Pro/College Football...FOF/TCY

[Darkiller]

I think I've put my fingers on the first reason "why I don't win in TCY as much as I do in FOF":

Frustration with the overall possibilities offered to me as far as improving my team.

The thing in Pro Football is we're so used to being able to "tweak" our team DURING the season, if things don't go well.
You know that you have the first few weeks to make a trade, and/or grab a player from the FA pool, so that you actually IMPROVE your football team.

In College Football, you just can't do that, you're stuck with your roster and no way you can expect any improvement during a particular season if you've determine that, indeed, your roster is bull shit on day 1.

Same for the post-season, in the Pros you can always say to yourself "I finished 5-11 because my pass rush was awful but that's not a big deal because this off-season, I'll go spend my big bucks on the league's top Defensive End, who happens to an unrestricted FA".
you KNOW that you are going to be able to IMPROVE your football team right away.

In College, even though you just recruited that top DE prospect ranked 16th in the nation, he probable won't be able to contribute as much as his talent suppposes he will until his junior season (or sophomore to be over optimistic). So that won't help in the immediate future.

I guess I have to work on that. I'm too much of a "Pro Football guy", not enough within the "College Football mentality" yet and that blocks me in some ways to play TCY effectively.

[Dutch]

In TCY, my first priority in recruiting is to fill obvious gaps. Then it's to fill gaps I can see developing just from my freshman and sophmore players. A lot of it (for me anyway) is guess work.

With FOF, I am a paper and pencil player, where I have all kinds of numbers and positions and things scribbled everywhere during the off-season. This ensures I am going into a season with at least trying to help each position out when they need it.

In TCY, I do everything in my head, so I try and use the generic freshman/sophmore players as a basis for my recruiting efforts.

It works pretty well, but I do have the occassional season when I find I *forgot* to recruit enough safeties and I go into the season with 3 recruited safties and a walk-on or two. When those walk-ons start playing because of injuries, things tend to not work out so well anymore.

And yes, when you find out you don't have any backups, or that your season is looking bad, there isn't much you can do. Sometimes changing out a QB with decent stats for that freshman with high potential ratings can work out, but I don't think I've seen any dramatic changes based on a couple of shot in the dark player changes.

[Darkiller]

Originally posted by Dutch
Sometimes changing out a QB with decent stats for that freshman with high potential ratings can work out, .

Interesting.
Could you elaborate on that since I just recruited a stud QB but he's all about potential right now. Basically I don't think he can play for me at all this year so I've just placed a "redshirt" on him (haven't started the season yet).

If I decide to keep him redshirted, how should I handle his "year off" in terms of study, practice, study film etc.. ?

[maximus]

Darkiller, I have some real bad luck with this game. The best record I have ever had was 7-5 (I think it was). I play as Wisconsin most of the time.

EDIT:

So I wish I could help but I can't.

[Darkiller]

LOL, no problem :-)

[Dutch]

I think a lot of it still resides in what your scout really knows about a player and the hidden values.

I think if your stud recruit is 5/100 across the board, he isn't really a 5/100. That's just what you see. It seems that if a player is going to pan out to have average ratings of 90, he will generally perform much better his freshman year. But that's just based on a couple of recent memories.

On the other hand, in FOF, I've had a journeyman QB averaging in the 10's who would win 70% of his games when the starter was injured during a 1-4 start and had good ratings.

This is why I wished the FOF/TCY series had more input similar to the CM ratings system. On a scale of 1-10, how did my player perform? Did the team carry him or did he carry the team?

As for Time Allotments, don't ask me, I only tinker with that stuff long enough to act like I know what I'm doing.

[Vince]

Hey Darkiller, check out the FOF Journal thread...DevaneyFan and others did a long study of TCY and time management a while back, and you can see what they came up with there.

I've found that TCY is exceedingly easy if you jack up your academics early in the career. So in the first few years, you set your Study Time for each player higher than normal to get them good grades and improve your school in that aspect. It then becomes rather easy to recruit players, and your team will improve. This way you can get a feel for how to manipulate your players and get the most out of them, and you get a cushion by having an easier time recruiting because of your high academic ratings.

