Anatomy of a Recruiting Class

[jello1717]

Since you mentioned that you were going to follow these guys from signing day until graduation, I'm very, very curious to see how these guys progress over the years. From what I've read here and there, I think these changes have been made:
fewer stud recruits
most (all?) recruits start out rated lower than in '09
because of that, recruits will progress faster in '10
recruits are slower than in '09
recruits get faster more quickly in '10

Because of that, I'd be curious of things like:
How many of these guys can actually start as FR? (the toning down of original ratings was deliberate to prevent as many FR from starting)
How soon until they can start? (JRs? SRs?)
How does speed progress? Can you sign a "B" speed RB and have him be "A" speed when he's a SR? If you want an "A" speed RB as a JR or SR, how slow of a FR can you recruit? "A"? "A-"? "B+"? etc
If you do sign an "A" speed recruit, does he become ridiculously fast as a JR and/or SR?

I think I read that they reworked the ratings such that important ratings count more (IE. high speed makes for high OVR for RBs and WRs, while slow speed will make for lower OVR WRs and RBs) This was done to reduce the 95+ OVR, 85 SPD guys and (probably more importantly) the 80 OVR, 99 SPD guys. I'd be curious if you see many recruits like that (slow 5* RB/WR/CB or fast 3* RB/WR/CB or weak 5* linemen, etc).

[NoDakHusker]

Quote: Originally Posted by BORN4CORN

This sounds like a horrible process. I saw some of this with the dynasty screens that Steve posted, and thought it looked just plain dumb. Also I wish the players you lost in season would remain on your list, but just be X'ed out.

whine whine whine thats all you do Born4corn.
on topic...
i can't wait to do dynasty this year with my TB teams and of course my cornhuskers!
one question
is recruiting better this year than last year?

[Hellisan]

Quote: Originally Posted by jello1717

Since you mentioned that you were going to follow these guys from signing day until graduation, I'm very, very curious to see how these guys progress over the years. From what I've read here and there, I think these changes have been made: fewer stud recruits most (all?) recruits start out rated lower than in '09 because of that, recruits will progress faster in '10 recruits are slower than in '09 recruits get faster more quickly in '10 Because of that, I'd be curious of things like: How many of these guys can actually start as FR? (the toning down of original ratings was deliberate to prevent as many FR from starting) How soon until they can start? (JRs? SRs?) How does speed progress? Can you sign a "B" speed RB and have him be "A" speed when he's a SR? If you want an "A" speed RB as a JR or SR, how slow of a FR can you recruit? "A"? "A-"? "B+"? etc If you do sign an "A" speed recruit, does he become ridiculously fast as a JR and/or SR? I think I read that they reworked the ratings such that important ratings count more (IE. high speed makes for high OVR for RBs and WRs, while slow speed will make for lower OVR WRs and RBs) This was done to reduce the 95+ OVR, 85 SPD guys and (probably more importantly) the 80 OVR, 99 SPD guys. I'd be curious if you see many recruits like that (slow 5* RB/WR/CB or fast 3* RB/WR/CB or weak 5* linemen, etc).

Good suggestions. I'll try to keep track of some things like this.

Quote: Originally Posted by ndhusker90

one question is recruiting better this year than last year?

That's a question that I hope to shed a little light on, but undoubtedly will not be able to answer in this exercise. That'll be vetted out over time.

[Hellisan]

Week 3:

Anytime I try to do negative recruiting, the recruit gets pissed. I like this, because I probably wasn't going to use it much anyway and I don't want people in my OD teaming up and having success with it. But there's the chance i just haven't figured out how to use this feature yet, I suppose.

One thing that's really annoying me: Just in general the menus are very clunky now. I know we thought they were last year too, but.... wow. Anyway, when you pitch something, if it's running long and you want to back out, the only way I can tell of doing it is to hit B. But... If the pitch somehow stops right before you push that, it backs you out of the pitch menu. It's a minor annoyance but it just KEEPS happening, and each week of recruiting seems to take forever compared to before. I'm going to jot that down as being the fact that I'm not as familiar with it yet, obviously. but so far the menus are a big negative for me.

Only got through 13 recruits. Definitely no commits yet.




Week 4:

Have one player visiting against Arizona State. I tried to schedule them against a bunch of different teams so we can see the success levels.

