How to make the Coaching Carousel Great - fcboiler87's Blog

fcboiler87's Blog

How to make the Coaching Carousel Great

Posted on July 24, 2011 at 12:56 AM.

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Coaching Carousel

My focus here will be on the Coaching Carousel. This has the potential to be the greatest feature ever. The implementation of this feature was THE ONLY reason I even bought NCAA 12 and while I'm enjoying it, there is plenty of room for improvement. I will break down the areas that need improvement in the following categories; Coach Ratings, Coach Contracts & Goals, Coach Progression, and Coach Hiring Logic.

Coach Ratings

"Coach Prestige" is a nice start, but what factors into a coach being a good coach is far more in depth than prestige. We need specific ratings for coaches in varying categories just as players do. I will break down an example as follow. Also, let's do away with the letter grade and use a numerical scale like we do with the players for more variance in the coaches.

Prestige: There is nothing wrong with giving a coach a prestige rating. Alabama's Nick Saban is going to obviously have more prestige than Arkansas State's Hugh Freeze. Saban could start the game with a 97 rating, while freeze might only be a 60. And though I will go more in depth in the progression category, Freeze should only progress a handful of points per year, regardless of his success because coaches don't just become one of the most prestigious overnight.

Offense: This category speaks for itself. What is the coach's background in offense? Has he had a lot of success? Gus Malzhan's overall as an offensive coordinator would likely be in the 90s due to his innovation and success. If he is a defensive coach, he likely won't have a high rating in it, and that's okay.

Defense: Again, this can speak for itself. How good of a defensive coach is the guy? Bud Foster from Va Tech would have rating in the 90s.

Special Teams: Another fundamental category here. How good is the coach at special teams. I'll get to the influences of the last three at the end.

Recruiting: How good of a recruiter is this coach? If he constantly lands 4 and 5 star guys, his rating would be pretty good.

Teaching: How good can this coach get his players to learn all that he knows? This is crucial to being a good coach.

Overall: These specific categories should add up to an overall rating, just as it does for players.

EFFECTS
Now, these ratings per specific categories should just be numbers that determine where and how coaches move around. They need to have a profound effect on the team they are coaching. If and offensive coordinator has a poor offense rating and a poor teaching rating, then that offense shouldn't be worth much, regardless of the talent they have. A good recruiting rating should allow teams to pull in some better recruits. Hopefully you get the point.

How this should be implemented for the user
At the beginning of the dynasty, we should be able to set our rating. Now, to make it realistic, we should only have so much space to work. Let us choose which categories we will be good in and which ones we will not be as good in. Then, as the dynasty progresses, we can improve based upon meeting our goals.

Coach Contracts & Goals

Contracts that coaches are given greatly need improvement. There are constantly 1 year contracts handed out. This makes no sense. No one does that. It's like saying "hey if you don't get it right this year then you might not be back." Especially if you walk into a mess of a situation, you get an opportunity to get your system in place and get things turned around. No contract should really ever be less than three years. Now, if we are talking extensions of contracts, 1 or 2 years makes sense. The school wants to continue to see progress and if it's not met then you're done. But 1 year from the get go is unrealistic.

Goals are an excellent idea for progression and firing logic. Even they could use improvement. It seems as though with weaker teams, your goals are very attainable. It would be nice to see a little bit tougher goals. On the other hand, goals at large schools or even small schools that win some can be -- dare I say it -- too tough?? I just saw in one carousel Chip Kelly from Oregon get fired for going 12-2 and had had equal success in earlier years. I saw a guy who was the HC at Wyoming get fired after going 8-4. I'm sorry but if you go 8-4 at Wyoming, you will be hailed as a god and they will build a statue in your name.

You will definitely not get fired. There are almost no programs that will fire you if you win 10 games every year.

Goals are excellent, but I can assure you there is one cure all for missing out on some goals written down on paper; WINNING. If you win ball games, especially dependent on the school, your job is safe.

Coaching Progression

If there is a consensus to the new coaching carousel, it comes with coaching progression. It above all things severely needs work. As it has been said, coaches progress WAY to quickly. This leads there to being an abundance of "good" coaches. This clearly affects the carousel because you see an A rated guy who just won 4 games get a head coaching job at a big BCS school.

