Operation Sports Forums - The Future of the NCAA Series (Part 4)

Building on what I stated in the previous blog about Dynasty, I would like to propose a complete make over for this section of the game, which will truly make it somewhat of a challenge to build that one star up to a six star. I would like to introduce Athletic Director or AD Mode. I’ve seen this idea tossed around a few times, and I’ve had it spinning in my head for the last couple of years as well. It would be such a new and exciting way to a build a program up or continue a teams’ strangle hold on the NCAA (USC, Florida, Texas) while actually trying to be declared a “dynasty”.

Although my ideas and plan are rough, I could see this turning out to be one of the premiere features in a sports video game. Let me try the best I can to paint a picture of what this would look like, with the whole premise being that everything from prestige to athletic facilities actually matter.

Starting off you would pick a school like normal, but you aren’t the coach this time (You do however still control aspects of the team still). You are now the AD with a set budget based on prestige & conference, with a university depending on your expertise to bring them out of the cellar. (We’ll say that the budget is comprised of points instead of actual dollar amounts) Lets say we begin a little team like FIU and our football team budget is set somewhere around 200,000 points or dollars - one of the lowest in the game. (A team like Texas would have something close to 10 million points/dollars to play with - guessing)

Like its set up now, you would be starting in the basic preseason. First would be the option to set your coaching staff, which would be expanded to include an offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator and special teams coach. All head coaches would have their real names, but the assistants would be generic for all 120 teams. From there its your decision to either keep the current staff or select a new one from a pool of randomly generated coaches, with the ability to even create your own coach. Their skills would also determine their desired salary (in points) making a budget that much more fun to manage. Also, this will determine your school’s coaching prestige & coaching experience ratings, which would now become combined to make a Coaching Staff rating.

Next in the preseason is scheduling for the upcoming year. Say you started out as that one one star school like FIU.. As soon as you go to pick your opponents, top tier teams like Texas or Ohio St. would offer you points to play them at their place (just like real life when LSU wants to play North Texas, or USC wants to play Idaho - they all pay small schools to play them). This is next taste of being an AD. Do you set your team up for possible failure, and take the points (which I’ll describe what they are used for shortly) or do you pass & simply schedule other cream puffs? Also, scheduling away games cuts into the budget, and even more so the further away you (geographically) play them. The offers from the big schools would cover these fees though if you agreed to play them.

...I would also love the ability to schedule neutral site games, and also start a home and home series with other teams as your school’s tradition grew. Also tying into scheduling would be the ability to create a rivalry. This would happen if you agreed to multiple contracts 5-6 years in a row with a single team, and then you could propose a long term series, declare it a rivalry, and possibly build a fake trophy.

Presentation - School newspaper or magazine would have all the breaking news of schedules, match ups, top games of the season, and new coaches. (National & Local just like it is)

Now comes the actual coaching aspect. It starts by throwing you into practice with your first unit team going against the scout team in your practice facilities (quality determined by school ratings - everything now matters remember). From there you are able to run drills - pass skeleton, Oklahoma drill, etc. and play around with your guys to try and figure out (using a new menu system) the following:

-Redshirts
-Depth Chart
-Formation Subs (Yes these will be added by then.. fingers crossed)
-Newly created plays (Create a Playbook)
-General roster tweaks (position changes, numbers, equipment, etc.)

Presentation - Aside from the immediate players you are handling, you would also see the rest of the team hitting sleds, kicking into nets, sprinting, and doing various drills with the coaches pacing around. If you are someone like USC or LSU, members of the media would be present, along with a gathering of fans (maybe fans.. idk)

After you are satisfied with the way your team is set, you move on to the actual season..

-Set recruiting board
-Schedule
-NCAA News
-etc.

Lets start with recruiting. I like the way its set up with the 10 hours of time at your disposal & how you actually go about recruiting, but bringing in players for campus visits, or sending coaches to their games/homes to scout & talk to them will cost you points/dollars out of the budget. Its going to cost more to go to that 5 star player’s house in California if you are FIU, than it would to visit that 2 star scrub in Georgia. (This also makes it an actual challenge to build programs with a horrible recruiting base i.e. Idaho)

*Throughout the season, a players rating (starts) could rise or fall also.
I don’t know how, but I think adding some type recruiting violations, along with bringing back player discipline has to be added. These things would also effect the budget, prestige, & academic rating and show up in the news section.

