What NCAA Recruiting Should Be

[RaychelSnr]

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?

Read More - What NCAA Recruiting Should Be

[Bodizzy]

Boy, do I agree with you that NCAA needs to wage a full-on onslaught towards beefing up recruiting in the series. Your team's current roster, coaching staff (including coordinators and position coaches who actually influence player morale and ability), assistant recruiters, team history and prestige, and the head coach's personality should all intersect at an overall recruiting prowess for a school. You're right, the top-shelf programs should have a leg (or two) up on the smaller schools, and they should have the advantage for various reasons.

Personally, I would love to have a dynamic, RPG-style conversation system implemented to woo and negotiate recruits. A coach with a winning history, a top flight program at his fingertips, and a charming personality would have more dialog options and success rates than coaches who are at smaller schools, lack the personality, etc. But you could pick a small school, create a no-name coach, start winning some football games, and slowly accrue points to either consciously ascribe to your coach and assistants or that are automatically attributed to personnel and coaches based on how those points were accrued. Either way, it's something I would absolutely love.

[Gossennator]

I never really thought about national signing day for NCAA 10. Just think how awesome it would be to have an OD where all 12 people are online trying to get top recruits. Maybe even committing somewere & going somewhere else. Instead of making it all day you can maybe tone it down to 1 hour or of your choosing.

[Cane_Mutiny]

In-season signings aren't allowed by the NCAA, unless the recruit is from Junior College or Prep School or something like that. For high school recruits, NSD is the first day they can officially sign.

Still, you're right that it does seem like players "sign" their LOIs mid-season, because once they've committed. they never back down. For this reason, they need to revamp how committments work. There should occasionally be hard verbals like we see in the game, but more often there should be soft committments that can be switched faily easily. I know that there are "soft commits" occasionally in the game, but they're sort of arbitrary.

Soft committments need to be made into a bigger deal, since they are much more common early in the process than "absolutely no way I won't sign hard verbals."

[thudias]

Great Ideas.

[callmetaternuts]

Quote: Originally Posted by Bodizzy

Boy, do I agree with you that NCAA needs to wage a full-on onslaught towards beefing up recruiting in the series. Your team's current roster, coaching staff (including coordinators and position coaches who actually influence player morale and ability), assistant recruiters, team history and prestige, and the head coach's personality should all intersect at an overall recruiting prowess for a school. You're right, the top-shelf programs should have a leg (or two) up on the smaller schools, and they should have the advantage for various reasons. Personally, I would love to have a dynamic, RPG-style conversation system implemented to woo and negotiate recruits. A coach with a winning history, a top flight program at his fingertips, and a charming personality would have more dialog options and success rates than coaches who are at smaller schools, lack the personality, etc. But you could pick a small school, create a no-name coach, start winning some football games, and slowly accrue points to either consciously ascribe to your coach and assistants or that are automatically attributed to personnel and coaches based on how those points were accrued. Either way, it's something I would absolutely love.

I definitely agree with most of these ideas. We need:

- Diamonds in the rough and busts

- More drama on NSD, not as many recruits committing early

- A way to gauge what other teams are doing

- Make the off-season visits matter. Dont have recruits commit so early where my visit in Week 4 never happens

[BCTiger8]

I really argee with the ATH section. I hate recruiting a 5 star ATH only to find out he's a 75+ QB a 60 Safety and 40 in everything else, especially when I already have several quality QBs. I think one thing that should be adjusted is the way ATHs are presented when selecting a final position. One of the big thing with athletes is that they have various skill sets that can be utilized all over the football field, but usually they have "raw" talent which hasn't been refined yet. I think showing the individual's potential rating at a specific position would be a better way to gauge the final position. Scrambling type QB? Might only have a 80 potential at QB but may have a 85 at safety with some good coaching (which is a separate issue all together). I just think there needs to be refinement with regards to ATHs in recruiting. There needs to be a better way to address these recruits, especially as they are widely coveted throughout the game.

[Boucher]

i could just see on nsd a recruit has 5 hats on a table and he picks your teams hat on his head to signify hes going to your school, or you can get some recruits to flip coins to where they want to go...