How Long do you Stick with Your Team?
 

I just started my 9th season as HC at West Virginia and am considering going to another school. In 8 seasons, I've won 3 ACC Titles and 1 National Championship and have 10+ wins each year. With respects to winning games, it's been a dominant run, but in terms of winning championships, it's still a challenge.

Nevertheless, I feel like it's getting a little stale--the excitement of building up the team and signing new recruiting classes has passed; recruiting pitches are generally maxed out; I beat up on the same 4-6 teams every year; and I've cycled through the uniform combinations.

This got me thinking--once you've reached the top level of your career progression (i.e., you're at a school that you're committed to building up and playing for National Championships, as opposed to a school you're using as a stepping stone to a better job), how long do you usually stay at that school before leaving for somewhere else, or no longer playing the dynasty?

Re: How Long do you Stick with Your Team?
 

Funny thing, I'm at this point exactly, right now in my current dynasty. It took me 20 seasons at TCU to win my first Natty, and now I'm in Season 22, 2 wins away from a 3-peat. I did, though, want to enjoy the top for a while, since it took me so long to get there. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that some of those years on the way up were excruciating to get through. I was almost fired, twice. My worst season was a 5-7. So, like I said, it was a long journey with sweet victory at the end, but now I'm starting to get that same old feeling and I really can't decide where to go from here. Timely thread.

Re: How Long do you Stick with Your Team?
 

Whatever I feel is realistic. I try to make the game difficult enough to keep me from really creating dynasties that win 5 titles in 8 years unless something magical really happened. I also don't ever go to a bad school just to build them up because I don't ever think a coach coming off of 3 straight titles at a P5 school would jump ship to the worst P5 school in the nation. That's just me, though. If I make my way to a good P5 school then I stay there as long as possible while trying to ensure the game is difficult enough every season is a challenge. If it does ever get stale I either start a new dynasty or create a new coach and let the successful one become CPU controller and let their career go however.

Re: How Long do you Stick with Your Team?
 

I'm the same way on this one. Though, my only exception to the rule is when the super successful coach, after multiples titles and winning seasons, takes their expertise back to their alma mater to build them up. In this scenario, it's especially fun when they're a small school. That's my favorite story arc to carry out in a dynasty.

Re: How Long do you Stick with Your Team?
 

I too have this cognitive dissonance when playing game. The worst example is with regard to realignment--I see a team like San Diego St or App State start to dominate in my dynasty and I spend hours thinking about moving them into a new conference, agonizing about how it would work IRL, ultimately abandoning the project with no changes, and starting the circle all over again at a later point in time. The funny thing is, my dynasty is already set in an anarchist world where schools are no longer state-funded and are private institutions. But, I suppose the alternate reality is not far enough from the real world and my mind is still trying to ground them in the modern state of things. But I digress.

With regard to coaches, I typically do the same thing where I create a new coach to satisfy the narrative. In this dynasty, my first coach won a 12 NCs in 20 years once getting the job with my teambuilder import. I created this new guy, had a few years overlap to transition, then changed the first guy's age, into a CPU, and forced him to retire. With my current coach, I've been imagining him as more of a egotistical guy who either clashes with the university or decides he's going to go do whatever he wants.

Re: How Long do you Stick with Your Team?
 

I like this, or he could always pull a good old fashioned :splat:Bobby Petrino:splat: and let a scandal be the reason that you have to leave.

Re: How Long do you Stick with Your Team?
 

Exactly. You can scale it based on the scale of the next job--a move from Florida to West Virginia was a clash with the AD. A move from West Virginia to Utah State is the result of getting drunk at a public event and sexually harassing the university president's wife.

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Re: How Long do you Stick with Your Team?
 

I actually create new coaches.

Sometimes they are former players who get an OC job with a guy from his coaches tree

Other times it’s new guys

Then sometimes I have progeny like “Brian Carter who’s 80 now has a 43 son, who’s going to play for a former OC”

Re: How Long do you Stick with Your Team?
 

So in my PS2 dynasty I was at BGSU for five years and then Clemson for five years. We won two national titles and I only left because I got the dream job offer - USC. I've been there seven years. I should've retired the coach after the fourth national title. Kinda not sure what to do with it now, because I'm trying to close out a dynasty by going through all the years for once.

In my PS3 promo relegation dynasty I made some spin offs from UTSA to USC and LSU because recruiting is still more difficult despite how well I've done at UTSA because tradition is more realistically dynamic in the PS3 game (and USC is my favorite school and LSU is as close to #2 as is possible). I'm torn because UTSA technically has a chance to win a national title but also I really enjoy the tradition and atmosphere of those schools. I've been at UTSA like six years.

