Comments on Recruiting

[Scott Vibert]

[QUOTE=SkyDog]He said that in most programs, the head coach and the offensive and defensive coordinators meet on Friday nights to go over last minute details of game plans, etc., but that pretty much every assistant fans out to high school games. [/QUOTE] I actually suspected that this was true and it makes sense. The coaches who are chiefly responsible for strategy, the Head Coach (which is your role in Bowl Bound) and the top two assistants (the Coordinators) spend their Friday's during the season worrying about the strategy. While the other coaches, the ones who have less in the way of game day responsibility, are the ones who are recruiting/scouting during the season. As mentioned previously you are just one person in Bowl Bound, and your job title is Head Coach; one of those guys who'll be spending his Friday Night worrying about the game plan, and not spending as much time scouting/visiting (and not nearly as much time as he'll spend during bye weeks/the offseason). In the game you will ultimately have the responsibilty for doing the jobs of both the strategy portion of the coaching staff (Head Coach and top Assistants) as well as the recruiting functions other 6-8 Assistants and Grad Assistants. Essentially to throw everything together, it's asking the human to do the job of an entire 10-man coaching staff and IMO it's just too much. (Particularly for something that is supposed to be a game, and not work!) I am a College Football fan. I live for the Saturday's, the games, the tailgates and watching/rooting for my team to win. I'm not a recruiting fan. I follow it, I have a decent interest in it, and it's great when my team comes up with a big recruit. But I don't go to the combines to watch the recruits run. I don't go to High School Football Practices (unless I'm the coach) to watch recruits do drills. I watch the games. To me College Football is Saturday... even if the majority of the work that brings results on Saturday's takes place Friday Night, I am playing the game primarily to live out Saturday. I don't dispute that recruiting is a year round activity and the primary focus of the staff even during the season (especially for those assistants who are not coordinators responsible for a game plan and the head coach). But what you seem to be pushing is more of a recruiting sim, with a football game in the background. I'd rather have a football sim, where recruiting is a big part of the job, but not overwhelmingly so. As a result I'm willing to make the tradeoff of abstracting the scouting during the season to tracking recruits performance through their stats, and performing most of my recruiting actions (calls etc) during the offseason, when I can devote my full energies to recruiting, without missing out on the "Saturday" experience that is my primary motivation for playing the game. I know it may not be completely realistic for me to spend more of my energy during the season on the games then on recruiting, but ultimately I want to play the game primarily for that Saturday experience, the thrill of the big upset or the bowl win, the disappointment of a late loss to a rival. Obviously recruiting the players who'll be part of my team is a significant portion of getting that big win, but I'm ok with devoting most of my energies to that in the offseason, and reserving the bulk of my in season time for the "good stuff". Your mileage may vary.

[SkyDog]

[QUOTE=Scott Vibert] I am a College Football fan. I live for the Saturday's, the games, the tailgates and watching/rooting for my team to win. I'm not a recruiting fan. I follow it, I have a decent interest in it, and it's great when my team comes up with a big recruit. But I don't go to the combines to watch the recruits run. I don't go to High School Football Practices (unless I'm the coach) to watch recruits do drills. I watch the games. To me College Football is Saturday... even if the majority of the work that brings results on Saturday's takes place Friday Night, I am playing the game primarily to live out Saturday.[/QUOTE]Right now, at 10:18pm on a Thursday night, there are 48 registered users at FOFC, 67 registered users at OOTP, 6 registered users at GDS--and some of those are surely overlaps. Meanwhile, at [i][u]just the UGA rivals.com pay site[/u][/i], there are 200 registered users. What are they talking about? Here are the top dozen threads on the board right now: [quote] Any pictures of Chasman "Ox" Davis" What Are You Hearing On Sapp and Geathers? What's Up With Akeem Hebron? I see he likes Georgia from "watching them on TV." Any news on Stafford? Pope for Heisman. Can it be done? The Elite qb camp in Atlanta today? I'm really impressed with how hard this incoming freshman class is working out. Nervous about Boise State? A quick update on Carlos Brown Poll: Should Richt dismiss Swain? When Is The Elite 11 coming out? I've been working on an update on this kid for two weeks now.[/quote]Again, I'd say that there is a HUGE untapped market of people who are very, very serious about recruiting--and note that only one of the threads is about the Class of 2005 (which is what it appears we'll be working with in Bowl Bound at this point in the season). Eight of twelve threads are about the Class of 2006.

[Strrngboy]

[QUOTE=Scott Vibert] I am a College Football fan. I live for the Saturday's, the games, the tailgates and watching/rooting for my team to win. I'm not a recruiting fan. I follow it, I have a decent interest in it, and it's great when my team comes up with a big recruit. But I don't go to the combines to watch the recruits run. I don't go to High School Football Practices (unless I'm the coach) to watch recruits do drills. I watch the games. To me College Football is Saturday... even if the majority of the work that brings results on Saturday's takes place Friday Night, I am playing the game primarily to live out Saturday. [/QUOTE] Besides, its the wins and losses that attract great recruits and not just the knowledge of who is going to be potentially good player. If it were all about recruiting, then any school would have a chance to win the National Championship. In other words, its the school's prestige through the wins and losses on the field that plays the biggest role in recruiting players.

