Your Recruiting Strategy

[dking_11]

Please excuse me for talking to much. Lol.
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I started an offline dynasty with the UCF Knights; I'm in my 5th year, but let me give you guys a look at what I've done over the years.

1st Year.
Started Unranked.
(11-1) Lost to Cinny the 3rd game of the year.
(Cinny ended up finishing in the polls, #4)
Final UCF Ranking : 17
Defeated Alabama 24-13 in the Liberty City Bowl.
Recruiting Class : #48
[Denied request to join ACC to replace Duke)

2nd Year.
Started Unranked.
(11-1) Lost to Florida first game of the year.
Final UCF Ranking : #10
Defeated South Carolina 35-31 in the Liberty City Bowl.
Recruiting Class : #18

3rd Year.
Started Ranked #18
(12-0) // 4 Unranked Teams.
Final UCF Ranking : #3
Lost to Ohio St. 40-27 in the Rose Bowl.
Recruiting Class : #1

4th Year.
Started Ranked #11
(10-2) Lost to Penn St. and Oklahoma St.
Final UCF Ranking : #13
Defeated Ole Miss 56-10 in the Liberty City Bowl
Recruiting Class : #5

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As we all know, with wins and blah blah, recruits become highly interested in your program. I found something for me that's quite easy to lure some of the 5 star or 4 star recruits in. Usually, I look first in the home state, then those pipeline states, look for any good interested players then, then go out and look at the rest of the interested people. First week comes up, I offer all the ones I 'need' and skill players that I 'want' but not really need scholarships, just so I can get a jump into maybe the top 3 or 5. So they're interested now because of the scholarship, but you can tell which players are really good, by how hard other teams want them. From maybe the 1st week til the week 5th or 6th, depending on how the recruit raises or loses his interests in other schools, I quick call players, maybe 20-30 or maybe an hr. depending on the player, just so I can unlock the pitches, see which ones work and not. As soon as I get 3-5 good pitches, such as Very High, Most, blah blah. I pitch those each and every week, depending on how good my program is at the pitch theyre interested in. It's worked for me so far. I'm not trying to tell other people, this is how it should be done, I just want to see if there's other ways out there, or blah blah. I just want to see all the different strategies.

[Old Gold and Blue]

I target 4 and 5 stars, especially with speed on offense. For defense I just go after every 4 and 5 stars. Then I offer the first week, gives me a nice bump in interest in most recruits.

I also never recruit kickers and punters, total waste of time.

[longshanks]

i do it like this....normally by the 2nd or 3rd year in my dynasty's i already have a national championship....so i always get good recruits that wanna play...

I always get the first 20 five star players that are interested in me.....then i get the top 10 guys that have me as their number one...some of those guys will already be 5 stars though......then I get 5 athletes...two, five stars and the rest just guys that are interested.....

my past recruiting season I got 11 5star players and 17 4 stars with the rest being three star athletes.....i also just do quick calls for 10 minutes on each player until the week of the visit....then i pitch the most, and two very highs...

i also re-order my rrecruiting board every time...except my top five star guys who i really want i keep them at the top....but reorder your players every week...i think that's a big thing that gets overlooked

my biggest surprise of the recruiting class was a 3star Athlete that was 6'2" 240 lbs.....i recruited him to play middle linebacker because one of my mlb prospects dropped out.....(whenever i go to position changes i always go through every player and see if they'll be better at another position) I get to this athlete and he ends up being a 72 overall mlb and i try all the other positions and end up at qb..........he was an 81 overall at QB! with 80 speed and 84 tp with 91 throw accuracy.....pretty sweet....he's ahead of my top qb recruit who was the number 2 qb overall and is an 80 overall

[UnderRatedCoast]

To keep a good recruiting class:

