The Ladder - 2023
 

It's time for redshirts, recruiting, and OOC scheduling. Let me know which teams you'd like to have added to your OOC schedule.

2023 Ladder Alignment

Teams I'd like to play (in order from highest preference to lowest)

Notre Dame - top priority, I'd like them at home.

Arizona State - preferably at home.

Colorado - At their place is fine.

LSU - At our stadium.

Texas - either place.

Hawaii - Either place.

If 3 of those 6 don't work out, I will come up with more choices.

Texas = cartman, sir.

Ahh, I forgot. I was just thinking of some fun rivalries for USC :)

As long as I have a home game against Texas State as close to week 6 as possible, I'm fine. All my other out of conference games I want on the road against the toughest teams I can play.

Id like to play SCar and Auburn on the road if possible.

Home game either week 6 or 7 against FIU if possible

Try to get my ND game around week 7 if possible.

Just found out I'm likely to be away from home for at least one week, possibly all the way until New Years.

Okay. I'll try to make the first couple of weeks byes for Texas. You can still do the preseason stuff like redshirts and recruiting on the website, right? Macro wasn't able to access the website for some reason that I don't recall.

Wk 2 vs Arizona State
Wk 3 vs Notre Dame
Wk 4 at Hawaii

Wk 1 at #7 Notre Dame
Wk 4 vs #4 Ohio State
Wk 5 vs Texas State

Made OSU a home game because otherwise you would have just 5 home games.

Wk 2 vs #22 Washington State
Wk 4 vs FIU
Wk 7 at #18 South Carolina


Couldn't get Auburn.

Wk 2 is an in-conference game against #8 Virginia Tech, but let week 1 open.


Wk 7 vs #14 Florida
Wk 9 at #25 TCU
Wk 14 at Texas Tech

Works for me.

Week 1 - Deadline is 12/28 (Wed) at 11 p.m. EST
 

Let's get this party started!

Week 1 Games

#6 UTSA at #7 Notre Dame
#11 FAU at Ole Miss


2023 Preseason Poll




2023 Heisman Outlook

When trying to get guys to insta-commit, do you assign recruiting points before offering, or offer without points?

Without points for me.

Without points for me.

Barely beat Notre Dame. Barely.

Yeesh.

I always assign max points.
I realize I lose the points that way, but anecdotally without ever racking it I think there is a higher hit % that way.

I suspect the back end code looks like this.

[Coach skill adds 5% chance to insta commit]
Hidden player school rating = 3,000
Players chance to commit to school is equal to X * [committ %]

So in theory if at 2,000 points you had an 80% chance at 2,700 you would have an 83% chance then you add your 5% bonus on either.

Again strictly anecdotal but thats my thoughts.

I also move them up to #1 on my board, then offer. I did track that in SP once for 10 seasons. Players ranked #1 on my board committed at a significantly higher rate. Although the sample size was naturally too small to be significant.

Thanks for the input, guys. I've never had the Insta-commit skill before, so this is new ground for me.

Ole Miss gave us all we wanted.
Their QB rushed 28 times...it was all we could do to stay competitive but we managed to win.

QB Devin Rankin continues to have some inexplicable throws as he tossed 4 INTs today. Several not even close to his target. I dont have another QB on the roster even worth considering...if I did it would probably be time to pull him.

Speaking of insta-commits. We got one from the #1 prospect on our board. a 5 star athlete from Texas who is the fastest QB I've ever recruited and has the potential to be the best I've ever had. He was the #4 athlete overall....

We also got one from the #1 athlete overall. Another 5 star from Texas who could play QB or WR for us.

Then, we got one from the #1 MLB in the nation. A 4 star stud from Georgia....

Then, we got one from the #8 G (#1 in California) :)

But, we weren't done yet. We got one from the #2 CB in the nation out of Hawaii! :)


Very nice opening week for USC on the recruiting trail :)

I wonder why UTSA doesn't get the rabid attention that USC and Indiana do on the recruiting trail. Is it a prestige thing?

Its tied into the conversion process tbh. And it will be an unintentional eternal advantage/disadvantage.

What we didnt know when we converted was that the rankings the commish assigned for the team builder teams in certain categories would never change.

Tradition is one. Those two schools are A+ and will always be at an inherent advantage. We are all getting good players, but it is the difference between, for example USC talking about stock piling ATH/QBs and FAU having one DT QB on the roster with an OVR above 72. This allows the top 2 to grab early insta commits and then battle down the stretch with everyone for the remaining ones.

Recruiting is by far my favorite part of the game. As such it does take a bit of the fun out of it for me. But I just consider it more of a challenge/house rules handicap.

FWIW, USC tends to have an advantage over us for the top players. My board is littered with guys who USC can take if they really want them. The Trojans tend to have a little points advantage for their pitches, and tend to start out ahead of us. We got two insta-commits out of 11 offers - the #1 rated RB, who is a good running back who lacks elite speed, and a solid OLB. I was all set to pursue the QB with the 95 spd, 95 acc, 93 agility, but it was going to be an uphill battle to get him.

Sorry things didn't end up more balanced. :(

By the way, we are an A- for program tradition.

This demonstrates how many of the best players look. We start off slightly behind, and have slightly fewer points each week.



