Last two seasons spent all my money and came up with fewer than 1/2 the recruits I needed. Have already:
1) stayed closed to home
2) focused on recruits that are realistic for where my team is at
3) used promised starts and playing time
4) hit players up on nearly every cycle
5) focused on only the number of players I needed
6) tried to go against SIMs where possible (but once you stay close to home you run up against real humans fast)

Now I have a team that is 1/2 full of crappy SIMs; going to lose most of my games; am one more season away from getting fired. This all seems way more difficult than it should be.

DS - sending you a sitemail.

looking at your resume in that world... have you been fired from all those schools in four seasons each or did you leave when your status dropped?

I hear ya Stink. I rarely fill a class in Div 1 . Most of my class ends up being recruits more appropriate for Div 1AA. I have tried both extremes 1. Go out aggressive and spend a lot of cash on first day and 2. Hang back and pick your spots = both methods a big fat fail.

At a BCS school, especially one near a couple elites like you are at Baylor, don't recruit too much the first cycle. Just go after 4-5 guys who you really want and would have a distance advantage on an elite. The 2nd cycle is where you'll do well, going after SIMs, and you can also target non-BCS SIMs as they will be a lot cheaper to knock off. You can build a top 25 team just picking up the leftovers that elites either miss or don't want.

Also, you can try saving 40-50k for post-signings (not including battle money), and go after backups who aren't going to get signed. Realistically, top teams will have 1-2 backups each who are top 50 at their position who they have no intention on signing. Spend money on them so they are considering both you and the other team (but not enough to be winning the battle), and when the top team fills all their scholarships you'll get the guy automatically. If they aren't considering you at all, you won't get him, so you have to send enough to get on him but that's it. It can be expensive signing guys like that though, so don't bank on it too much, just try for 2 or 3 guys max. If I have 12 open scholarships, I'm usually signing 7-8 the first signing cycle, then maybe 2-3 battles, and 1-2 elite backups I have my eye on.

Spending money each cycle doesn't do anything that I'm aware of. If you see a guy considering all SIMs and it's like the 4th cycle, you want to fire big time to try to get him in one cycle. If a recruit is considering you and SIMs, you need to knock them off asap to deter other teams from hopping on him.

Also make sure to cut your youngest 3 SIMs every year if you have them on your roster, better to have the extra cash than a useless player on your roster. Just on a theoretical level, if you have 3 SIMs on your roster, it's better to cut them and get $45k for recruiting guys you want (even if those 3 end up as SIMs again!) than to keep them on your roster.

Your team will also do better if you practice fewer formations. Right now you're using 4 on offense and 3 on defense, cut that down to 1 on offense (pro-set?) and 2 on defense (4-3/3-4 and Nickel?) Practice each 18 minutes while you're rebuilding to give your players a kickstart.

z32 had great advice. So when I'm at a BCS school and going after a top-50ish guy at his position, I'll typically send 3-4 sets of 3 CVs the second cycle to guys with 3 sims on them I'd send less if they're a TE, K or P. Usually the recruit will accept 2-3 sets of 3 CVs. For the third cycle, if I'm yellow with 3 sims I'll send 2 more sets of 3 CVs, if I'm yellow with 1 sim, I'll send one more set of 3 CVs. Once I'm green I stop. If I'm still yellow with 1 sim I send another set of 3 CVs every cycle until I'm green. If another human enters the equation that's when the challenge begins.

If it's more than 48 hours from the start of recruiting, you'll probably need to allocation another 5-10 CVs to knock off all sims from a recruit.