There are a ton of great coaches out there who I really enjoy playing. Too many to choose just one. In no order, great coaches who always seem to consistently have my number at some point over the years:

freesteagle
mfnmyers
topdoggbm
zemedlin
devilowl14
snewell12
paland
phalla

But if I had to choose one rival right now it's probably topdoggbm, I have regular matches in 4 different worlds with him, which is the most of the coaches I play.

Posted by topdogggbm on 10/5/2019 10:00:00 PM (view original):
My best rivalry is favre3xmvp. We play home and homes in every world we share. And we seem to meet in the NT often. And we met in a title game once.

Fun fact.... each time we've met in the tourney, whoever won our regular season matchup, LOST the NT game. And it's happened 4 or 5 times now

I'm glad everyone enjoyed it. I knew it wouldn't go on forever, but I hoped it would start to bring people back to the forums, which it's seemed to have done. Annnd we got to learn a little more about one another.

See, we CAN have nice things.

Posted by pallas on 10/11/2019 11:53:00 AM (view original):
I'm glad everyone enjoyed it. I knew it wouldn't go on forever, but I hoped it would start to bring people back to the forums, which it's seemed to have done. Annnd we got to learn a little more about one another.

See, we CAN have nice things.

Thank you so much pallas!

I've played Timbo71 in IBA for a ton of straight years (I'll know in 4 days when we play and I can see my record against him). I believe it's well over 30 straight seasons. I have had a few very exciting rivalries some I've done very well in and some I can't seem to win, but each one is awesome for the game.

Love seeing the forums more active with the help of this thread.

In other news, I picked up my first D2 team in quite some time. I'm loving the game right now, despite my Virginia team underperforming, and I wanted to get a D2 team to a) save my sanity during the Knight postseason / offseason b) to work my way back into another D1 team. For the time being though, I'm enjoying the D2 team.

What division do you guys seem to enjoy playing the most? Also, what's your dream school or a school you'd like to coach that you haven't yet?

D3 has it's advocates, but isn't it around 15% human coaches? How can 25 games vs. sims each season be enjoyable?

I like D1 the most now, but I have fun with all of them. Having some good non conference rivalries is important for me to stay interested in an empty conference. But I also like having a low pressure place to try stuff.

I grew up rooting for the Golden Gophers, so I’d like to coach Minnesota here sometime, but the timing hasn’t been right yet.

Last night I was watching The Princess Bride with the 8yo. One part always makes me chuckle. Westley is telling the story of his abduction by the Dread Pirate Roberts, and how he started working for the crew. He recounts the Pirate telling him “Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.”

Reminds me of some of my “project” players. I take some guys other coaches scoff at. As long as he projects to do something reasonably well as an upperclassman, I’ll consider him instead of a walkon. But these guys are also often cut if I find myself in a position to get a better player the next season or two. James Verret, for example, didn’t project to anything more than an emergency pg. I *very nearly* cut him after his redshirt season, and again after his freshman season. The only reason I stuck with him both times is that higher division humans showed up on some other recruits late in the first session, and I decided against using resources to secure a replacement.

By the end of his soph season, he was a regular, and last season as a junior, he led the nation in assists on a championship team. He didn’t even have all that much growth. Just a handful of blue categories, with a bunch of yellow.

“Nice work, James. Sleep well. I’ll most likely cut you in the off-season.”

I was always a big fan of DII and DIII in the 1.0 and 2.0 days. Of my 500+ seasons, probably 2/3 of them are in the lower divisions.

With 3.0, I just play in them anymore. My last lower division season was this past one and, from now on, it's DI or bust. I understand the need for the artificial signing barriers with the way 3.0 is designed. Understanding it and liking it are two different things...and I just can't stand it.

Posted by oldwarrior on 10/13/2019 4:01:00 PM (view original):
D3 has it's advocates, but isn't it around 15% human coaches? How can 25 games vs. sims each season be enjoyable?

I play in mostly filled conferences and schedule human non con. Most years I play about 10 sims.

I'm a DI guy, always have been. From day one, my goal was to get to a Big 6 job. I can understand those coaches who prefer DII; there are certainly aspects of DII I like better than DI, but I would gladly take the "randomness" of DI recruiting to coach at big schools.

I hate DIII. The low money and having to wait late in the recruiting process to sign anyone are rough to me. And also, that FB/Press cheese at the DIII level.

Posted by oldwarrior on 10/13/2019 4:01:00 PM (view original):
D3 has it's advocates, but isn't it around 15% human coaches? How can 25 games vs. sims each season be enjoyable?

In some worlds, D2 populations are lower than D3. Smith currently at 50 D2 coaches.

I just find D3 recruiting boring. It can be competitive if you're in a good conference - just like D2 - recruiting is just a slog to me.

Posted by oldwarrior on 10/13/2019 4:01:00 PM (view original):
D3 has it's advocates, but isn't it around 15% human coaches? How can 25 games vs. sims each season be enjoyable?

i think folks really need to get themselves into full conferences and play human slates in non conf. with the new seeding system (including having visibility), it seems more and more folks are fine playing high record sims because it is fine for their seeding, which makes the loss in population look even worse!

its kind of a shame, in a shrinking community, we need to increase human interaction however we can!

i like to think of it like this: we were a small community when i started, but it didn't feel that way - this was a really engaging community because it was active and there were many interactions between members.

my theory on the 'community feel' of a community is that it is much less about the number of members, instead being about the number of connections between members, if you will (so in a graph where nodes are the members and edges are connections, its the edge count that drives the community feel). however you think of it, even with a small number of members, there is room for a LOT of connections between members.

2 people can only have 1 connection (bob plays with alice) (nice), but 3 can have 3 (bob plays alice, alice plays jimbo, bob plays jimbo), and its off to the races from there. 100 people can have about 10,000 connections and 1000 people can have about a million. we are a small community but it doesn't have to feel that way! if we organize into human conferences and engage through our conference chats and the primary HD forum (as opposed to splintering), it could feel like it did 5 years ago.

unlikely but interesting to think about

Posted by gomiami1972 on 10/13/2019 6:18:00 PM (view original):
I was always a big fan of DII and DIII in the 1.0 and 2.0 days. Of my 500+ seasons, probably 2/3 of them are in the lower divisions.

With 3.0, I just play in them anymore. My last lower division season was this past one and, from now on, it's DI or bust. I understand the need for the artificial signing barriers with the way 3.0 is designed. Understanding it and liking it are two different things...and I just can't stand it.

i still don't get why they don't change it to allow coaches to skip to low d1 if they've done it in another world. if d1 was full and spots were coveted, i could see it - but as it, it seems totally insane. give the people what they want!