What NCAA Recruiting Should Be

[RaychelSnr]

Feb. 04, 2009 – National Signing Day. The best offseason day in all of sports.

While I used to readily give this label to NFL Draft day, excessive media hype, substance-light coverage and an influx of under-informed fan know-it-alls have soured the once sweet taste of that special weekend in May.

National Signing Day, like college football itself, is much more of a niche product than the NFL and the NFL Draft. Fan conversations, online or otherwise, tend to be smarter and more detailed. The coverage, particularly by sites like Rivals and Scout is unparalleled. The slightly under-the-radar nature of the whole event makes it that much more enjoyable to the hardcore college football fan.

Reveling in the nine-hour ESPNU coverage this past Wednesday, all of the fanfare got me thinking: How can the NCAA Football series better emulate the landscape of modern college football recruiting?

Read More - What NCAA Recruiting Should Be

[Bodizzy]

Boy, do I agree with you that NCAA needs to wage a full-on onslaught towards beefing up recruiting in the series. Your team's current roster, coaching staff (including coordinators and position coaches who actually influence player morale and ability), assistant recruiters, team history and prestige, and the head coach's personality should all intersect at an overall recruiting prowess for a school. You're right, the top-shelf programs should have a leg (or two) up on the smaller schools, and they should have the advantage for various reasons.

Personally, I would love to have a dynamic, RPG-style conversation system implemented to woo and negotiate recruits. A coach with a winning history, a top flight program at his fingertips, and a charming personality would have more dialog options and success rates than coaches who are at smaller schools, lack the personality, etc. But you could pick a small school, create a no-name coach, start winning some football games, and slowly accrue points to either consciously ascribe to your coach and assistants or that are automatically attributed to personnel and coaches based on how those points were accrued. Either way, it's something I would absolutely love.

[Gossennator]

Re: What NCAA Recruiting Should Be

I never really thought about national signing day for NCAA 10. Just think how awesome it would be to have an OD where all 12 people are online trying to get top recruits. Maybe even committing somewere & going somewhere else. Instead of making it all day you can maybe tone it down to 1 hour or of your choosing.

[Cane_Mutiny]

In-season signings aren't allowed by the NCAA, unless the recruit is from Junior College or Prep School or something like that. For high school recruits, NSD is the first day they can officially sign.

Still, you're right that it does seem like players "sign" their LOIs mid-season, because once they've committed. they never back down. For this reason, they need to revamp how committments work. There should occasionally be hard verbals like we see in the game, but more often there should be soft committments that can be switched faily easily. I know that there are "soft commits" occasionally in the game, but they're sort of arbitrary.

Soft committments need to be made into a bigger deal, since they are much more common early in the process than "absolutely no way I won't sign hard verbals."

[thudias]

Great Ideas.

[callmetaternuts]

Boy, do I agree with you that NCAA needs to wage a full-on onslaught towards beefing up recruiting in the series. Your team's current roster, coaching staff (including coordinators and position coaches who actually influence player morale and ability), assistant recruiters, team history and prestige, and the head coach's personality should all intersect at an overall recruiting prowess for a school. You're right, the top-shelf programs should have a leg (or two) up on the smaller schools, and they should have the advantage for various reasons.

Personally, I would love to have a dynamic, RPG-style conversation system implemented to woo and negotiate recruits. A coach with a winning history, a top flight program at his fingertips, and a charming personality would have more dialog options and success rates than coaches who are at smaller schools, lack the personality, etc. But you could pick a small school, create a no-name coach, start winning some football games, and slowly accrue points to either consciously ascribe to your coach and assistants or that are automatically attributed to personnel and coaches based on how those points were accrued. Either way, it's something I would absolutely love.

I definitely agree with most of these ideas. We need:

- Diamonds in the rough and busts

- More drama on NSD, not as many recruits committing early

- A way to gauge what other teams are doing

- Make the off-season visits matter. Dont have recruits commit so early where my visit in Week 4 never happens

[BCTiger8]

I really argee with the ATH section. I hate recruiting a 5 star ATH only to find out he's a 75+ QB a 60 Safety and 40 in everything else, especially when I already have several quality QBs. I think one thing that should be adjusted is the way ATHs are presented when selecting a final position. One of the big thing with athletes is that they have various skill sets that can be utilized all over the football field, but usually they have "raw" talent which hasn't been refined yet. I think showing the individual's potential rating at a specific position would be a better way to gauge the final position. Scrambling type QB? Might only have a 80 potential at QB but may have a 85 at safety with some good coaching (which is a separate issue all together). I just think there needs to be refinement with regards to ATHs in recruiting. There needs to be a better way to address these recruits, especially as they are widely coveted throughout the game.

