Sweet article on Rivals.com.

[Steve_OS]

Nice find Nutz, gave ya some love on the Main page.

[CWood2]

Quote: Originally Posted by glucklich

Yikes, me too. Id be pi$$ed if they took that out.

Did you guys mean create-a-prospect since Rivals has taken over? I didn't see any info that would concern me about the create player feature...

[Dauminator]

So the guy in the article says that "gameplay was my main focus." Sounds nice, but can we trust him?

[Pared]

Quote: Originally Posted by Steve_OS

Nice find Nutz, gave ya some love on the Main page.

You gave some love to Nutz on the main page??

[CM Hooe]

Since they have Rivals.com now, did they drop the Sports Illustrated feature? Or will that still be there as well?

[Tomahawk]

Wonder if your schedule will impact recruiting? For instance if you don't schedule a game during Week 14 & 15 will the recruits interest drop since he can't visit your school once it gets close to decision time?

[kirkdawg]

Quote: Originally Posted by Tomahawk

Wonder if your schedule will impact recruiting? For instance if you don't schedule a game during Week 14 & 15 will the recruits interest drop since he can't visit your school once it gets close to decision time?

Looks like you can schedule visits in the bye weeks. I think the way the recruiting engine is set up is that each prospect is given a certain proclivity to sign with each school. The number of points we throw at the player, with the pitches mixed in as some kind of multiplier, probably determines who gets him in the end. The success of your team on visit weekends will likely be another multiplier in the equation. I assume that we will be limited in vists per weekend at least by recruiting points and that some weekends will be taken up by visits to other schools. The prospects will probably make a soft verbal if one school gets a lead of X points. I also doubt that the rivals license will affect the use of SI in anyway since none of the SI stuff ever had to do with recruiting.

The layout of the recruiting screens looks much easier to navigate. I like how some of the relevant measurements and stats are displayed without having to go to the actual recruit page. The narrowing down of schools from 8 to 5 and so on looks like a nice touch. This is really more than I expected from this year's incarnation of NCAA. After reading all the stuff about the useless race for the heisman mode, I needed something to look forward to.

Here's hoping the gameplay work really does pay off and that scheduling bugs get fixed. I'm still hoping for the 85 man roster and the ability to edit a player's class, but I'm not gonna hold my breath on those.

[theaub]

Note: I have NCAA '04 only, so if any of this was in '05, my apologies

- The thing I like most is that they show top 5 instead of top 3, and have the interest meters either rising and dropping for all teams...I always though that should have been in NCAA regardless...
- Obviously prospect visits are awesome...I like how the players respond to them
- Players drop down to 5 schools eventually, which makes sense
- You can invite players to campus on bye weeks, but it's probably more effective if you have a game...I highly doubt I'd schedule a game after the Iron Bowl though
- Bonus points if you win for in-season recruiting is a good idea, but I think it may make recruiting a bit too easy if you have a good team (logically, if you just pitch program prestige, it should be just as effective)
- I see they have prospects who won't qualify academically, but I hope they have Prop 48 cases (if they still exist)
- For RTH, I wonder if the recruiting will be only local, or if it will be ranked like prestige (e.g. I'm from Toronto, but I'd want to go to Auburn. I wonder if I would only be recruited by schools like UM, or Ohio St., or if I would be ranked as a "4 star prospect" for example, there would just be a long list of teams that were 1-4 stars in prestige, and maybe a few 5 stars that would be interested in me. Think of when you quit your coaching position, and all the teams that have a lower prestige than you show up as potential jobs. I wonder if it will be like that, or if only 8-10 schools will try to recruit you).
- Release date is July 12