NCAA Football 10 News Post

What NCAA Recruiting Should Be

01:53 PM - February 6, 2009 by 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?

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# 21 JohnDoh @ 02/07/09 02:02 PM

All great idea by the OP. One thing I would add as well is the ability for recruits to rise and fall along the ESPNU Top 150 throughout the year. Say you start recruiting a kid outside of that top 150 and all the sudden he is having a great senior year (with stats provided) and he jumps into the Top 150. Likewise, kids that are having poor senior campaigns or maybe get hurt, could drop from the Top 150. I prefer the Rivals format for recruiting but being EA has the ESPN license, use the Top 150 format that changes throughout the course of the recruiting year... it would add alot!

# 22 dansaint @ 02/07/09 04:09 PM

One pitch I'd love to see in the game is "family connection". You see a lot of times a kid will go to a school because his father was a great player there...or his grandfather...or a brother.

As with all...don't overdo it...but allow you to really push that...the family legacy.

# 23 JeffHCross @ 02/07/09 05:17 PM

Great write-up, but one disagreement. *MOST* college football fans are not hardcore. *MOST* NCAA gamers are not hardcore. I went to Ohio State and was once of the few (even counting that the majority of my friends were student section members) that cared about either real-life recruiting or NCAA. The majority of the NCAA gamers I met were pick-up-and-play-ers. One of them even went so far to edit the Ohio State team to all 99 OVRs so he could dominate.

The simulation market is ridiculously small compared to the casual market. I agree that EA could and should do a better job of courting both, but they do have to give options for the casual gamer.

Look at it another way. Even the most hardcore NCAA gamer might not be interested in recruiting. He might just like playing the games. You've got to have options for all.

But otherwise, very good article.

# 24 JeffHCross @ 02/07/09 05:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TrevJo


	You guys are nuts on the ATH thing. Recognizing what position an ATH is going to be good at is as easy as breathing.

Not so. I recruited a 3-star athlete who's ratings were show as if he were an FS. He was a 72 at FS, and 70 or so at CB. Normal, right?

He's an 81 at QB. 88 THP, 80 THA.

# 25 Sportsbuck @ 02/07/09 06:03 PM

I'd like to expand on the ATH point Chris.

Make it so that players aren't just good at one position when they come in, make them be able to play at multiple. Not all players end up playing at where they came in. For example, Anthony Gonzalez and Ted Ginn, Jr. were both recruited as CB's and ended up being first round picks at WR. They should obviously have a position where they are listed at but they should be able to have good ratings at the other spots as well.

# 26 ballaspence9493 @ 02/08/09 11:37 PM

i agree with a couple people on here on the matter that there should be busts and jems. this is needed or else big schools become dominant in ncaa as years progress.

# 27 lawsindell @ 02/09/09 12:58 PM

Some improvements I've been stewing on for a while, recruiting and otherwise:

- The ability to spend more time recruiting and less time practicing (or vice versa) if you so choose during the season. For example, if a season is totally shot for me, I would love to throw myself into recruiting to build for the future, but the fact is that I can't recruit any more than anyone else. You should have the option of neglecting your current team (with a corresponding risk that your play would suffer) in order to spend more time recruiting. This is absolutely a choice that real-life programs have to make every year and it would add a little variety to the seasons.

- The ability to work on certain things in practice during the season (and in the off-season, for that matter). For instance, one of my dynasty teams is the worst tackling team in NCAA history. Honestly, I've never seen anything quite like it. Even if I control the defensive player and lay into a diminutive running back full on, there's about a 75% chance I'm going to bounce right off of him. The problem is: how do you improve team tackling? You can't. You just have to get through the season and hope your recruiting and off-season improvements (which are totally random) solve the problem for you. I wish they'd take a cue from the NFL Head Coach game and allow you to focus on specific issues each week in practice. This would also address the ATH problem that everyone here seems to be dealing with. You could use practice to take an ATH who was an option QB in high school and turn him into the WR you need by spending time teaching him routes and running catching drills.

- Specific tasks for players. You should have a Game Strategy option each week where you can assign specific tasks to specific players that would override the play you call for that player. Besides the obvious benefit of correcting the ridiculous over-effectiveness of the option, it could help you deal with all sorts of things: a scrambling QB, a star WR, a dominant pass-rushing DE (if such a thing existed), etc. and then the other team would have to make adjustments instead of just relying on the same thing all game (a crime I'm as guilty of as anyone - even if I hate myself for it).

- Hiring and running a staff. How cool would it be to try and steal other gamers' offensive coordinators or hotshot recruiters? Or you could go out and hire the hot new DC and get some exotic new scheme by bringing him in. It would also be a way to help you improve specific areas of your team. Your team full of young, inexperienced LBs? Go out and hire Jim Ryan as your LB coach to turn them into All-Americans. Of course, you'd have to have a budget so you'd have to make choices and compromises, but, man, that would be awesome.

