College Football 25 All-In-One Recruiting Guide: Do This, Not That

[Limasbravo]

Quote: Originally Posted by ChaseB

Just about 6,000 words of advice for those who want to get a handle on just about all aspects of recruiting to either understand the mechanics, get a leg up on peeps in online dynasties, see what's strong to help implement your own House Rules, or just compare to what y'all do already before telling me what a FOOL I am. This first appeared in our newsletter last week, please subscribe (it's free and it's the only email we send to ya each week) if you want to see me in your e-mail on Friday mornings

Might want to add to the article about "need" and rosters. This time it's different. This time it will list you as needing certain positions, but you don't actually need them.

It may say you need 2 QBs but you only have 1 Senior QB graduating.

Plus, there's a negative in over-recruiting that NCAA14 and others did not have. With 25, you can not cut true freshmen. So, if you already have 3 QBs and they're all 80+ Overall and you sign a 60 overall freshman QB, you aren't able to cut that 60 overall.

[tessl]

Quote: Originally Posted by DLev4552

The not scouting part is really small-school specific. When you are 1-star prestige school with only 350 hours/week, poor pipelines, bad pitches, and some players in the 50s already on the roster, you just need to be dumping hours on 3-stars that you can actually sign. You can only send the house on 7 guys/week, or hard sell on 8 guys/week as-is. And that's not including visits. Whether they are a gem or bust, or what their abilities are isn't really that material. Mostly anything is going to be better than what you've got. Now when you are at a 5-star school with 1,000 hours/week, mega-pipelines, and players in the 80s that are 3rd string on your roster, that's a different story. You can STH on 20 guys and hard sell on 25 guys, while you probably only need to sign 15-20. That's when you get picky. Alabama doesn't want a 4-star bust with no abilities, so it's worth their while to find that out beforehand. But South Alabama doesn't care. They would be over the moon to land him, period.

That makes sense. What I'd do in that case is wait until week 2 and sort for players with no scholarship offers.

[ChaseB]

Quote: Originally Posted by DLev4552

Two things related to recruiting that I still haven't been able to decipher: 1. Does the Pipeline tied to your head coach and assistant coaches have any effect at all? Ex: Your head coach has a pipeline for Hawaii and you are coaching Jax State. I haven't see where Jax State now gets a 1-star (bronze) pipeline for Hawaii. 2. If I am wrong about #1, do the pipelines stack? Lets say you are coaching South Alabama, with a 2-star silver pipeline for Mississippi. If your head coach and both coordinates all ALSO had Mississippi as their coach pipelines, you would think Mississippi would now be a 5-star mega pipeline. I don't believe this is happening. 3. What is "National" pipeline? My DC in my dynasty has national for his. But of course, if the answer to the 2 questions above is that the coaching pipelines actually have zero effect, then this point is moot.

I talk about this a little bit in the article, but yes, those coaching pipelines do have an impact but they're very small until you get to those certain abilities in the coaching tree. I wouldn't call them quite nothing because they do theoretically stack, but when people have run tests it just doesn't seem to make a big difference early on. I think you might be thinking stacking = 2X and so on, but I don't think the multiplier works like that (unless it's the abilities). Think of stacking more as smaller impacts than 2x and beyond most of the time.

I specify how things work when you get to certain abilities that the ones that boost your pipelines will add your coaching pipeline to the mix more at that time.

As for national pipeline, I'm not sure I've noticed that, his pipeline is listed as that or he has an ability? My guess without seeing is it is maybe it helps add recruiting hours but yeah would need to see a bit more.

Quote: Originally Posted by tessl

Great article. I learned a lot. I have to say I disagree the statement that you shouldn't scout after the first week. He gave a list of the most desirable physical attributes. The only way to find those is to scout. The only way that would work is if you were oversigning just to find players with top level attributes and then culling the herd to get rid of players when they become sophomores by encouraging them to enter the portal. That might work in the game but that's a pretty cutthroat way to do business. Aside from that great informative article.