1) Start with guys who are interested in your program. Add the guys you think will contribute to your team to your board. One strategy I try to employ in an online dynasty is, if one of those players I want has a user team 1st on their board, either offer them a scholly with 20 total minutes of quick call time, or don't offer at all. The reasons are that often if a user team offers those guys who are #1 on their list in week one, and you use 75 minutes on them in week one, they may just be wasted minutes since the recruit might sign with the other team before you get a shot.
2) Find the guys in your state and pipeline states that don't have you on their list, but you think you may want or need. Offer them a scholly in week one, and it will often put you in the top 10 for them.
3) Add a couple elite players who are longshots for your team to your board, and offer them...if they want a place to get playing time, and you can offer it, they may just put you in the top 10 and you can go from there.
4) In week 2, if a player who had no interest in your team still doesn't, and a team in his top 10 has offered him, drop him from your list completely. If you are the only person who has offered him a scholly, and he still has no interest in your school, keep working on them.
5) Once you realize you can't sign a recruit, stop wasting time on them. If your interest meter is 3/4 full and his visit isn't scheduled for 4 weeks, and another team has the interest meter full and the visit is in two weeks, cut your losses and drop them from your list.
6) Once you drop players, go to the recruiting database and sort the players by those who haven't signed. Sift throught the database and look for those players who have no offers. Obviously, some of them have no offers because they're going to be busts. Often it's a RB with B speed, B- AGI, and B ACC. But you can find WRs who are only lacking at one rating, like A- SPD, B AGI, and B+ ACC. They aren't the game breakers you want, but they'll provide valuable contributions to your team as juniors and seniors as a 3rd WR. Add these guys to your board, then start recruiting them. Often it will add 3 or 4 extra four star recruits to your class. Also, many of these guys will be 3 star recruits with amazing athletic ability, but poor catching or awareness. I've gotten CBs who were 95 SPD, 94 AGI, and 94 ACC, but 55 AWR who have ended up as great starters by their senior seasons, once their AWR goes up about 5-7 points per year.
7) Don't be scared to reschedule recruiting visits. Often you'll schedule a player to visit in week 11 or 12, then as the season goes on and it gets to week 6 or 7, you'll notice a recruit is closing in on a full interest bar for yourself and another member of your dynasty, and that other person has a visit scheduled for week 9. It will greatly benifit you to go ahead and reschedule the visit for week 8. There's nothing that's more upsetting than when a recruit signs with someone else without even visiting your school.
8)Offseason recruiting: since I never play with OSU or Florida, most of my signees end up being in the offseason. Therefore, I have a lot of players to visit, but you can only schedule a limited number of in home visits. Don't schedule these by the order in which you most want a guy. Instead, schedule them in order of your likelihood to sign a guy. For example, if you are the only team offering a guy a scholarship, it won't hurt to wait until week 3 or 4 to visit them. But if there are 4 or 5 teams still in the running, you'll want to visit them ASAP. Also, be careful with some of the lower level recruits who want to schedule visits before the higher level guys. You don't want to schedule a bunch of 3 star guys in week 2, then end up not having any scholarships left for a couple of 4 star guys you still have on your board later.
9) Promises. Only promise things you can come through on for sure. If you're a marginal player, or if you have a bunch of users in your conference that have a shot at beating you, don't promise a conference title. But there are a couple of things you can almost always promise. If you're recruiting a player who is from a state that you play a conference game, you can promise a game in that state since you have to play there anyway. You can always promise not to redshirt a guy, since you can help that. If you have no QBs on your roster, then you can promise playing time. If your rivals are the two sorriest teams in your conference, promise a winning record against your rivals. Stay away from promising national titles and things like that unless you're in an offline dynasty where you beat every team 80-3 and win the title every year.

[MacDaddy]

Pretty simple for me. I go to the prospect database and sort by each position, looking at what i need.I then go down the list in order and recruit interested guys whose attributes I like and i think would fit at their position on my team.

[OrangeBlood]

I setup my roster so as I always have a position available for incoming recruits and I always redshirt incoming recruits. I try to keep my recruiting class to around 15 per year. If I am able to keep everyone through their RS Senior year that gives me a 75 man roster.

Basically I recruit as follows:

QB - 1 every other year. Max of 3 on the roster.
HB - 1 every year. I rotate my starter and backup often and the next two are the punt and kick returners. Max of 5 on the roster.
FB - 1 every other year. Max of 3 on the roster.
WR - 1 every year. I rotate WR's often as well so everyone gets playing time. Max of 5 on the roster.
TE - 1 every year. 90% of the time I have 2 TE's on the field and I rotate as well. Max of 5 on the roster.
OT - 1 every year. I switch between LT and RT every year. Max of 5 on the roster.
OG - 1 every year. I switch between LG and RG every year. Max of 5 on the roster.
OC - 1 every other year. Max of 3 on the roster.
DE - 1 every year. I switch between LDE and RDE every year. Max of 5 on the roster.
DT - 1 every year. Max of 5 on the roster.
OLB - 1 every year. Max of 5 on the roster.
MLB - 1 every year. Max of 5 on the roster.
CB - 1 every year. Max of 5 on the roster.
S - 1 every year. I switch between FS and SS every year. Max of 5 on the roster.
K - I recruit a new kicker after the previous kicker just finished he RS Soph. season, the new kicker will be RS and then will handle kick off duties the next year during the others RS Senior year.
P - Recruiting is setup the same way as the kicker but the other punter only sees the field in blowouts.

Roster Breakdown:

QB - 3
HB - 5
FB - 3
WR - 5
TE - 5
OT - 5
OG - 5
OC - 3

DE - 5
DT - 5
OLB - 5
MLB - 5
CB - 5
S - 5

K - 2
P - 2

Total: 68 players. The remaining 7 players come from athletes, however I only recruit athletes when they are too good to pass up, like when you see a 6'5'' 230 pounder with A- speed and looks like a great TE, however in that senario he would just replace my TE recruit for the year.