- In general, there should be more mid-week tasks for you to play with. Player discipline issues, booster issues, media issues, etc. The old "play, recruit, play, recruit, play, recruit, play, recruit" routine gets a little old - especially when recruiting sucks.

There's just a few thoughts I've had.

# 28 hustle55 @ 02/09/09 02:23 PM

Make ATHs, Athletes i really hope they do this in Ncaa 10

# 29 NikB13 @ 02/09/09 03:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hustle55


	Make ATHs, Athletes i really hope they do this in Ncaa 10

Me too. Your 100% right!!!

# 30 moyae84 @ 02/09/09 05:04 PM

In regards to ATHs, I agree that there should be some kind of list of positions they project at, but I'm surprised nobody has said anything about how you recruit ATHs. There are tons of athletes that turn down schools because they want to play WR instead of CB. I'd love to be able to pick a position to recruit them at.

There are several offseason things that are missing in NCAA, most notably camps and spring games. Camps would be a great way to get recruits in and actually run them through drills and how they do in drills will let you see what their potential or strengths are. You could also use it to gauge what position an ATH projects at.

Spring ball, while not really a recruiting addition, would basically be similar to training camp but teams always invite recruits to it.

There should also be unofficial visits. Even though recruits aren't on officials they are routinely issued sideline passes to games and are chatted with by the coaches.

Speaking of coaches, it's been mentioned before about hiring a staff. Expand on that. Assistant coaches should have stats on how well they recruit but also what region they recruit. Normally assistants are assigned a geographic region where they try to hit hard like Texas, California, Ohio Valley, etc. Say I'm head coach at BYU I could hire an assistant from TCU as a coordinator and he would get a bonus for recruiting Texas because he has ties to that region.

It was mentioned about early enrollees. Definitely should be added since it's becoming a more and more popular option. Also JUCO players should be on a seperate list.

# 31 atlplayboy23 @ 02/09/09 06:16 PM

I agree with the op that will make recruiting much more fun. But I dont think we will ever see half of that stuff

# 32 Special27K @ 02/09/09 06:20 PM

I have a huge beef with recruiting piplines in the game, schools in actuallity rarely have a whole state as a pipeline and when they do it's often the home state. Universities' pipelines are more oriented to single HS's or cities.

Ex. OSU --- Glennville HS in Cleveland, OH
Ex. Miami --- Northwestern HS in Miami, FL
Ex. Michigan --- Massilon, OH

Now it's unrealistic to have all these HS in the game too but, I'm willing to settle for city/town pipelines. That could easily be done since the game already lists many for players hometowns. Possibly even get regional state pipelines if they could hold enough city pipelines in an area.

I would like to see assistant coaches be a part of dynasty's and recruiting. Coaches could be randomly generated for all I care and should have aspects like QB, RB, WR/TE, OL coaching abilities as well as have a hometown. The hometown obviously could sway kids from the area and coaching abilities could sway position kids.

As for the head coach I've always portrayed that as myself and there needs to be a create a coach option and a random generator for the rest of the schools.

Bring back the "Discipline and Potential" ratings of players. I would also like to see some kind of a gpa or test score to tie in academic eligability. I want to see a few 4* & 5* guys with low grades or poor discipline that will make some schools stray from and a morale rating how clutch a player is. It would bring in great realism.

Addressing the family ties idea, I think it would be great but, how could they program that it sounds awefully complicated to keep track of that if it just wasn't randomly generated.

Junior recruiting, I love the idea of it and I think it would tie in perfectly with my new pipeline idea's. As well as give some smaller schools a better shot at landing a bigtime recruit.

More diverse pitches are needed. I'm going to list some new ones with some type of explanation and which ones we need to keep.

Academics - tie to recruits gpa
Campus Life Style - ties to maybe discipline
Coach Prestige - tie into career record, bowl record, conference and national championships
Coach Experience - record vs top25, rivals, time spent as a coach
Conference Prestige - this goes with your conf bowl record and number of national championships
Conference Competition - less competition more likely hood of winning record/BCS game (Big East) or more competition better bowl game/NC... something along those lines help me tweak out that idea if you want
Top Program/Program On the Rise -some kids want to be part of a championship team now or help build a championship team
Playing Time - depth at certain position
Player Development - ties to coaches position coaching abilities the new pro factority
Coaching System - do you go 5 wide and go big or play for 3yds and a cloud of dust, do play a bend and not break d or do you rattle the qb and play bump n' run. Depends on player's ability
Staff/Program Stability - what's the likely hood that you're gonna be there in 4 years when the kid graduate's, are a contender this year and lowly bottom dweller the next season
Training Facilities - what's practice field and weight room like ties to potential
Fan Base - I'm fuzzy on an atribute this ties to maybe morale

I want the to be able to retire numbers or reserve numbers for special position players in like a promise. Some teams have numbers on reserve and if not you can create a tradition.