Ok, now to actually playing the games and how that ties into it. Take our struggling FIU Panthers.. they don’t draw a lot of fans, their stadium is dinky, and they get beat often.
Lets look at this logically:
 You win games > Increase attendance

Increase attendance > Increase ticket, merchandize, & vendor sales
 Increase all those things, and that’s how you start gaining point/dollars toward the budget for the AD (yourself) to play around with in the off season (this will start to make perfect sense shortly).

Alright, now that we have played through the season, spent points on bringing in recruits, traveling, & gained points from winning games comes the bowl season. Suppose FIU managed an 12-0 season.. miraculously, and we have been received a BCS birth.

Presentation - Sometime during or before the bowl season, you would have the option to play the high school All-American game. It could just have a generic spornsor, but you would be able to play with the top prospects in the country, and possibly get an early look at one of your recruits if they are that good.

Presentation - Bowl preview show with predictions, awards presentation, Heisman blowout presentation (so it actually feels special if you when it).

If you don’t know already, BCS bowls pay out a huge sum of money to each conference the teams in the game are representing.. so this is a big deal for the Sun Belt & FIU. Say they win the Orange Bowl.. FIU would receive a huge boost in their budget, Coaching Staff rating goes up, prestige goes up, conference prestige goes up (because of the distribution of BCS winnings), TV exposure rating increases slightly, and fan base increases. Everything has a purpose now (I’m getting to the other school attributes)

Presentation - To much to cover here.. I will have another blog dedicated to this aspect.

Offseason

Ok, FIU just won the Orange Bowl, but there are teams who didn’t fare so well. This is where the “coaching carousel” begins. Your coach is a hot name on the market for big schools who had a rough season and fired their coach. Their AD’s are offering big bucks to swoop your coach away, and some are even going after the coordinators. With your budget much bigger though now, you are able to try and match offers by offering an extension or more points/dollars. Or you can simply let them go, and pick up one of the fired coaches or generic coaches in the “free agent” pool.

This move though would decrease ratings such as: Program stability, tradition, coaching staff, fan base (*Fan Base also effect how much money/points your school would receive from boosters/community), conference prestige, & championship contender. Once again, the whole point is that every move you make actually matters.

*Players leaving for the draft would bump up the Pro Potential rating also.

After the coaching mess has been taken care of, you move on to recruiting (And no, 4 and 5 star recruits would not be showing up out of the blue like Ben has it currently set up - you would however see a slight change in how some players were rated). I like how the offseason recruiting was set up in 09, so I probably wouldn’t change it too much. The only thing is how aggressive you recruit the top guys will still depend on your program ratings, and budget to visit & bring in player.

Presentation - A national signing day clip must be shown. I want to see the top couple of players pick hats or flip coins, especially if they are considering my team

Now we are almost to the big addition that is going to separate Athletic Director from everything else, and tie everything together. Say FIU currently has a budget of 5,000,000 points from all their wins, boosters, BCS birth, etc. You can choose to spend those points/dollars on new items such as:

-Stadium Expansion
-New Stadium
-Uniforms
-Facilities

All this would be done through TeamBuilder (of course stadium additions would have to be implemented first) and then downloaded into the dynasty. All those things would cost money/points, but they would also build your creditbility as a school, attracting recruits and media attention.

Speak of those things.. Once this process of updating your facilities and team look is done you would be offered: TV contracts (would boost TV exposure rating) & sponsorships (stipulations, but would boost budget if you met the goals). Both these thing would probably have to be generic of course. They aren’t to far fetched either. The Iowa Hawks (and probably every other team) are backed by local businesses.

Now, the final thing that happens in the offseason would be the opportunity to hold a camp for that next years recruiting class. Of course this hinges on if your budget can afford it and if your facilities are up to a certain level (think Oregon). This would:

-Give you and early look at recruits, and let you play with them
-Influence those recruits to attend your school
-Increase multiple program ratings

After this faze, you would begin the next season & continue your mission to build up your school. Spring game would be the first step on the schedule for the new year..

Obviously the example I showed you was a little far fetched, and would be very difficult to win the Orange Bowl with FIU in the first year, but I just wanted to show you the basics of how this would work.

I hope that you enjoyed my vision for an improved dynasty, and realize the possibilities this mode truly has. Unfortunately though I see nothing like this being added with Ben Haumiller as the dynasty lead. My next blogs are probably going to cover gameplay and presentation more in depth just FYI.