University of Rochester - Year 1 (An NCAA 2014 dynasty)
 

After last year's aborted An Alien in the NCAA dynasty, I am back to try again with a less grand and less time-sucking premise. This dynasty won't feature much of an attempt at a backstory. It will chronicle my team, the University of Rochester Lake Monsters, as we start from humble origins with hopes of glory in Conference IHOF (formerly Conference USA). This new dynasty features an entire conference of IHOF teams (plus the Gatesville Silicon Pirates from my most famous dynasty, The Bill Gates Challenge).

All of the team uniform designs are blatantly ripped off from the cuervo72's awesome designs in IHOF (except for Gatesville). The man has skills. I just tried to reproduce his work as best I could.

I plan to gloss over the non-conference schedule and most recruiting stuff. My focus will be on the Conference IHOF games. I won't spend much time on the national picture. How long will I keep the dynasty going? Who knows? Probably not long. But maybe, just maybe, I'll keep up for a while. Let's find out.


House Rules

I'll be using BYU's sliders (or something close). I've modified the conferences to make them more regional. No attempt at realism was made. Hopefully our BYU contingent will be happier with the alignment than they were with last year's dynasty. ;)

To make recruiting more difficult, I will follow one house rule:

I can only allot points to 2 targets from outside the Empire State who are below 25% lock in any given week. Other players from out of state can still be on my board if they are below 25% locked, but I can't spend any points on them. I am free to allot points to any player from the state of New York, no matter what his lock percentage is.

This is my first run-through in the new dynasty mode. I'm sure to botch things pretty badly. But it should be fun. Don't expect a fast-moving dynasty. I have very limited console time these days. Basically, don't expect another Bill Gates Challenge, and you might not be disappointed. I do plan to incorporate YouTube highlights like I did in the Alien dynasty. But I will try to be more judicious with highlights because they are time-consuming to produce. Shorter write-ups will be the rule for run-of-the-mill games. Only the big games will get the full treatment.

Anyhow, I used up all my playing time tonight messing with recruiting, so not much to report just yet. I'll be back. Most likely... :cool:

For my roster, I chose my beloved Indiana Hoosiers as a base. I wanted to play a dynasty with Indiana, but I also wanted to play with my beloved Lake Monsters. This was my compromise. Rochester was made using IU's roster.

Some teams in the IHOF were made with rosters that were very good and were given strong pitches (Tucker, Chesapeake). Some were given a crap roster and crap pitches (I'm looking at you, San Luis Obispo). Most teams fell somewhere in between.

North Plainfield is our designated rival. They're one of the better teams. David Conti is out there as a recruit, but so far nobody is going after him. (I won't allow myself to go after him.) Hopefully he goes to NPL like he was designed to do...

2013 U of R Offensive Scouting Report
 

Yes, this member of the BYU contingency gives you a thumbs up on the conference alignment :)

is the scouting report available somewhere or do you write/transcribe everything?

Wrote everything myself. And it was a pain in the ass. :)

2013 U or R Defensive Scouting Report
 

2013, Week 1
 

Tre Roberson connected with Shane Wynn as time expired in the 1st half to give us a 17-10 lead.




I uploaded this replay because I felt like it wouldn't have happened in NCAA 2014. Wynn would have been tackled early in the play. I like how it feels like there are more things that can happen in NCAA 2014.



I did this as an offline dynasty in hopes that I could avoid the freezing issues that plagued me in NCAA 2013 online dynasty mode. The downside: I need to take pictures or create all graphics by hand.

2013, Week 2
 

We had a bye in Week 2. Easy to post! :D

2013, Week 3
 

I smell a QB controversy brewing! :)

2013, Week 4
 

Clearly I need to work on my passing...

We travel to Chesapeake to face the 3-0 Chitterlings in Week 5.

It looks like maybe I should adjust run-blocking down a bit for me and up for the cpu, and maybe turn down interceptions a bit for the cpu.

Chesapeake is much better than us, so they should whip us.