Ex. Syracuse --- #44 is reserved for special RB's because of Jim Brown etc.

Ex. Michigan --- #1 is being reserved on offense for WR i.e. Braylon Edwards. #2 is reserved for impact defensive stars/leaders Charles Woodson

I'm sure this isn't everything but, its a good dent of the ideas I have.

# 33 USF11 @ 02/09/09 09:20 PM

Recruiting needs to be faster. The load times and repetitive nature of the new system makes multiplayer dynasties a long boring process.

I wish there was a way to upgrade and maintain school values such as facilities and stadiums. Incorporate BCS money or something.

The process needs to be faster though.

# 34 youALREADYknow @ 02/09/09 09:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by USF11


	Recruiting needs to be faster. The load times and repetitive nature of the new system makes multiplayer dynasties a long boring process. I wish there was a way to upgrade and maintain school values such as facilities and stadiums. Incorporate BCS money or something. The process needs to be faster though.

I'd argue that the process should take even more time. Recruiting is the single most important aspect of a college football program. For those like yourself who don't enjoy recruiting, the game already has built-in CPU control.

# 35 deadlyCane @ 02/09/09 10:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by youALREADYknow


	I'd argue that the process should take even more time. Recruiting is the single most important aspect of a college football program. For those like yourself who don't enjoy recruiting, the game already has built-in CPU control.

Agreed.

I'm going to stop reading your posts. You make way too much and all I keep doing is saying "I agree with youALREADYknow" or "that's exactly how I feel"...lol!

# 36 jcraig33 @ 02/10/09 12:39 PM

1) I think hiring a staff should be a must. College Hoops 2k8 was great for this. Your hired assistants that would fit specific needs. Usually one to scout, one to recruit. The more success you had, the more quality assistants you would get.
2) I also hate the current "athlete" prospect. I also agree that you should have some flexibility in where you can play them. I would also like to have the flexibility to change their position later without a huge drop. I understand that the current awareness drop in a position change covers some of that, but it's dumb that if you change a player from a halfback to a fullback their speed drops from 88 to 65 and their acceleration or agility will drop too. Strength and blocking ability dropping relative to the position is one thing, but why would their speed drop that much?
3) The end of season signing, and the soft commits that you have to pay attention to would be great. Verbal agreements are only are not binding, and players switch all the time. I would like to see the "hat's on the table" thing too, if only for the highest level prospects or maybe the top 25 prospects. You don't want to over do it.
4) I also would like to see better AI by the computer in signing players. At least in past gen games, when you would switch teams you would see like 12 WR's and 3 rb's, and two of those RB's were horrible, probably walk-on's.
5) Last thing, I also would like to see an emphasis on systems, offensive and defensive. I like the idea of there being a plus or bonus for a "rising program", even if the first few years are lean. I do think to reach realism, the elite programs will take most the elite prospects and when starting out at a less than stellar program it should be hard to even sniff 4 or 5 stars. BUT, I think the aforementioned "recruiting staff" element should be able to offset that somewhat. A dynamite recruiter can work wonders.

# 37 jdrhammer @ 02/10/09 03:55 PM

I like the idea of trying to recruit more or put more emphasis on recruiting if you wish but no coach in their right mind cashes in his chips and doesn't prepare his team as much as possible during the season. They may write off some of the SR's that aren't producing and play more young guys but you never practice less or coach less throughout the season. Not an option. However, if there was a way we could devote more time to recruiting like how there was a % on the old gen. If I only needed a class of 12 like I do this season, I would make my % less than normal but when I need a bigger class I would use more.

# 38 HuskerHero @ 02/19/09 03:39 AM

The one thing i would really like to see in the new game would be improved Junior college recruiting. Keep the normal top 100 players and the prospect database for the high school players, and add a Junior college top 50-100, 50 would be just fine. And make the JUCO players that are 5 and 4 stars ratings atleast 5 points higher than the High school 4 and 5 star players. Im not saying make ever juco 4 and 5 star better than the HS players but most of them should be. I dont like to recruit JUCO players in the current game because most of them will never see the field for my teams, i will only go after them if they are in the top 20 players in the nation. I think it would make the game alot better being able to get an instant impact player out of the JUCO ranks.

# 39 nexdawg @ 02/19/09 05:42 PM

I like the recruiting system! They need a few bells and whistles via a national signing day more competative cpu recruiting and im happy there!

# 40 nikka @ 02/20/09 12:50 AM

You also can't over do it I agree with chris
They really need to put an emphasis on in-state recruiting, recruiting hot bed areas, areas you generally do well in, national recruiting, and bring back the map as main recruiting screen with hot beds,pipelines (specific areas i.e. corner of neighboring state) highlighted. sorry for the typing on ps3 lol

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