High School Recruits - Thoughts

[Hoos]

My question/concern- Are there enough recruits in the game? Regardless of how many scholarships there are to fill by the 117 (?) teams, I don't feel like there are enough recruits to choose from overall. In the demo, I took over Virginia and had something like 20 QB's available in the region and 3 in the state. Working through the recruiting stages I missed out on 2 of the 3 who committed in the middle weeks (why couldn't my guys have shown up for the VT game- very true to life, by the way). Coming down to the last 2 weeks of recruiting, there were only 4 QB's left on the entire east coast... I know it's a game and the term "realism" is bandied about too often, but to me this affects the "immersion factor" in recruiting when you have to go after the 1 guy left. Even if the players stink, I think it adds a lot if you are able to decide among bad players... Which of the local kids do you offer a scholarship to. Maybe there is someone with good stats but poor rankings that might be a sleeper. Do you go after a kid with good athleticism but poor position skills... (I also had a punter problem, where there were 3 left in the entire country in the last week.) I haven't tried other schools yet, but I will also raise this question in the context of taking over a bottom-feeder school. Virginia is middle of the road, but if you were to recruit from a Duke for example this issue might be even more apparent since you may face the problem of having to recruit the last available guy at multiple positions, year after year. Size and database issues aside (and I realize they may exist), my opinion is that there should be dozens of players at every position that never get offered a scholarship. These guys should wind up as walk-ons on the various rosters or vanish at the end of the recruiting stage (ie. attend Div I-AA, II, III schools).

[Tim Plum]

As a player that takes UVA constantly I agree with the framework of the question but not the actual question part of the realism and "work" in the recruiting phase is to find those nuggets across the country, although in the one season demo you don't see that recruiting changes from year to year, while this year the Qb choices are few next year that may change.

[coachcbj]

Thats kind of weird that happen. I wonder if its a region thing. Im playing a San Jose St. And on the west coast I had plenty of recruits to choose from. Being a small school I never even looked at other region unless a player emailed me to look at him. But I had over a page of recruits for evey position in the west. And Almost at least half a page per position for just California. So I wonder if it has something to with the regions. YOu figure, Cali, TX, and FL are the big recruiting areas. Or maybe its just the demo....

[HerdFan]

I've been messing around with the recruiting pools (simming through my single season over and over again) and it can vary greatly from year to year. One season may have a major dearth of talented players in a particular state or region and the next there could be an over-abundance. The only thing you can really do is check the depth of the recruiting class in a particular region early in the season and be prepared.

[gopokes]

zero recruits from certain states has anybody noticed that there are no recruits from certain states? In the season i'm running right now there are no recruits from the states of Wyoming and West Virginia. I'm wondering if this is just a random thing or if this might be a bug. I know that Wyoming isn't even listed as being in the state of Wyoming but rather in Wisconsin. I'm not sure about West Virginia. I just thought that maybe there might be correlation between the two instances.

[Tim Plum]

thanks gopokes ya we saw this one too in beta, I will repost your comment for Arlie.

[gopokes]

thanks tim