Best recruiting class ever?

[dbly32]

I recently discovered that you can "recruit" players without actually offering them a scholarship, so some of my classes lately have been out-of-this-world great. Recruiting at USC (maxed out school/coach prestige--believe it's 6 stars for both), I landed a class of 19 players, all 5 star blue chips. That wasn't even my best one, the best one I had was the most recent, 24 signings, 23 five stars, 1 four star. Seventeen of those players were the number 1 rated player at his respective position, I had a 90+ rated QB, three 85+ backups, the top QB in the nation from the previous year all on my current USC squad, and I still managed to get the top two QBs in the country that year.

If you want to pitch whatever angle to a player without offering him a scholarship, you go to the recruiting screen for the player, give him whatever pitch you choose with whatever amount of points you choose, and offer him. Then, go back to the recruiting screen, and click the right analog stick to withdraw his offer. The computer will treat this as if you have offered him based on the pitch you chose, and the next week you will have info on whether or not that pitch worked for him. They will never commit when you do this, but it's a great way to "show interest" to the recruit without actually offering. And when you think about it, it's not really a glitch/cheese/cheating/whatever you want to call it, because in real life schools can show interest in a player without actually offering him. There are lots of players who have favorites and are just waiting for the scholarship offer for them to commit to the school, so it's not really cheating if you can do it in the game.

[Gocanes44]

If this is true and Im about to test it, you have just revolutionized the way i recruit...

[dbly32]

Believe me when I tell you this, and if you test it you will find out too, that this works like crazy. I took the time to do this to every single 5 star recruit in the country and with a stacked USC team (ie 5 returning QBs, 6 returning HBs) still managed to get 1-2 five stars at pretty much whatever position I chose. What I do is that I usually pitch program prestige, followed by coach prestige (keeping in mind that I had all 6 stars in both coach and program prestige, so if you try this with a bottom feeder you won't get the same results). If the recruits still don't respond to the pitch (although some may move you up in interest from high [top 10] to very high [top 3] just by doing this), I pitch location to recruits close to my school, and coaching style to the rest. I hardly ever pitch playing time, as most of the time when I've done this I've had numerous returning players at each position.

[CC2009]

This will definately help me, thanks a lot.

[GoHuskies]

I don't understand how this is helpful if they won't commit.

I have bigtime recruiting trouble because I created a school in Hawaii and it costs me a fortune to go anywhere east of California.

Can someone explain how this works?

[Sinister8578]

Is this for the PS2?

Quote: Originally Posted by dbly32

I recently discovered that you can "recruit" players without actually offering them a scholarship, so some of my classes lately have been out-of-this-world great. Recruiting at USC (maxed out school/coach prestige--believe it's 6 stars for both), I landed a class of 19 players, all 5 star blue chips. That wasn't even my best one, the best one I had was the most recent, 24 signings, 23 five stars, 1 four star. Seventeen of those players were the number 1 rated player at his respective position, I had a 90+ rated QB, three 85+ backups, the top QB in the nation from the previous year all on my current USC squad, and I still managed to get the top two QBs in the country that year. If you want to pitch whatever angle to a player without offering him a scholarship, you go to the recruiting screen for the player, give him whatever pitch you choose with whatever amount of points you choose, and offer him. Then, go back to the recruiting screen, and click the right analog stick to withdraw his offer. The computer will treat this as if you have offered him based on the pitch you chose, and the next week you will have info on whether or not that pitch worked for him. They will never commit when you do this, but it's a great way to "show interest" to the recruit without actually offering. And when you think about it, it's not really a glitch/cheese/cheating/whatever you want to call it, because in real life schools can show interest in a player without actually offering him. There are lots of players who have favorites and are just waiting for the scholarship offer for them to commit to the school, so it's not really cheating if you can do it in the game.

[tedknick]

Quote: Originally Posted by Sinister8578

Is this for the PS2?

Yes it is. I told a guy at work about it and he has been doing it. His last class included (22) 5 stars and (2) 4 stars. Sounds like it works to me. He does say that you need to remember what you have pitched to a player though because each week it only remembers what you have pitched for the most recent week.

[dbly32]

Quote: Originally Posted by GoHuskies

I don't understand how this is helpful if they won't commit. I have bigtime recruiting trouble because I created a school in Hawaii and it costs me a fortune to go anywhere east of California. Can someone explain how this works?

This is helpful because you learn what pitch they will buy into. Say you have a pass-happy offense at the most prestigious school with the best coach. You might pitch program prestige because you've gone undefeated for the past 2 years, but a recruit doesn't buy it. Well instead of choosing to not offer him the next week, you can do this trick with a different pitch, and it will not cost you anything in terms of points or scholarship offers. If you do this for a player who has average interest in your school since week 1, by week 4 you may be in his top 3. The reason why this works so great is that you don't have to tie up any scholarships or points to do this, and you can make the recruits hold off on their decision much longer than if you were to not offer them. So if you need only one QB because of scholarship limitations, and the QB you want has high interest, you can do this on a second player as sort of a backup plan in case the QB chooses to go to another school. Without doing this, the backup recruit wouldn't receive any interest from your school and would commit somewhere else.

Let me try to explain how to do it better.
Every player has his own "recruit info screen" where if you want you can choose to scout the player, or offer him a scholarship and choose how many points/what type of pitch you want to give. Say you want to do this to the number 1 QB in the country. Well you go to his info screen and you pitch him whatever angle you think will get a positive response, and give whatever amount of points you want (I don't know if it matters or not, I don't think it does). So you hit "recruit" and you have offered him a scholarship. After you do that, the game takes you back to whatever menu you were looking at (current targets, in state, interested, etc.). The player highlighted will be the one who just received an offer from you. So you go back into his info screen and you click on the right analog stick which will withdraw his offer. Resume recruiting as usual, then check back on his info screen the next week to see what his response to your pitch was. Sometimes they will have a neutral reaction to every pitch you choose, and they will move you up on their list of potential schools. I've had players who listed their interest in my school as "average" in week 1 end up commiting to me in week 5 because of this trick. So you can do this until you find what pitch works, then make the actual offer with the pitch that they like, and you move up on their list in a hurry.

This is going to be a bad analogy, but hopefully you'll get it.
It's kind of like you're interested in a girl (recruit) but you're waiting for the right time to ask her to be your girlfriend (scholarship offer). If you were to keep in contact with her (do this recruiting trick every week), she'll begin to feel more comfortable with you (move you up to a top 3 school) after a while and then you can make your move (offer). Of course, if you liked her and didn't really show any interest (not offering a scholarship or doing this trick), she's not going to know you want to be her man and she'll end up with your friend (rival school).

Very lame, but I tried.