Quote: Originally Posted by fballturkey

I kind of agree that you probably won’t scout everybody when you are at a small school. If I’m at a small school frankly I’m taking almost any 4* no matter what. Later on at bigger schools you’ll have more hours than you know what to do with after a few weeks, and you can scout to find gems or good matches in players you add later to your board.

Quote: Originally Posted by DLev4552

The not scouting part is really small-school specific. When you are 1-star prestige school with only 350 hours/week, poor pipelines, bad pitches, and some players in the 50s already on the roster, you just need to be dumping hours on 3-stars that you can actually sign. You can only send the house on 7 guys/week, or hard sell on 8 guys/week as-is. And that's not including visits. Whether they are a gem or bust, or what their abilities are isn't really that material. Mostly anything is going to be better than what you've got. Now when you are at a 5-star school with 1,000 hours/week, mega-pipelines, and players in the 80s that are 3rd string on your roster, that's a different story. You can STH on 20 guys and hard sell on 25 guys, while you probably only need to sign 15-20. That's when you get picky. Alabama doesn't want a 4-star bust with no abilities, so it's worth their while to find that out beforehand. But South Alabama doesn't care. They would be over the moon to land him, period.

These two hit on it, but yeah, I think I say it a little bit in the article, but scouting gets more important because you can "waste" hours once you're not a bottom feeder. But when you have 300-500-800 hours even when starting out, it's not a good allocation of time because time is your only true currency. My point was more that when you become an Alabama, you likely have 1200+ hours of recruiting to use each week anyway, so then not going for red gems becomes more viable since you're only hunting 4 and 5 star guys most of the time and probably not trying to bring in more than 15 guys a lot of years.

Not that I haven't ever encouraged transfers as well, but yeah, I think your point is super valid that it's context-sensitive.

Quote: Originally Posted by Limasbravo

Great stuff. Looks like this section is duplicated in the article:

Cheers mate, must have copied and pasted it by accident when transferring it from the newsletter, fixed now.

Quote: Originally Posted by Limasbravo

Might want to add to the article about "need" and rosters. This time it's different. This time it will list you as needing certain positions, but you don't actually need them. It may say you need 2 QBs but you only have 1 Senior QB graduating. Plus, there's a negative in over-recruiting that NCAA14 and others did not have. With 25, you can not cut true freshmen. So, if you already have 3 QBs and they're all 80+ Overall and you sign a 60 overall freshman QB, you aren't able to cut that 60 overall.

Yeah, I could add that I believe the game will even just give you a position if you're under it, it won't let you start the season without being roster compliant (presumably because it would be a bug and crash your ish).

I think the over-recruiting point I make is that certain recruits have playing time etc. as Dealbreakers and will just remove you from consideration anyway if you're offering too many scholarships to that position and so on. But super fair that you can't just cut people right away -- just ruin them with position changes if you want hehehehehehehe.

[DLev4552]

Quote:

Yeah, I could add that I believe the game will even just give you a position if you're under it, it won't let you start the season without being roster compliant (presumably because it would be a bug and crash your ish). I think the over-recruiting point I make is that certain recruits have playing time etc. as Dealbreakers and will just remove you from consideration anyway if you're offering too many scholarships to that position and so on. But super fair that you can't just cut people right away -- just ruin them with position changes if you want hehehehehehehe.

I haven’t made it this far yet, but let’s say the game is telling you fullback is a need, but you don’t actually want a fullback because you are a shotgun spread team and will just use a backup TE in those situations.

Are they going to auto-generate a 50-something overall walk-on fullback that you can’t cut (due to being an incoming freshman) and make you cut someone you actually do want?

I have made a sheet showing MY minimum required personnel (rather than the needs sheet in-game), and it’s only 75 players. The thought is that I could use the other 10 spots I best available.

But it would be a nightmare if the game starts giving you walk-ons and making you cut good prospects because it won’t let you go with only 4 QBs instead of 5 or something like that.

