Real life NCAA ?: Do programs ever go from high prestige to very low prestige?

[yankeesgiants]

Quote: Originally Posted by Tovarich

SMU was a power of CFB until they got the death penalty. 20 years later, they still haven't recovered.

To this day I think the NCAA regrets decision to give them the death penalty. What happened there was criminal and should never ever happen and people should have gone to jail in some cases. They were awful from the time Doak Walker left 1949 until the early 80's. The "Pony Express" revived the program for a few years and thats no excuse for what happened but the penalties they received were over and beyond.


The full list of penalties:

• The 1987 season was canceled; only conditioning drills would be permitted during the 1987 calendar year.
• All home games in 1988 were canceled. SMU was allowed to play their seven regularly scheduled away games so that other institutions would not be financially affected.
• The team's existing probation was extended until 1990. Its existing ban from bowl games and live television was extended to 1989.
• SMU lost 55 new scholarship positions over 4 years.
• SMU was required to ensure that Owen and eight other boosters previously banned from contact with the program were in fact banned, or else face further punishment.
• The team was only allowed to hire five full-time assistant coaches, instead of the typical nine.
• No off-campus recruiting would be permitted until August 1988, and no paid visits could be made to campus by would-be recruits until the start of the 1988-89 school year.

The story for those to young to remember or where not born yet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Souther...otball_scandal

[TNT]

I think it's common for elite (6-star type) teams to drop into the land of mediocrity (i.e. 3 or 4-star type, probably more commonly 4). Will USC, Michigan, or Texas drop into the realm of nearly complete irrelevance (2 or 1-star)? Probably not, but each of these schools has recently or will likely experience(d) a drop to the realm of 4-star(ish) prestige.

I think the answer to having a reasonably realistic ebb and flow of programs (which is nearly nonexistent now) is a greater emphasis on the coaches that would take into account things like age, coaching skill, and possibly coaching loyalty ratings that would give the effect of the game of musical chairs that goes on pretty much every year in major college football. Oh, and a return of the probation system wouldn't hurt either (you know, the one we had on last gen that somehow manages to remain omitted from our new, technologically "advanced" game). Just my 2 cents...

[AnybodyKilla]

Syracuse used to be an elite football program. It's so hard these days lol

[JAYMO76]

Quote: Originally Posted by 20Smash

I remember doing a dynasty on NCAA 07 (PS2) a couple years ago. What was crazy was that after 6 or 7 years, I decided to 'test' the market and, lo and behold, there was Nebraska as a 1-star program.

Yeah in 06 after seven seasons at Arizona State I decided to take over the worst team in the FBS. No it wasn't Idaho or FAU or any of the small programmes... it was the ONE STAR Michigan St. programme? They were on a 20+ game losing streak. Within four seasons we were back to five star.

Man I miss 06

[bufordbuckeye]

They definitely do go up an down in real life, but not as quickly the game does it. Teams go through bad stretches at times but that won't immediately effect team prestige and teams that do well for a while will be a little higher prestige.

Michigan is still a top tier program (5-6*) even though they have been bad for a couple of years but it would take about 4 or 5 more years of being bad before they really took a hit on their prestige.

Notre Dame is still considered to be a fairly prestigious program. Although I think they are starting to get a little tarnish on their golden helmets Prestige has a lot to do with a programs history.

It really takes something like the SMU scandal or decades of mediocrity like Army to fall by the way. In the game you have one bad season and you start losing prestige. In reality it will take a few in a row for that to happen.

[sois]

Good discussion here guys.

I would probably toss out the SMU stuff. That wasn't natural progression from good to crappy.

So it seems there is a mild ebb and flow to who is good and who is bad and a handful of teams make the ascent/descent to greatness/the gutter. Wow what a terrible sentence!

Thanks!

[jhawkmike]

Kansas State went from being the worst program in the history of college football, to a perennial top 10 team, and then back to being a crap team, all in a span of 20 years.

San Diego State is currently a 1 star program in the game, but they had some decent seasons back when Marshall Faulk was there.

[JAYMO76]

Quote: Originally Posted by sois

Good discussion here guys. I would probably toss out the SMU stuff. That wasn't natural progression from good to crappy. So it seems there is a mild ebb and flow to who is good and who is bad and a handful of teams make the ascent/descent to greatness/the gutter. Wow what a terrible sentence! Thanks!

That bolded section pretty much sums it up.