collusion includes any act that supports bad, deceitful or illegal behavior agreed upon by two or more users or attempted by a single user. Here are a few examples:

• Discussing the pursuit of a recruit with another coach, including who is pursuing him and money that might have been spent."

(from here: https://www.whatifsports.com/account/FairPlayGuidelines)

From my point of view, what may seem common sense and "being a good neighbor" in essence places other coaches in that world at a disadvantage (thus the rule). No personal attack meant with my post or my opinions. It is a good discussion to have.

I'm not saying you all are wrong but you can't say, "I think" or "from my point of view" and it be a clear violation. Simply discussing a recruit could be a violation but even the rule stated above doesn't a simple discussion as a clear cut violation.

"Collusion includes any act that supports bad, deceitful or illegal behavior agreed upon by two or more users or attempted by a single user. Here are a few examples:

• Discussing the pursuit of a recruit with another coach, including who is pursuing him and money that might have been spent."

(from here: https://www.whatifsports.com/account/FairPlayGuidelines)"

So, let's break this down.

"Any act that supports bad, deceitful or illegal behavior." -
Discussing a recruit or whether or not you intend to not recruit a player doesn't necessarily support "bad, deceitful or illegal behavior."

And then here is the example provided:

"Discussing the pursuit of a recruit with another coach, including who is pursuing him and money that might have been spent."

So, the part of a discussion that violates fair play guidelines is the "pursuit" of a recruit. But what's the definition of pursuit? Because money is mentioned in the same sentence, I believe this is in reference to actual dollar amounts being disclosed being the main issue. However, if no dollar amounts are disclosed, than is there a clear-cut violation? I don't believe there is, with the current wording of the above definition.

As to cjsweat's statement, First, just because Coach A spent $27,000 on a recruit and Coach B spent $12,000 on a recruit...does not mean that Coach A should sign said player. This is absolutely true, but I have already addressed this in two ways. After bhazelwood said the same thing in the 2nd post of the thread I said let's assume I used proper judgement and only battled at = or shorter distances. Also by having the whole list of recruiting transactions reviewable one could tell if the opposing coach was spending $300/campus visit while you were spending $2000/campus visit. (anyone with this poor judgement probably wouldn't correctly analyze the info, anyway) The bottom line is that if I could see different coaches transactions I believe that I could make reasonable conclusions and improve my game. (If for no other reason I might discover that I would be insane to waste my $ battling with certain prestige edge coaches.)

My policy is, and has been for a while, that I simply don't communicate with other coaches about recruits during the recruiting period. I'll sitemail a coach AFTER to discuss things, but not during. I just don't want to find myself in any gray areas.

And I'd really rather my competition did the same, tbh. Even relatively innocuous questions like, "Are you going to sign X or is he a backup?" earns a coach a competitive advantage over the other coaches who do not have that same information (if the other coach responds with an answer to that question). Once WIS clearly stated the rules shown in multiple posts above, I just think coaches shouldn't be talking about recruiting during an active recruiting session, unless it's more generic like, "The recruits suck this season and I'm mad about it and wanted to vent to you."

You can try to find nuance in the language and probably figure out clever ways to stay within the letter of the law, but to my mind, the spirit of the law is that no communication about specifics is permissible.

If you want to know if Coach XYZ is going to sign Recruit ABC.... just wait. You'll figure it out quickly once signings start.

Posted by TBill7 on 11/4/2016 12:20:00 PM (view original):
As to cjsweat's statement, First, just because Coach A spent $27,000 on a recruit and Coach B spent $12,000 on a recruit...does not mean that Coach A should sign said player. This is absolutely true, but I have already addressed this in two ways. After bhazelwood said the same thing in the 2nd post of the thread I said let's assume I used proper judgement and only battled at = or shorter distances. Also by having the whole list of recruiting transactions reviewable one could tell if the opposing coach was spending $300/campus visit while you were spending $2000/campus visit. (anyone with this poor judgement probably wouldn't correctly analyze the info, anyway) The bottom line is that if I could see different coaches transactions I believe that I could make reasonable conclusions and improve my game.

