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?

Recruiting is part of what makes college football a unique brand. While the new system introduced in NCAA 08 is a step in the right direction, it is still a mere shell of the real-life system that it is supposed to emulate. In the future, a static and watered-down recruiting system will be just as detrimental to the series as poor on-field play -- after all the Online Dynasty era has begun. Simply put, the fun of the competition must now extend beyond head-to-head games and into the virtual recruiting realm.

Minus a few very small tweaks, the menus we have now...we had years ago.

The Current System: Miscellaneous Notes and Flaws

Any veteran of the NCAA series can tell you that the current recruiting system is leagues beyond the old point-assignment system. Simulating the system of limited phone calls, on-campus/in-home visits, promises and coach integrity have given the Dynasty mode new life. Still, the system needs to mature.

While the game is really good at allowing gamers to tailor their pitches and sway recruits to their liking, it is devoid of the emotional volatility that exists in real recruiting. The "football face" that pops up during recruiting calls is supposed to emulate recruit emotion; however, it often seems to serve the sole purpose of monitoring time for phone calls. Throughout countless dynasties, I have yet to decipher a true "rule of thumb" when it comes to the football face. Leaving the face happy, neutral or angry has little effect on your ability to land the recruit, just so long as you win games and satisfactorily match up recruit priorities with program strengths. It is a nice attempt, but serves little purpose beyond the aesthetic.

The current system also allows you to suddenly lose recruits without warning. Soft verbals can turn into de-commits very quickly, especially when recruiting against human opponents. This is realistic, as nearly 20 percent of this year’s top 100 recruits balked at their initial verbal commitments. However, the warning-less manner in which this occurs in the game is far from perfect. Thanks to the Internet, fans often know when a committed player is being courted by a competitor. It stands to reason that the coaches, who are on the front lines of the recruiting battle, would be the first to know of such activities. There will always be some surprises, but in the real world, very few of these commitment betrayals occur without some advanced warning. The game should reflect such a dynamic in these situations.

The main system "improvements" in '09 were, in my opinion, aimed in the wrong direction. Last year, EA developers presented gamers with ways to streamline the process via features like Quick Call and CPU assistance. Sadly, many sports games -- particularly EA Sports games -- yearn for the casual gamer, and these new tweaks made it nauseatingly evident. Considering the over-the-top, hardcore nature of most college football fans (and NCAA gamers), it seems counter-productive to dumb down the product for the masses, at least in this department.

So where do we go from here? I have got some superb ideas.

These guys...they just don't feel alive sometimes.

Inject Some Humanity

While logistically sound in its simulation of the recruiting process, the current NCAA Football recruiting system is rather monotone, if not inanimate.

While the "football-face" icon scratches the surface of recruiting emotion, it is far from satisfactory. To remedy this situation, I propose a kind of "Rapport Meter" be assigned to each recruit on your board. The more you talk to a recruit -- especially when appealing to his high priorities -- the higher your rapport becomes with said recruit. There should be a balance, however, as in the words of Tommy Tubberville on ESPNU, you never want to "overcook" a recruit. Calling too often or taking too much of a recruit’s time could damage your rapport with him and hurt your chances.

Maintaining this rapport with recruits will play a pivotal role in maintaining their interest level, and will also give you an advanced warning when your competition is making a strong play to steal one of your coveted targets. The more plugged in you are to a recruit, the more likely you are to know if his verbal commitment is in jeopardy.

An extension of this system would be to give recruits a Morale Ranking -- similar to Madden -- once they become signed players. This morale ranking would affect their in-game performance and career progression. Such a system would be linked to playing time, coach promises and in-game performance. In a sense, it would give players personality. High or low morale could also play a role in simulating "bust" or "break-out" recruits, something we have not yet seen in NCAA Football.

This guy is an athlete...actually both are.  Why not in NCAA?

Make ATHs, Athletes

One of my biggest problems with the current recruiting system is its treatment of athlete prospects. Aside from height, weight and vague letter-grade criteria for certain skill rankings, we are given next to no real information about these prospects.

Recruiting them is always a crap-shoot. Other than speculation, we really have no way of knowing what position might be the best fit for these prospects. More often than not, they are only suited for one position, with a 10-15 point drop-off in the OVR department for all other positions. Thus, they are an enigma that fails to fit logically into your recruiting game plan.

First and foremost, the game should tell you specifically what position(s) they play in high school. This would be extremely helpful when shaping your recruiting board to fill specific needs. Secondly, depending on the level (5-star, 4-star, etc.) of the athletes, some should be astute at multiple positions, with little drop-off. For instance, a 5-star athlete who primarily plays quarterback in high school, might be a viable option at WR or HB in the college game. The luxury of recruiting an athlete is flexibility, and the game should treat it as such.

