No feeling like working up from the bottom in NCAA OD - Hellisan's Blog

Hellisan's Blog

No feeling like working up from the bottom in NCAA OD

Posted on April 15, 2009 at 04:22 AM.

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Starting in a league full of first-rate teams including USC, Texas, and Michigan just to name a few, my choice of Purdue might have seemed odd. But like many people, I thought it would be more fun to build something from scratch rather than have it all ready for me right when the online dynasty started up. I'm not an alum of Purdue or anything - I did an offline dynasty with them a few years back and of all the teams I ran with - and I've run with a few - they were the ones that kind of grew on me the most.

So I took Purdue, rolled with the punches for several years, and have finally made it to my first Championship game in the 2014-2015 season.

Ironically, this will be the first time a user has squared off against another user for the BCS Trophy in the history of our dynasty, known as The Tradition. In some respects there were a lot of things the developers missed when they were working on Online Dynasty - but as I've said before, I'm just glad it's here and it works.

One problem with taking a team like Purdue is that getting to a six star prestige level is only so helpful. It does help you recruit a higher quality of player, on average, than you could in the past. However, it does not give you more recruits that are interested in your team to begin with. And it really should. As an example, Purdue has 60-85 players per year that list us in their Top 10. USC, Penn State and the like have over 350. That's definitely one thing to consider when choosing a team, this year and maybe next year if they didn't catch that. Another thing it doesn't do is move you to the top of many players' lists. Of the players that are interested in Purdue, I might have 1-2 players in a given year that are worth recruiting list me as their #1 team, even though we've been a six-star school for three years! The vast majority of the players that are interested in us list us 5-10.

But we kept hammering away, scouring the corners of the recruiting board for talent. I even took on the moniker "recruiting buzzard" on The Tradition forums. Year after year, teams with superior recruiting capabilities stole the players that would have probably turned the tide in our favor much sooner. It was like the entire league was playing keep away, and we just weren't good enough to get the damn ball. This year our schedule stacked up somewhat favorably, as we had UCLA (user) as an out of conference team coming to our house, and faced Michigan (user) and Ohio State (user) at home. The two road games we had to worry about were Texas A&M (user) and Penn State (user).

In just about every game, I got a break that turned the tables in our favor. A&M had badly blown coverage that let us get a game-winning field goal as time expired. Ohio State, the last team I had to beat to guarantee myself a spot in the title game, had a horrible-timed holding penalty take away a first down as they were moving down the field to either tie the game or go ahead with a touchdown. Against Michigan, we caught a batted pass for a touchdown in the end zone which gave us the early momentum.

Nevertheless, we put ourselves in position to win those games by minimizing turnovers and sporadically making huge plays on defense. What a great feeling to get to the title game with a collection of scrubs the other teams for the most part didn't want. Now, about winning it...

Comments

# 1 stlstudios189 @ Apr 15

good luck in the Championship and congrats for getting there.

# 2 BlyGilmore @ Apr 15

You're justly Bruce is controlling Michigan now. Because I would have continued to build on my perfect record against Purdue :-)

# 3 Hellisan @ Apr 15

LOL Bly. I have actually taken on your style a bit. I throw 25 passes per game against other users typically, and have thrown 7 interceptions on the season against 40+ TD passes. I will take the sack, throw it out of bounds, whatever, but I try to really minimize the turnovers, I liked that part of your game. But just to be clear, by now you guys would be Purdue's biyatch.