So what I'm trying to say is that I think your minimum depends on where you're at. Urban Meyer was only at BGSU for two years but I feel like I should be at any school for at least five years so I'm going through a whole recruiting cycle and have the ability to cause lasting success. BGSU was a 8-10 win team for a while and Clemson is consistently top ten; I beat them in my last national title game.

I don't think there's any realistic way for me to leave USC besides retirement (can't *exactly* import him to Madden) so I might just end up making another coach. I think the scandal idea is a cool way to keep things dynamic. But I don't know where I'd even want to go next. Maybe Boise?

I'm not trying to hijack the thread (sorry if I'm oversharing), just trying to share my own experience and thoughts.

Do what feels fun. If you get bored, switch it up. But don't force change that makes you have less fun. It is a game, after all.

Re: How Long do you Stick with Your Team?
 

I had two super memorable lengthy dynasties, one with LSU and another with Ohio State...

I think I stayed 5-8 years with each and had a wrap up season & retirement. I was able to do a "end of career" analysis and actually got to document all my recruiting classes, see how players panned out, teams panned out, etc.

With dynasties I like to keep them as fresh as possible and actually keep a limit on how many seasons I go through so I don't get burnt out with the game. At the end of the day, solo playing 1000+ hours of the same game is going to get old, variety is needed.

Re: How Long do you Stick with Your Team?
 

For me it's all about how I start the dynasty. If I am using a tèambuilder team then I roll with them only until I get board. My longer dynasty have been starting out as a OC/DC at a 1 star program then work my way up. I have had 2 go for 10 plus seasons this way. A couple things I do is.....
1: Since my HC always has a offensive background I will run what ever defense my D.C. has assigned to him. I will do the same for offense too if the OC has a 15+ skill rating.
2: Replace your HC with a newly created coach, create a back story.
3: Log your dynasty progress online or offline. Write stories, do player interviews, create team news

The best way to get ideas for how to make your stale dynasty better is to watch some YouTube series like Goldy goes Gaming's Big-12 teambuilder series or Not the Experts UGF Pandas series among others.

Re: How Long do you Stick with Your Team?
 

Well, since I have been with the same dynasty since 2013, and taken pictures/videos in every game, I have an entire note dedicated to it. Lol. But these are the teams I've coached, and the length that I stayed there. Going back to Wisconsin for the final 8 or 9 years left. On Wisconsin!Attachment 165386

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Re: How Long do you Stick with Your Team?
 

I seem to average about 12 years

Re: How Long do you Stick with Your Team?
 

Love you some Sconny. You should post in the How Is Your Dynasty Going thread. I'm intrigued

Re: How Long do you Stick with Your Team?
 

Yeah man, I have posted in there some. And I'm glad that I did, since I've put so much into the dynasty throughout the years that a lot of fond memories could have slipped through the cracks if not lol.

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Re: How Long do you Stick with Your Team?
 

i just called it quits with my teambuilder after the 29th season. i don’t think i’d finished more than a season with any other team prior to that dynasty lol. won championships in 29’ and 39’

Re: How Long do you Stick with Your Team?
 

I had an idea over the weekend. About 20-25 seasons ago, I started to save each new season as a separate file. I think I might pick a year to go back, start a new coach, and set up an alternate timeline for my dynasty.

I can run the alternate timeline and see how it compare to the original timeline in 10-20 years. Might be fun, and if I don't like it I can go back to the original timeline.

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Re: How Long do you Stick with Your Team?
 

So far the new timeline is much darker than the original. The year is 2033 and Coach Ridley Boone (who I'll rename "Radley" Boone to help distinguish the timelines), coming off his first season as an OC, has accepted his first HC position at FAU, who just went 1-11 and whose starting QB (and there's really no competition on the roster) had 5-18 TD-INT ratio last season.

In the original timeline, Coach Boone accepted a HC position at Tulane, who was rated 1 star, but had talent at QB (a transfer from my other HC's team), WR, and RB. I believe Coach Boone went 11-3 in 2033, his only season with Tulane, and accepted a HC position at a struggling Wisconsin program. We'll see how FAU experience turns out.

Re: How Long do you Stick with Your Team?
 

I always struggle with when to take a new job and start at a new school, the only time I successfully left a team and enjoyed the new team was when it was my favorite team (Florida State Seminoles), others I immediately regretted switching schools as I just couldn't attach to the team and was missing my old players.....anyone else ever feel this way?


I knew I should have saved the file prior to the switch

Re: How Long do you Stick with Your Team?
 

Always save a separate file when making a big change. I started doing it after each season a while back.

Usually when I make a change it's because the dynasty has grown stale--tired of playing the same teams year over year, recruiting is too easy, uniforms have gotten bland.

When I get to this point, I'll usually make a decision based on the players. For example, I'll leave after my favorite RB or QB graduate, so I don't have an emotional tie to anyone.

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Re: How Long do you Stick with Your Team?
 

Man....are you even a true NCAA fan?? seriously