One nice touch is that when you're scheduling the activiites for a visit, his interests are highlighted in green. Just makes it much more easy to visually discern and get in/out quickly when doing that. Quite nice.

Ah, o.k. Now I see something that is very telling. When "finding" a pitch, I went through a few different ones and was getting +2 interest per click and they didn't end up being the Very high or Most pitches. Then the next one I hit, I was getting +8 per click and it turned out to be the Very High. If this is consistent, it'll be almost too easy to find the pitches. I hate to turn something like that into a negative so quickly, but honestly, the act of finding those pitches was quite difficult to do quickly last year and that's what made it interesting.

Ok, now this is good. I really like this because it's different. Just talking to a player, and I went to pitch a "very high" - and he said hung up and said "I don't know where you get your information from, but yes, I'm willing to sign!" DT Eric Young who was the #1 player in the country and had UGA #1 on his list to start the season - has now signed. Obviously, it wasn't possible to just sign a guy mid-call last year other than when you offered a scholly. I had done that with Young in Week 1.

We lost 21-30 to Arizona State during tackle Todd Lyle's visit. We knew his top 3 pitches and got a B-

[Potatoes002]

Quote: Originally Posted by ndhusker90

whine whine whine thats all you do Born4corn. on topic... i can't wait to do dynasty this year with my TB teams and of course my cornhuskers! one question is recruiting better this year than last year?

I actually agree with B4C, the new process is stupid after seeing the added time it adds and the new look of it from the screens.

[Potatoes002]

Good write up Hellisan. One question though, do you give out your scholorships early or spread them out during the season? Is there really a difference?

[Hellisan]

Quote: Originally Posted by Potatoes002

Good write up Hellisan. One question though, do you give out your scholorships early or spread them out during the season? Is there really a difference?

I always offered them right at the beginning. Not sure if that is the best way to do it this year, but it's working so far. Seems like it's easier to recruit? Let's see how it shakes out...

[Hellisan]

Week 5:

Three visits this week against LSU.

Seems players hang up more quickly than before. If you start to see them get less than happy-faced, end the call post haste.

Most of the cpu teams seem to schedule their visits late in the season if they can. They also seem to schedule things quickly, because I waited a couple of weeks to schedule this one guy, and there was only one game open.


We lost 35-38 to LSU. None of the three recruits signed, and the visit grades ranged from B- to B



Week 6:

Only managed to talk to 10 players but everybody that is in my Top 10 has me #1. We were at Tennessee, and finally won one to stop a 2-game skid.



Week 7:

No signings, talked to 11 players, I'm trying to hit the top ones hard, get them signed, and then start on the others or bring in new ones.

We had an easy win against Vandy.



Week 8:

Bye week, and I scheduled one visit for this week just to see what kind of grade I could get. (it ended up being C+)

I got soft commits from three players, all of which have already visited and had grades in the B- to B range.

From what I can tell, when you first talk to a player and you're getting +16 and +18, go ahead and make good use of it, because later on the best you can get is +14 per tick once you've talked to him about it a few times.

Here I will state that this year you have a lot more control over how much time you're spending. I hated how last year, even once i opened up the pitches, I never had much control over how many players I spoke to, due to having to get "pitch complete" to have the conversation be worthwhile. Now, you can see the interest go up so you know it's working and you can call a player, hit three topics in 20 minutes and end the call if you want.

Decided to Add a player that doesn't have any interest in me and see if I can get him interested. SS Jeremy Cook looks like an absolute killer disguised as a 3-star recruit. He has speed (A-) awesome strength and tackling ability, hits like a load of bricks etc.

I landed a running back that only I had offered a scholly offer to. He hadn't soft committed yet, but just randomly signed. The other three soft commits remained that way.

I lost out on the best linebacker in the nation, who was an in-state recruit and had me #1 all year (AND HAD SOFT COMMITTED TO ME!), to Florida - who hadn't scheduled him for a visit yet. But yeah... they're florida. LOL. I think that's gonna be happening a lot this year!

Being the first player I lost to another team since week 1, I was happy to see that he was on the list and X'd out, just like last year. Guess the glitch from last year is still in. I'm beginning to worry about commissioner player progression in online dynasties!