Coaches don't become all stars over night. Okay, yes, Urban Meyer's rise was rather meteoric, but that's only in reflection. Nobody knew the guy when he was winning games at Bowling Green State. Regardless, progression should be toned down greatly. Perhaps a max of 5 points overall per year? That's just a suggestion and even that might be too great.

Progression should be tied to success and success, while determined by goals, should also have winning factored in. If a coach has a successful season (meets all goals, wins 8 games at say... Tulane) then he should improve more than a well rated coach (didn't meet all goals, won only 4 games at Ole Miss). Again, I'll go back to the fact that winning equals a lot, even if you only ran for 950 yards on the year when your goal said 1000.

Coach Hiring and Firing Logic

Although you've seen the most debate about coaching progression, I'll end with hiring and firing logic because it is my biggest concern.

As it stands, if you aren't a coordinator, you're not going to get a head coaching job. This isn't always the case, but I've simmed through years and years and the majority of the time, coordinators are the ones becoming head coach. This would be one thing if the hirings made sense, but often, they leave you scratching your head. Now, I know, there are hirings in real life that make you go "huh??" but not most of the time.

Case examples: I've seen Army's offensive coordinator land a head coaching job often. I'm sorry but the only place their OC is actually going is Army. He certainly isn't going to move up in the world by getting a head coaching job. He could land an OC job at a bigger school. That would make sense. But he is not yet qualified to land a head coach job. It just wouldn't happen. And this stuff happens all the time. A BCS level school hires a coordinator from a small conference. That would never ever happen. To make matters worse, these coordinators often come from schools with LOSING records. Once again, I'll go back to the fact that WINNING equals everything. I don't care if you're an A rated coach, if your team wins 3 games, nobody wants anything to do with you. That's a FACT.

What we need to see...
...In BCS level conferences
We need to see the rise of coaches emulated like we do in real life. Who gets BCS head coaching jobs? Very often, they are head coaches from smaller schools, with the MAC being a hot bed for them. If a BCS school does not hire a head coach from a small school, they will likely hire a coordinator from a very successful BCS school. That's just how it goes. On occasion, teams will hire from within, but not nearly as often as '12 seems to make happen. The only other thing that might happen is they get somebody from the NFL (i.e. Colorado). This could be emulated by having a pool of generic, CPU created coaches.

...In smaller conferences
Smaller schools might have a little more flexibility with hiring coaches, but their favorite place to go is back to the BCS conferences with hiring not only coordinators, but position coaches (but that's another story for another thread). Here, it would make sense to see hirings from within - i.e. promotion from coordinator to head coach. One thing that is great is that former head coaches often land coordinator positions at these smaller schools. That really does happen and I like to see it in the game as it is. We could definitely also see those former coaches take head coaching gigs at smaller schools, which is realistic.

Hiring and Firing
In real life, if a head coach is fired, the coordinators that coached under him are basically fired too. A new head coach will bring in his own guys to run his system. It's a fact of life. Almost never will a coordinator hang around. This is not emulated in the game. The CPU head coaches need the ability to hire an OC and DC that fit the styles they want (that are listed on their coach profile). A head coach really shouldn't hire someone that doesn't fit with their styles of play because they probably wouldn't mesh well.

A user that becomes a head coach should absolutely be able to hire the OC and DC he wants. Again, it's just realistic. And if you go back to coach ratings, having his own OC and DC would mean he controls how his team is affected. We could even go a step further and say in the middle of a game, instead of the option to choose "coach call" plays or you pick by formation, you have no option to choose and your OC or DC says what he wants to run. Some people might not like the loss of "control" but it would certainly add to the realism and it could be added as an option.

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In all of this, I am not clamoring for additional coaches. I like the HC, OC, and DC set up. It keeps things simple at a point where I don't mind it being as such. I'm all about depth, hopefully as evidenced by above. But let's get the above accomplished and we can begin adding other coaches.

As stated earlier, I love the addition of the Coaching Carousel. It is the only reason I bought the game. While I am disappointed with some aspects, it still keeps me playing the game.

Let me know your thoughts. Our constructive criticism is how this game gets better.

Comments

# 1 bowdenfsu52 @ Jul 24

i agree with you on must all these points, but hring isnt that messed up on mine usually they hire coordinators from sec or big ten schools to coach them. their is the occasional san jose stae coach with terrible prestige getting hired at tamu or something. i love your idea of hc getting to hire his oc and dc it makes alot of since.