Now, I've played the game enough to not want 'easy,' so I try to keep my study time reasonable, so that my academic ratings are only mediocre...this way my on-the-field performance has more to do with my recruiting than academics. Makes for a much bigger challenge

[Vince]

Originally posted by Dutch
This is why I wished the FOF/TCY series had more input similar to the CM ratings system. On a scale of 1-10, how did my player perform? Did the team carry him or did he carry the team?

See, this is where I find that text sims sometimes give too much information. In real life, the coach has to infer this scale of 1-10 by the player's performance on the field. I think that as the 'coach' of a simulated team, you should do the same. The only problem with this is that we don't get to watch the game. We can't see, for instance, that of the 3 INTs our QB threw in that game, 1 of them bounced off the hands of a receiver, and another one should have been caught but the receiver ran a 5 yard in instead of a 5 yard out. We can't tell those little 'intangible' things that help add into that 1-10 rating. So basically I can't understand/figure out where the line should be drawn at what the engine should tell you about a player's performance, and what us as gamers should have to infer from what the game has told us.

[Dutch]

Of course another problem is that it's easy enough to win games as it is, any more help would be more realistic, but probably not helpful in making the game more challenging.

Adding ratings won't help the AI teams...they would need an improvement somehwhere to counter.

[The_herd]

Originally posted by Vince

I've found that TCY is exceedingly easy if you jack up your academics early in the career. So in the first few years, you set your Study Time for each player higher than normal to get them good grades and improve your school in that aspect. It then becomes rather easy to recruit players, and your team will improve. This way you can get a feel for how to manipulate your players and get the most out of them, and you get a cushion by having an easier time recruiting because of your high academic ratings.

As Vince says above, the key to making the game easier is to boost your academics as fast a possible. You can take your walk-ons and boost their study and free time really high to improve their GPA's since you shouldn't be worried about their talent development anyway.

Only recruit players with 2.80 GPA, over 1000 SAT scores, and a Fair attitude at the very least, try to get players with terrific and excellent attitude if you can. The next thing you need to do is get offensive and defensive coordinators that have high abilities in talent development. Then set up a good talent base by redshirting EVERYONE. It gives them that extra year of development that could make the difference on them maxing their abilities in their Redshirt Junior (4th season) year as opposed to their senior year. After a few years of solid recruiting classes you will be able to reload each year instead of rebuilding. Try to space your recruiting at QB and RB out to where you have a young player ready to step in after your current player graduates. Ideally you have a player coming off his redshirt season ready to step in at these 2 postitions after a player graduates. You don't want someone stepping in to play 1 year and then graduating, its not worth it.

You should also try to take the K-State path to improving by scheduling 2 cup-cakes at home each year until your team is established enough to take on some tougher teams. It will hurt you end of year ranking because of a weak strength of schedule, but it should ensure you get into a bowl, and getting into and winning your bowls are the ways you improve your overall prestige.

[MarylandWest]

For recruiting the first few years, I target all the best recruits in the general area regardless of position (with Maryland, this is everywhere from New York to Ohio to North Carolina, basically whomever costs less than 400 to visit). Hit all these guys hard with the calls and visits and you'll find that a lot of them will sign with you. Be sure to always stay away from the academically challenged recruits. Nevermind the effect it has on your reputation, these guys fail classes and thus get suspended. When I used to recruit them, there'd be some players whom I'd be lucky to get 1 year on the field because they'd fail the other 4 years.

Once you get about 5 years of good recruiting classes then you have to start going after replacements for the guys who will be graduating soon. From then on you just keep doing that. Make sure you always have starters and a couple backups for each position (except for kicker and punter).

Success doesn't just come from recruiting. Defensively you have to play away from your strengths. What I mean is that if your team is good at stopping the run then have your defensive game plan play to stop the pass. Offensively, go with whatever's working. If your RB is chewing up yards every game then lean on him to be your offense. If he's getting stuffed then go pass-happy. Keep an eye out for whatever offensive formation your opponents use and adjust for it.

Don't be afraid to start freshmen if they're that much more talented than the older players. Playing in games is the only way to gain experience. The only drawback is that getting hurt can make them injury-prone for their entire career with you. Anyone that won't be playing significant minutes during the season should be redshirted. There's no reason to let a great player waste a year of eligibility because he happened to play one down in one game.

Every off-season, be sure to check for better scouts and coordinators. Keep these jobs filled by the best available guys.

That's all I can come up with off the top of my head. I hope it helps.