Finally, and this applies to all recruits, it would be helpful if, each week, the game gave you simulated HS statistics for each recruit. This would not only go a long way towards determining the skill set of athlete recruits, it would also be a nice touch when tracking recruits. Praising their on-field achievements during a phone call (provided this was an option) could also play into the aforementioned "Rapport Meter."

Where's the love for system based recruiting?  Coaching philosphy anyone?

Make Your System Matter

I can only think of one thing that the old recruiting system had over the new one: "Coaching Philosophy."

I must credit my college roommate and future best man FatJoe399 for bringing this to my attention today. The offensive and defensive systems that you run need to play a major part in recruiting. At the very least, they should help to determine what recruits are initially interested in your style of play. Do you drop back and air it out? Selling your program to pocket passers should be a breeze. Have a fast, attacking defensive scheme? Stocking your roster with young pass-rushing ends and hard-hitting DBs should come easy.

While the current "Pro-Factory" pitch does this to an extent -- if you have noticed, your ranking in this category will vary from position to position -- it fails to reach the level or realism that I want. This could be easily corrected with a special pitch called "Star Potential" or something thereabouts. The availability of this pitch would be based purely upon your playcalling tendencies and current player statistics, and would only be applicable to relevant positions. Fore example, say you run a smash-mouth I-formation offense that often yields big numbers in the running game. The "Star Potential" pitch would become available to HBs and offensive linemen. Or if you like to throw the ball all over the field Texas Tech style, the pitch would become available to top QBs and WRs.

Speaking of Special Pitches...

I know the horse is dead, but I am going to keep beating it.

There need to be unique pitches that are only available to certain schools so they can serve as trump cards in certain recruiting situations. Other than the aforementioned "Star Potential" pitch, the two special pitches that absolutely must be included are "Historical/Premiere Program" and "Program on the Rise." True, the former is already available to a degree ("Program Prestige") but it does not quite do what it should.

In terms of the interface, it would probably be logical to place these pitches on a sub-screen within the normal pitch screen. Of course, these pitches would be dynamic, and would only be available to teams with the correct criteria. Exceeding or failing to meet these criteria would affect the availability of a pitch the following year.

The main purpose of these special pitches would be to realistically skew recruiting towards the upper echelon of teams. While this would likely make things more difficult for those gamers whose favorite teams are less than stellar, it would make things substantially more realistic, and it would make those lower-tier teams claw through a few seasons before having the juice to land that big fish.

This game gets it...sometimes.  But seriously, where are the recruiting links?

Junior Recruits

Scouting recruiting classes of the future is just as important to college coaches as the class at hand. NCAA’s recruiting system would be wise to add this aspect by providing an abbreviated list of junior recruits at the beginning of each season.

The rules for recruiting junior athletes are substantially different from senior and junior-college recruits. Ideally, future editions of NCAA Football could provide a short list of the top junior recruits (namely 4- and 5-star guys) at the beginning of each dynasty season. Users could compose a short list of potential targets -- 10 would be a good number. Each of these 10 recruits would be "sent" recruiting materials at the beginning of each season, with one phone call allowed the following offseason so you can get a jump start on recruiting the following fall, and maybe even get some instant commitments (see: Texas).

An interesting twist on this system might be potential links to senior recruits, like family members or teammates, and could serve as an extension to the current Pipeline system. Want that junior 5-star RB from Dublin, Ohio? Recruit his teammate, who just so happens to be a 3-star defensive tackle this year, to help sway him. This should by no means be overdone, but it would be a neat little wrinkle should junior recruiting be added into the mix.

Signing Day

Yes, early commitments happen all the time. But many, MANY high school athletes wait until National Signing Day to formally fax in their letters of intent. Some of the lucky ones even get to make their announcements on ESPNU.

Signing Day is such as big part of the process that it is nothing short of tragic that EA’s developers have not found some way to include it, especially since they have the ESPN license. When doing anything to revamp the current recruiting system, National Signing Day has to be the top priority.

First and foremost, the system should be adjusted so the majority of recruits do not sign letters of intent until this day. In-season signings are commonplace in the current setup, but are generally pretty rare for most Division I programs in real life. There is a lot of haggling and positioning for recruits up until the final days of January. Postponing official signings until the end will heighten the drama and make the game more true-to-life.

Secondly, the offseason schedule should have a Signing Day mechanic that launches once the five-week call/visit schedule is complete, similar to the NFL Draft screen. A little war-room interface could be in place for this process. The game could even use its ESPN license to implement a press-conference sequence for some of the top-tier recruits on your list, showing a player choosing between two hats on a table. Maybe I am going a bit too far into a pipe-dream here, but hey, last-gen versions of the game had an animated Heisman presentation, right? I am no developer, but an animated press conference definitely seems doable.

I Showed You Mine

I have pretty lofty hopes for the future of NCAA’s recruiting. Maybe too lofty, as this article is more wish list than logic. But what do you all have to say about future recruiting possibilities?