[ChaseB]

Quote: Originally Posted by DLev4552

I haven’t made it this far yet, but let’s say the game is telling you fullback is a need, but you don’t actually want a fullback because you are a shotgun spread team and will just use a backup TE in those situations. Are they going to auto-generate a 50-something overall walk-on fullback that you can’t cut (due to being an incoming freshman) and make you cut someone you actually do want? I have made a sheet showing MY minimum required personnel (rather than the needs sheet in-game), and it’s only 75 players. The thought is that I could use the other 10 spots I best available. But it would be a nightmare if the game starts giving you walk-ons and making you cut good prospects because it won’t let you go with only 4 QBs instead of 5 or something like that.

I'm pretty sure FB isn't one of the "musts" because there are teams with zero FBs in the normal depth charts as well. It might even be just if you're really low on the overall roster number in general. I forget all the permutations because I did it way early on and mostly was unbothered by how they seemed to handle it but it seemed to be more if you get totally annihilated in terms of missing on recruits and also have lots of transfers/graduations.

(Plus you still have position changes if need be)

[tessl]

Quote: Originally Posted by packmanuk

I'm just starting a dynasty and had 400 hours recruiting hours. I setup my board of 35 players and did some scouting of players and went all in on a couple of players using up my hours This was all in preseason. Now I'm in week 3 but have had zero hours to use in week 1, 2 or now week 3. Will I ever be given any more hours or should I have not used the 400 hours during pre season ? I now don't have any hours to offer scholarships etc.

You maxed out your points and nobody committed. Remove points from some of the players you are recruiting and it will free up points.

[moTIGS]

You mentioned using position changes to help fill out your running back depth, offensive line, etc.

One additional use of position changes that you didn't exactly mention, though, is that sometimes it can be a very powerful way to turn bad recruits into genuinely good players, and it can also help good recruits with low skill caps become better players at new spots.

I did some research recently and shared it here: https://forums.operationsports.com/f...post2050979531

The gist of it, though: An athletic two-star receiver or running back will typically start his college career in the high 50s or low 60s overall at his natural position. But if you move him to defensive back, he'll lose 20-30 points of overall immediately *with the chance to make that back and then some* a year later. So that two-star WR who might never get better than a 77 overall at WR could actually be a high-80s cornerback in disguise.

It can also be used to get around skill caps. Say you land a three-star receiver who starts as a 66 overall, but his skill caps mean he's basically already maxed out. If he wasn't an "athlete" recruit, he probably has no DB skills. But you can still move him to DB anyway, and suddenly those skill caps might look wildly different. That high-60s-forever WR could develop into a high-80s safety or corner in a season or two.

I mostly focused on WR to DB in my testing, but the same principle can apply at other positions, often with fun results. I recently landed a three-star "athlete" defensive end who was 6-6, 280. I moved him to right tackle, where he was a 27 overall. But he gained like 45 points of overall after one season. Those gains weren't evenly distributed, though. For his run blocking, for example, his actual run block rating was still in the 60s, but his run block power was 99. So now I have this super athletic OL with a handful of elite skills, but he can't handle speed rushers at all.

This can lead to some really weird, fun types of players who are really good at one thing but terrible at another, which works so well with college football. My latest project is moving a FS to HB. He's very athletic, but it's looking like his break tackle rating is never going to get out of the 40s. Personally, I'm loving the idea of a college running back who's great in space but falls over the first time a linebacker breathes on him. Feels very realistic. (Mostly I made this change because I wanted a 210-pound running back, though. It's weird/unfortunate to me that running backs who weigh 210-219 pounds just flat-out do not exist in the recruiting pool.)

[mtoo22]

I feel like something like this is what EA needs to do. There is so much to the recruiting that isn't obvious because EA doesn't give you a place to go and read a guide like this. It's just up to the community. Like seeing run fits. I just found out about that too.

Either way, good work. This is why this is the best sports gaming site out there.

Reminds of the esoteric thread from the college hoops forum back in the day. There's a lot to this game under the hood.

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