Hi,

For all of those who have been around for a while, where do you find the best location to build a powerhouse to be (by division)? I have found that my four teams have all ended up in the Idaho / Dakotas / Colorado area for D II. I also seem to notice that at D II Montana St. - Billings is usually highly ranked.

Just wanted to know everyone's opinion on where recruiting/success has been the most fruitful by division.

As an additional point, for my fourth team I recently left Chaminade, which was an absolute pain to recruit for, to go to N.W. Nazarene, which seems to have solid reviews in terms of location on the forums. Are there distinct advantages to being in a certain geographic area?

In part depends on which nearby schools - at your level and a level up - have human coaches.

For Div-3:
- Palm Beach Atlantic.
- Colorado College.
- Any school in the University Athletic.
- - - Palm Beach Atlantic has no nearby Div-3 rivals, but with a lot of D-1 and D-2 schools around, it offers a big player pool.

For Div-2:
- Schools in the Rocky Mountain Conference.


For Div-1:
- Not sure.

What's good about the university athletic conference in d3?

DII Chadron St, NW Nazarene are the best. Montana Billings is really hit or miss, not many teams to battle with but not many recruits either.

DIII PBAU; Wisconsin Parkside is nice too.

DI: Texas, Florida, Cali and then any state that borders Cali or Florida. To be honest, however, in my opinion it is not the location that makes a school in every world but instead areas with not many good coaches.

Posted by Trentonjoe on 6/16/2017 5:18:00 PM (view original):
What's good about the university athletic conference in d3?

Right, i think it's a combination of few other D3 schools near the 12 UAA teams, along with many D2 and D1 schools. So more D1 and D2 level recruits for the UAA to sift through, with relatively low D3 competition.

Posted by Trentonjoe on 6/16/2017 5:18:00 PM (view original):
What's good about the university athletic conference in d3?

Historically, the advantage of the University at D3 is that its geographical footprint was sprawled wide enough that most of the schools could be populated by human coaches without them having to fight each other for top recruits and pull-downs in 2.0. That allowed the league to attract and retain quality coaches and build powerhouse programs without them cannibalizing each other during recruiting, enabling the league to build more postseason cash, lather, rinse, repeat...

Under 3.0, some of that isn't quite as necessary, but it's still a great league as most of the schools are located in the gulf states, which have a high distribution of both D2 and low-major D1 programs which help the states to spawn recruits, but many of those same programs often aren't grabbed by human coaches, leaving an abundance of upper-division talent that can be peeked at.

Answering the OP, the top two schools for me at D3 would be 1. Colorado College and 2. Palm Beach Atlantic, with the order open to being reversed if the Sunshine is heavily Sim while the Colorado D2 conference is heavily human. The two schools I would stay away from at D3 are Maine-Presque Isle (any recruit you want, you'll be at a distance disadvantage, and the further away from you they are, the closer they are to the jungle and zoo that is D3 recruiting in the New England region...) and Sul Ross St. (looks great, a school all alone on the western side of the consistently overflowing talent warehouse that is Texas. But wait...aside from the rare D1 kid in El Paso...NO RECRUITS EVER FREAKING SPAWN IN WESTERN TEXAS!!!...so you pay a huge cost to scout the state and then are at a distance disadvantage to go after almost all of it. And there's ALWAYS human coaches helming the eastern Texas D3 programs..so have fun playing the leftover game and praying to the gods of New Mexico to sustain you)