If you want to know how much another coach is spending on CVs (or anything else), do this:

1. Find out where the recruit is - you get this information from each recruit's profile.
2. Find out the city where the other school is located.
3. Go to THIS WEBSITE and find the distance from the recruit to the other school.
4. Find a recruit in your Watch List - or do a new search, if necessary - that is approximately the same distance as the distance you found in #3.
5. Compare the costs to recruit the player found in #4 to the player you're battling for.

Now you know how much more/less the other coach is spending for each action.

Hey gt, this is all true and I already know this to my satisfaction before I start battling. But If I'm already satisfied with the distance and I battle the same coach for three players and lose all three after spending 48k, 37k and 29k, it would be very useful to know whether he had to spend 50, 36, 24 or 42, 31, 23 or was it 22, 15 , 9? If a coach can land guys at a fraction of your cost (given = distance) you would know not to battle him. What I want to know is there a massive prestige edge that can't be overcome? (I don't think that this is an unfair question.)

Hey guys, I want you to know that I'm not trying to stir things up. I know many of you are respected in the GD community. If you have an opposing view, I'm fine with that. But I do want to make my position very clear so that you'll know what you are opposing.

Posted by TBill7 on 11/4/2016 12:55:00 PM (view original):
Hey gt, this is all true and I already know this to my satisfaction before I start battling. But If I'm already satisfied with the distance and I battle the same coach for three players and lose all three after spending 48k, 37k and 29k, it would be very useful to know whether he had to spend 50, 36, 24 or 42, 31, 23 or was it 22, 15 , 9? If a coach can land guys at a fraction of your cost (given = distance) you would know not to battle him. What I want to know is there a massive prestige edge that can't be overcome? (I don't think that this is an unfair question.)

You want all the info spoon-fed to you. Fair enough. I think that's probably a reasonable ask at the D-III level, where the game has been simplified to lower the barriers to entry and help ease new coaches into the game.

Meanwhile, all of the info that you need to know in order to build a coherent model of prestige in recruiting are available to any coach who's willing to put in the work to aggregate the data. Recruiting is the least-broken aspect of this game, if you ask me. Time and time again, we've seen WIS make changes to the game to fix or upgrade something, only to turn things that were mostly working into a flaming dumpster fire. I'd hate to see that happen to recruiting.

For as long as this game has been operating, recruiting has been a black-box to ALL coaches. Yet, we still see examples of coaches who clearly have it figured out to the degree that they build talented teams at any level they enter.

If you're losing EVERY battle you enter with a certain coach, you're doing something wrong. Instead of appealing to WIS to simply hand over the inner workings of the "black box," perhaps you could try something different. Perhaps you could, I don't know, stop battling the coach that's beating you over the head each time you battle him (or her?) until you've built your team's prestige to something closer to that of the dominant coach.

Or, if you're completely fixated on beating this coach in a recruiting battle, here's a plan:

1. Pile 25 players into a single signing class, preferably on the same class that this coach has his/her least amount of recruits.
2. Spend about $300-400 per recruit in signing 24 out of your 25 scholarships, leaving a massive bankroll for the last player.
3. Choose the best player the other coach is pursuing that's closer to you (this should be a situation where you are within at least one recruiting distance tier closer than the other coach - simply being at 100 miles when the other coach is at 170 doesn't help) than it is to him/her and "battle".
5. PROFIT!

More productively, you could stop butting your head against that wall and go elsewhere to find talent. There are ways to get players who are as-good or better than those "must-have" recruits that the Big Boys sign, by the time they are upperclassmen. What's great about this game is that there isn't one single way to create a great team.

Posted by gt_deuce on 11/4/2016 12:23:00 PM (view original):
My policy is, and has been for a while, that I simply don't communicate with other coaches about recruits during the recruiting period. I'll sitemail a coach AFTER to discuss things, but not during. I just don't want to find myself in any gray areas.

And I'd really rather my competition did the same, tbh. Even relatively innocuous questions like, "Are you going to sign X or is he a backup?" earns a coach a competitive advantage over the other coaches who do not have that same information (if the other coach responds with an answer to that question). Once WIS clearly stated the rules shown in multiple posts above, I just think coaches shouldn't be talking about recruiting during an active recruiting session, unless it's more generic like, "The recruits suck this season and I'm mad about it and wanted to vent to you."

