[jello1717]

I would definitely say it's the recruiting, and you could always make the sliders tougher if you want. For recruiting, you need restrictions because the CPU is simply not smart enough to recruit against people.

Here's a typical user recruitment of a recruit.
1. Uncover A+ pitches until you get 3 V.H. or Most.
2. Continue from A -> B+ -> B (depending on what your school has to offer) until you get to 3 good pitches (most, V.H. or sway a high to V.H.)
3. For every subsequent week, only pitch your good pitches for however long you deem necessary (half hour, hour, until his bar fills, until his face hits a certain degree of pissedoffedness, etc).

This doesn't even account for visits, but the CPU's recruiting logic isn't capable of the above and thusly, isn't nearly as effective. Devs have stated that the CPU recruits by using the "quick call" logic. Try some quick calls and see how dumb it is (IE. "interest gain for " when you never would've been pitching that because you have a most/A+ pitch).

To make it fair, do a combination of the follow or other recruiting restrictions:
Never allow yourself to sign more players than needed to hit 70. This should be the 1st rule implemented by everyone.
Only allow yourself to sign x 5* kids and y 4* kids.
Only recruit ones that start with a green dot.
Only allow recruiting of 5* and/or 4* kids from certain geographical areas (IE. near your home state or from pipelines, etc). The pipeline one can be fun as you try to find good 3* kids from a new state that you want as a pipeline and then, after you get 4 from that state, you're now allowed to sign 4* and 5* kids from there.

Another possibility (although I wouldn't like this at all) would be to only use quickcalls or even simply let the CPU do all of your recruiting. This would likely put you on par with the other teams for recruiting. For me, though, recruiting is the most fun part of the game so I'd never do this. I still need restrictions (especially as Michigan) but it's still a blast to recruit even with the restrictions.

With decent recruiting restrictions, you can still have a great team, but one that's on par with the USCs and Texases and Floridas of the world instead of one that's NFL caliber when compared to other teams.