need help recruiting

[Wizeguy]

I need help recruiting. I don't know how much points to throw out to each player. I was very successful last year but confused this year. I understand the pitch and all that stuff just not the point system this year. please help

[Manny677]

I recruited well for Nebraska. I was a top 10 program so it was not hard to attract good talent. I usually spent about 25-35 on players that I really wanted if I was 2nd or 3rd on their list. The instate kids I spent less than 10 points on. If I was 1st on the list, I spent about 20 points. I could afford to loose players leaving early so I did not try to stop them. Fortunately, I had some big studs who stayed 4 years even after winning awards. I always ened up with 7-10 blue chippers, 7-10 4*, and 1-5 3*. Make sure you keep changing your pitch if it one did not work. I got about 85% of the kids I wanted with this strategy.

I have not yet played with a lower tier team so I can't help you there.

[Kaylos]

Try this, I found it when scouring easports obtuse forums, but its a gem of a thread.

http://easports.boards.ea.com/[email protected]

My only question that I felt was left unanswered was how much of an effect potential has on a recruit. I have only seen average or good potentials, never poor or excellent. I am testing it myself with two 2-star backs, one with average potential, the othe good. Going to redshirt them and put a little more emphasis on training in the offseason and see how they comnpare by their senior years.

Will post my results once I see what happens.

[yo136]

I did notice one mistake in that guy's tips:

"-Tip: If you choose the wrong Pitch, it won't make a difference if you use the maximum recruiting points on a prospect, or the minimum. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong.)
~Advice: Apply your extra recruiting points to players that you have already figured out the right Pitch for, or ones that you think you can guess it."

This is wrong. I've had recruits sign for reasons apart from what I pitched. But if he's already very interested, you can sometimes pitch anything and it won't matter as long as you put enough points into it. I usually do the full 15 points for good in-state prospects, but do the minimum for out of state just to find the plus factor.

[Kaylos]

It does get to it later in the thread how sometimes it does not seem to matter how many how many points you throw at a guy, sometimes they do weird things. I usually find I have do not have to spend too many points with interested players even not finding the right pitch to get them to commit. Of course that is with LSU, it seemed quite a bit more difficult with a bottom tier 1-AA school. (Northwestern State of course)

Of course, when you are bottom tier though, it is really tough, because you do not have enough points to do any scouting, which is what you need to be able to find those good potential, diamonds in the rough players. By contrasting, it seems to easy to recruit with marquee schools, and almost too tough with cupcake schools. I think it costs too much to scout. Obviously it should be tougher for small schools, but you would thing they could at least manage to scout out state prospects pretty cheap. But its not a game breaker though and even with minimal points, it seems you can build, if you can keep from getting fired. (pretty easy to do if you simming instead playing. But I noticed how much an effect coaching strategy can have on simming, so now I going to attempt scouting the teams I am playing to build the coach strategy around stopping them)

I did notice last night though using LSU, just by showing an interest in a guy though, he will usually stick around long enough for you to figure out the right pitch unless you are just really unlucky. Also, and it easier for me by only spending minimums early to attempt to get quite a few more stars. In fact it got quuite sick at one point. I pulled in 10 5-stars and 4 4-star players one off season after a championship run. I wouldn't really have been able to get more because I got a scholarship suspension of 10 per year for two years despite having low NCAA interest in my program standards.

I also found myself having to look out of state for most players, becauses oddly enough Louisiana wasn't producing as many stars as I was used to seeing.

As for my update on potential. My 2 star backs comparison. When I recruited them, they turned out to be almost identical backs in size and stats. They were both 62. By their5th year with 40% training every year, one was 82, the other was 78. If you notice, players improve every year before training by a little usually. Then training adds to it. Well the only difference between the two was one year the good potential back received a two point bonus before training the the average back did not receive. Then one year, the good potnetial back recieved a 4 point bonus from training, while the average back only recieved a 2 point bonus. Thus the 4 point difference with the good potential back getting 20 points in four off seasons, and the average back getting 16. By the end, they were still similar backs, just only a little better than the other. On a side note, I had to spend like 80 recruiting points to keep one from transferring one year because obviously neither were getting playing time.

[Lonestar210]

Whats a good budget balance for recruiting, training and discipline?

[Kaylos]

I would say it depends. My first mistake was to ignore discipline. After getting slapped with fines, I realized there was no getting around it. So I put no less than 25% into Discipline, and only less than 30 if I have a really large departure of graduates that need replacing. I split the rest between training and recruiting. Some years, I will put a little more emphasis on training, others on recruiting, but not too much. With a weak team, maybe a little more in recruiting, with a strong young team, a little more in training. It also depends on how many holes I might need to fill due exits due to graduation. Also, with 1-AA, I will throw all my left over from discipline points at recruiting, because the players are so bad, that training them is pointless, you are better off with a bunch of one and two star players.

[Kaylos]

I amend what I said about players improving before training. They do not get a random boost before recruiting, but instead the stat improvements they get from good games in the season seem to be permanent. Like my FB got +4 from good play over the season and I checked before training in the off season and the +4 was not listed, but his overall was still 4 points higher than before.