[Boucher]

i could just see on nsd a recruit has 5 hats on a table and he picks your teams hat on his head to signify hes going to your school, or you can get some recruits to flip coins to where they want to go...

[NikB13]

Re: What NCAA Recruiting Should Be

All the RPG style and hat choosing ideas would go a long way with the recruting presentation. the new style is great, but if they had some drama towards NSD it woul be spectactular.

[jbrew2411]

Re: What NCAA Recruiting Should Be

I really argee with the ATH section. I hate recruiting a 5 star ATH only to find out he's a 75+ QB a 60 Safety and 40 in everything else, especially when I already have several quality QBs. I think one thing that should be adjusted is the way ATHs are presented when selecting a final position. One of the big thing with athletes is that they have various skill sets that can be utilized all over the football field, but usually they have "raw" talent which hasn't been refined yet. I think showing the individual's potential rating at a specific position would be a better way to gauge the final position. Scrambling type QB? Might only have a 80 potential at QB but may have a 85 at safety with some good coaching (which is a separate issue all together). I just think there needs to be refinement with regards to ATHs in recruiting. There needs to be a better way to address these recruits, especially as they are widely coveted throughout the game.

I'm with you on this one. I hate to get an ATH and the only position he can play is corner. Most ATH in real life play both ways in high school and return kicks. I would like to see ATH's that could be good on both sides of the ball. I hate the QB Ath's because that is all they can play. That is not an ATH. Look at Russell Sheppard who signed with LSU he could play QB, RB, WR, and made on D. I don't see that in this game.

[TrevJo]

NCAA has so many other issues that need to be fixed aside from revamping recruiting. They have too many requests for bells and whistles to fix something that isn't broken without sacrificing quality.

The only problem is that recruiting is too easy. And recruiting is too easy for one simple reason: The CPU is ******** at assessing its needs.
If a CPU school has 1 good LT and 2 lousy RTs coming back, the CPU will not put much focus into recruiting LTs, because they have fulfilled the roster minimum.
Now EA should listen carefully because this is the part that concerns them: The roster minimums need to be increased to 4 or 5 for positions like tackle, guard, defensive end, etc. And the CPU needs to be smarter about recognizing weaknesses and needs for the future. Fix this!

A further problem along the same lines (but not directly related to recruiting) is that a CPU team with two 85 LGs and two 70 RGs will start one of each instead of starting both LGs.

[TrevJo]

You guys are nuts on the ATH thing. Recognizing what position an ATH is going to be good at is as easy as breathing.

[NikB13]

Re: What NCAA Recruiting Should Be

You guys are nuts on the ATH thing. Recognizing what position an ATH is going to be good at is as easy as breathing.

Ya i kno which is why i dont like it. ATH should be able to play a multitude of positions at a high level. not just one and the rest crap.

[hustle55]

Re: What NCAA Recruiting Should Be

Ya i kno which is why i dont like it. ATH should be able to play a multitude of positions at a high level. not just one and the rest crap.

I agree totally an ATH should be able to play a lot of different positions.

[mattbooty]

Re: What NCAA Recruiting Should Be

A couple thoughts.

1. on the ATH thing, I don't think the problem is so much that you can't tell what position they will play, but that they will only be good at one position (maybe 2). Realistically an ATH should be able to move between QB, WR, HB, CB, S, etc with a minimal drop in skills. Most ATH in 2009 are say a 72 rated WR, a 60 CB, and 40 at everything else... at that point why not just make the recruit a WR in the first place, why are they even listed as an ATH.

2. I have always thought it would be great to earmark 10 junior HS players that would automatically give them a bump next season when you actually recruit them. For instance you see the juniors, and whichever ones you pick they will bump you up a few spots on their list when recruiting starts (potentially get students interested in your program when they wouldn't have been otherwise).

3. I love the idea that very few Hard commits happen until signing day. What I think should happen is any pre-signing day would be Softs, but the big change is once a player soft commits, all other schools should fall off their board. You can still monitor that player during the season, and if another school appears on their board (which would happen with maybe 20% of soft's) that tells you that they are starting to rethink their commitment and you need to start throwing more time at them to get them to hold to their commitment.