NCAA 14 Recruiting Wishlist

[user_pick]

Hello everybody,

For all of you NCAA fans that also read Rivals.com you know, as I do, that recruiting and scouting in this game is extremely flawed and inaccurate. I have a few ideas for EA to consider which would make it a little more accurate. I am not a computer programmer and I fully realize that there are disc space implications to consider before saying "All of these should be in the game now!!!" Any of these, on their own, would help the game, IMO.

National Signing Day

Verbal commitments given during the season are non-binding until NSD. Teams can steal prospects based on greater prestige (an advantage for big schools), promising playing time (an advantage for smaller schools), etc. A feature with a fax machine printing out signed LOI’s would be sweet, but not necessary.

Recruit Injuries

HS prospects can be injured causing some big schools to drop them – small schools can take a chance on a recovering player in order to score 5* caliber player. Injury recovery could be linked with “Discipline” rating.

Scouting/playing select HS games

Scouting should not take place in the off-season. How can you scout a player that is currently not playing football? College Hoops 2k8 allowed playing prospects ABL games. Why can’t we play select prospects HS games (say 1 per week)? Unplayed games should have stats available for viewing. Maybe have a playable 7-on-7 for the off-season. At the very least the US Army All-America game should be playable. Uncommitted prospects can do hat-reveal.

Top Ten School List

A recruits initial "Top Ten" should be influenced by who offers him first. HS players are always saying they are "definitely considering School X because they were the first to offer me and have shown me the most love all along". Small schools getting a jump on the big boys should provide an initial advantage. Once the big boys come calling it should be tough to keep them but at least being in the initial Top Ten gives them a shot.

Grade Risks/JUCO Players

There should be some grade risks for players coming out of HS. If the player does not make grades (percentage based), the player will not be eligible to enroll in school (obvious). However, I would like to see it go a little more in-depth from that point on. That player would then go to JUCO for two years. During his second year at JUCO you can begin recruiting him again. I would be OK with JUCO games being unavailable for play (since you should have checked him out as a HS senior) but his ratings will have changed depending of attributes like “Discipline”. It would be nice to have an in-game notebook for recruits (to look back with when recruiting as a JUCO) but I’d also be OK with users having to keep track of their HS-to-JUCO recruit attributes, thereby giving an advantage to detail based recruiters.

Junior days

Invite top prospects in-state to campus for drills to see who measures up. (Oklahoma, DB/WR interactions, lineman drills, etc.)

Spring game (last gen)

Please bring this back. This is a great way to pick offensive and defensive captains (impact players).

Fall workouts

Basically this would be the drills feature from last gen. gives a chance to earn ratings boost in one or two categories per player (one drill per player).

Facilities

I would like to see a "upgrade facilities" feature implemented. Base this on Bowl Game payouts, attendance, nationally televised games (say it gives a boost to merchandise sales), etc. Say every 5 years you would need to upgrade the weight room, player lounge, trophy display, etc. Failure to do so will affect the programs "Facilities" rating.

So that is my list. Please let me know what you think.

user_pick

[NoFlyyZone]

I like your list and would love to see some improvement in recruiting to make it more realistic.

I think also that once you get a commitment in the season you should still have to fight to keep them committed and if you don't they de-commit from you. Also think when it comes to firing coaches the recruits should be able to go back on the market like they do in real life. If you take a new job you you should be able to try and keep the recruits the old coach had or let them go. I think they need to go a long way to make it more realistic. Your list is awesome though, hope to see it added.

[dudo670]

I would love to see a fixed ranking system. There should be 25-30 5 stars and another 300 four stars. There should not be 10 ATH that are 5 stars or 10 WRs. also, Dlinemen, QBs, OL, or occasional RB/WR should be # 1 overall. They should also rerank players occasionally. Start with like 15 five stars and get to 25 by NSD. Make some drop to 4 stars.

[darren1024]

Ive always said there were too many 5* recruits. I think it should be 15 max. Like someone said earlier, i like the idea of hard commits can decommit if we dont how an interest(10-20min per wk)in them after their commit.

[hustle55]

I would like to see CPU teams use better logic. To often a recruit will have a team as there top choice and that team never offers the player or even shows interest in the guy.