You can try to find nuance in the language and probably figure out clever ways to stay within the letter of the law, but to my mind, the spirit of the law is that no communication about specifics is permissible.

If you want to know if Coach XYZ is going to sign Recruit ABC.... just wait. You'll figure it out quickly once signings start.

This. 100

Hey gt, you've made some incorrect assumptions based on not reading my previous posts. Your advice to stop battling the coach that beat me was unnecessary because I already stated that I gave up battling him after the third defeat. The idea that I'm completely fixated by beating is also wrong for exactly the same reason, I gave up battling him after the 3rd defeat. Building up my team's prestige is clearly correct. In both DIII and DII I gradually improved my team until it was a top five team. Whatever my team's level of prestige attained, certainly was in "the black box" level. I think the crux of your argument was that I want "everything" handed to me. It's my impression that I would like to have one specific thing to be transparent. It's been pointed out that this is moot because it probably won't happen. If not, It won't stop me from playing and improving. However, you haven't convinced me that my suggestion wouldn't improve the game. The best argument I've heard so far is that in real life coaches don't share their recruiting strategies with each other. My concern is merely to make sure the GAME is fair (no glass ceiling). Leaving the game as is, is fine with me, as well.

Posted by realist9900 on 11/4/2016 1:27:00 AM (view original):
Your request isn't unreasonable. I play numerous simulation type games and RPGs. All of them you can test and figure out how things work.

This is the only game I have played where you can't test. Where you can't prove something one way or the other. Where when a question is asked, it is answered by theories, hyperbole and opinions.....rarely rarely facts.

So your request for more transparency in regards to recruiting fall in line with the requests for more transparency for a lot of things

So true. I remembered when I first started. I kept searching for the data. I eventually realized there wasn't any and that the developers don't understand their creation. It isn't cheating or crying to look for this info. Nearly every other game provides it. You won't find it here though. So I agree with others that you are wasting your time asking for it.

I don't think transparency is what is needed. Its nice to know how someone beat you for a recruit when you've put in tons of cash, but that should be up to the coach that beat you to give that info or not (after the recruiting is done).
I do think the player's guide is pretty basic with recruiting. The pinned topic Recruiting Manifesto helps a lot, but it deals with more strategy than what drives the game engine. Maybe a little more in what factors with recruits would be nice i.e. Top School in each division factors up to 25%, Coaches Rep 25%, Type of Recruiting Effort (CV vs Fr Start) 20%, Distance 20%, Just dumb GD luck 10%.

Just my $.02
I stink at this game anyway, it just fills a void in my CFB soul.

-BKD

Just a question, wondering if this would be considered collusion. I didn't do this, but thought about it and was wondering if people would consider it collusion.

I had a battle for a good TE that I won, but just in case I had turned a pretty good TE green as backup. Once it became apparent I was going to win the battle, as a gesture of good will I was going to sitemail the other coach and let him know about my backup option and that he would be a good fallback option. Would you all consider that collusion? I didn't think it would be, but in this case (several cycles later) a 3rd human actually signed this guy and he might not have been available for him to sign had I made the other coach aware.

It's communication - don't do it. Not even once. It's like a gateway drug.
If the other coach is paying attention, he will be keeping track of your signings and then should be alerted to the recruit being in a better situation for him.

Any discussion of recruits that is between two coaches and not available to the rest of the community is creating an unfair advantage. Even if it is to be nice to your conference mates or your buddy who is struggling to fill his last few roster spots, it is collusion and should be stopped and not repeated. I have had coaches ask me if I was going to sign a recruit or I have some ask which ones I would be going after in my 360 radius and I have always ignored them with no response whatsoever...they usually get the hint that it is not right. I don't respond when people ask me how much I spent on a recruit. Money spent is hardly ever the only factor I use to get a recruit to sign with my team but even so it is info i consider just my business. Anytime someone during recruiting contacts me about a recruiting situation, I have no response until recruiting is over and then my responses are cryptic at best. Some things you have to figure out on your own and develop instincts to help you navigate who is on a recruit and how much they will fight for that recruit. In the end, no recruit is irreplaceable and if you are recruiting form IQ, work ethic, and potential growth with your team set up to have depth at all positions....the top rated guys aren't always the best.