I guess one way to look at it is USC has more national championships (5) than the rest of us combined (4), so they should have an advantage in recruiting.




Also, USC's overall win percentage and bowl win percentage is the highest in the Ladder.

We are, however, slowly catching up to them in our head-to-head series, after a rough start. :)

Right.
And just to be clear no need to apologize here or be sorry.
Just pointing it out.

For comparison sake we are a D- in tradition.
Where the game fails is the players dont have enough personalities. So for example USC can take a guy who would be my starting QB and move him to 2nd string FS. And he will move. He wouldnt be top 3 QB good for USC but he would come in as the best guy on my roster.
And we are a top 10 program.

Bama can do that to UAB, they cant do that for example to Michigan.

Whats sucks is that the game isnt adjusting those fields based on performance

Yeah, dynamic ratings would be nice for sure.

Ah, I didn't know about that.. Has to be a bug in the game that causes that rating to stick. Classic EA. Anyway, just was curious about it, I sit here pining for the top studs and they seem to love sunny CA over pretty decent looking San Antonio.

I guess that's why all the teams seem to start pretty close to the same on recruits in the American Conference dynasty. It is one of the more interesting things in recruiting in that league to see the initial bunch up and wonder who is going after who in the early stages.

Got back home late last night, and I head back out early tomorrow morning.

Got my recruiting done, ready to advance. Got 4 insta-commits, which I don't think I've ever gotten that many before.

Will move us ahead tomorrow.

Week 2 - Deadline is 1/7 (Sat) at 11 p.m. EST
 

Week 1 Results

UTSA 28, Notre Dame 24
FAU 49, Ole Miss 28


Week 2 Games


Arizona State (0-0) at #2 USC (0-0)
Florida State (0-0) at #3 UTSA (1-0)
#6 Virginia Tech (0-0) at #19 Texas (0-0)
Washington State (0-1) at #8 Florida Atlantic (1-0)

Dang it. Another bye!

After barely scraping by Notre Dame, we're looking forward to debuting a new playbook this week.

Can't wait to get this team on the field but probably won't be until Monday that I can find time to play.

Got a lot of rust to shake off on playing the game. But I eeked out a 27-21 win over #6 Virginia Tech.

Forgot my family was off today and I haven't had time to play. Been spending time with family and now time to watch the real USC in the Rose Bowl. Look forward to playing on Wednesday!

I got some unexpected time today to play!

Wow. Bell started off hot, had a few bad picks in the middle of the game (2 to be exact) and ended hot. He isn't going to run as much this year probably because he has so many weapons to throw it to. He threw for 10 TD's, ran for 1 more, and passed for just under 700 yards. Just as important, after a slow start, our defense brought it this game. We had 11 sacks as a team! That included 3 sacks from freshman starting MLB Sterling Brown who looks like a beast out there. Back to the offense, Ryan Rowe added over 100 yards rushing and a TD despite only getting 11 carries. 3 receivers with over 100 yards including Shawn Ernst who led the team with 276 yards on 12 catches with 4 TD's. RS Sophomore star T.J. Lambert added 8 catches for 189 yards and 3 TD's. Sensational Sophomore TE Mike Harris added 6 catches for 131 yards and 2 TD's. Bell spread the ball around even getting 3rd string QB/6th string WR James Johnson his first career receiving TD on a little 1 yard pass late in the game.

Week 3 - Deadline is 1/21 (Sat) at 11 p.m. EST
 

Week 2 Results

USC 91, Arizona State 6
UTSA 62, Florida State 20
FAU 55, Washington State 36
Texas 27, Virginia Tech 21


Week 3 Games

#1 Indiana (0-0) at Purdue (0-0)
#15 Notre Dame (0-2) at #2 USC (1-0)

Had a fun opening game against Purdue. Doug Rivero amassed over 300 yards in returns on the day, and returned both a kick and a punt for a TD. Both TDs included nice cutbacks that allowed him to reach paydirt. We also had 5 takeaways on the day, including two pick sixes. Our offense wasn't quite hitting on all cylinders, but it did lose 4 possessions due to returns for TDs. The defense allowed more yards than I'd prefer, but did come up with 5 takeaways, so it's hard to be too unhappy. We won 77-14 (or something close to that).

Week 4 - Deadline is 1/24 (Tues) at 11 p.m. EST
 

Love the quick turnaround this week. :)

Week 3 Results

Indiana 77, Purdue 21
USC 77, Notre Dame 21


Week 4 Games

#1 Indiana (1-0) at Stanford (2-1)
#2 USC (2-0) at Hawai'i (0-2)
#13 Ohio State (0-1) at #3 UTSA (2-0)
FIU (1-0) at #5 Florida Atlantic (2-0)
#21 Ole Miss (1-2) at #10 Texas (1-0)

I'll get my game in today. There is a decent chance I'll be traveling next week and the week after.

Wow. Three guys are done already. Most impressive. :)

Ohio State didn't do shit.

I'll get mine in tonight or tomorrow AM at the latest

Had a tough slog against Ole Miss, but won.

Mine likely won't be until the weekend.

And I will be. I'm gone from Sunday until Feb. 3rd.