[SkyDog]

[QUOTE=Strrngboy]Besides, its the wins and losses that attract great recruits and not just the knowledge of who is going to be potentially good player. If it were all about recruiting, then any school would have a chance to win the National Championship. In other words, its the school's prestige through the wins and losses on the field that plays the biggest role in recruiting players.[/QUOTE]Chicken/egg.

[SkyDog]

Just checked Texas's paysite. I can't read the threads as I'm not a subscriber there, but I can see the titles and registered users. 458 registered users there right now, and most of the topped threads, and nearly all of the stickies, appear to be about 2006 recruiting.

[Arlie Rahn]

[QUOTE=SkyDog]Just checked Texas's paysite. I can't read the threads as I'm not a subscriber there, but I can see the titles and registered users. 458 registered users there right now, and most of the topped threads, and nearly all of the stickies, appear to be about 2006 recruiting.[/QUOTE] That's because it's the offseason. Check that board on OKlahoma weekend and see how many threads are on recruits ;) If I had made the decision to have the gamer manage a slew of 10-11 assistants like in real life, there probably would have been more micromanagement for in-season recruiting. In BBCF, you have a head coach (yourself), an OC, a DC and ST coach. These guys are primarily focused on having their areas ready for Saturday. Now, will these guys get reports on how recruits are doing, some stats and their their overall interest level in the school during the week before a big game? Sure, but that will also be in BBCF. But it's not like the DC for Minnesota is going to go fly out to some High School football game the Friday night before they play Michigan or Wisconsin. And, remember, there will be recruiting monitoring that goes on during the season in BBCF - which is a main part of what the Head coach does during the season. The only difference is when the major activities by the head coach occur involving each recruit individually - and that's been moved to the offseason. As others have stated, it is not feasible to mimic every aspect of college football and recruiting in a game and have people want to play it. I would also be willing to bet that of all those people on recruiting boards, maybe 5-10% would change their mind on purchasing the game if recruiting was done prior to the season and in season as opposed to in the offseason. The bigger hurdle is having them learn more about the text sim genre and decide if playing a sports sim game on the PC is something they would enjoy doing. If the answer is "yes" to that and I do a good job making sure the game works as advertised, I expect a vast majority would be just as happy playing a game with recruiting actions after the season as they would with in-season recruiting.

[SkyDog]

[QUOTE=Arlie Rahn] If I had made the decision to have the gamer manage a slew of 10-11 assistants like in real life, there probably would have been more micromanagement for in-season recruiting.[/QUOTE]That's not the point. The point is that the text sim is a scaled-down version of real life. What would be desired is if every aspect of a coaching staff would be scaled down equally. What appears to be happening is that gameplanning is being scaled down to, say, 1/1,000th scale, but that recruiting is being scaled down to, say, 1/100,000th scale. A college coach says that it is THE most important thing they do, and it is getting the short shrift. That's what I'm reacting against. [QUOTE]I would also be willing to bet that of all those people on recruiting boards, maybe 5-10% would change their mind on purchasing the game if recruiting was done prior to the season and in season as opposed to in the offseason. The bigger hurdle is having them learn more about the text sim genre and decide if playing a sports sim game on the PC is something they would enjoy doing. If the answer is "yes" to that and I do a good job making sure the game works as advertised, I expect a vast majority would be just as happy playing a game with recruiting actions after the season as they would with in-season recruiting.[/QUOTE]Your expectations are off, Arlie. I floated TCY in front of this crowd a couple of years ago or so, and the feedback was that there wasn't enough attention given to recruiting. As spartan as the gameplanning system is in that game, very few said anything about it, and even fewer complained about playcalling. Most comments centered around there not being enough in-season recruiting flavor, and questions about what additional recruiting options happened during the offseason--followed by incredulity that there weren't Junior Days, summer camps, combines and the like. And by the way, it sounds like you'd be mighty surprised as to how much recruiting talk there is *during* the season on those boards. Stafford will continue to get multiple threads every day until he makes a decision--whenever that is. Plus, guys are forever asking, "Who's seen so-and-so play this fall? Does he really look like a 4.4 guy? Give us an update!" The interest is intense, and it is year-round, believe me.

[Tayhey]

Boy clicked on this thread and missed about an hour of work just reading it. Both Sky Dog and Arlie bring up good points and here, for what it is worth, is my take on it. Sky Dog you are looking for a game as realistic as possible to the real world of college football. A game that a true college football "junkie" would enjoy and get into. Arlie is trying to design a game that will appeal to as many people as possible. Arlie has to look at what the "average" college football fan/sports gamer would enjoy. Lets face it, recruiting is a year round aspect for college coaches today. Once one recruiting group is signed, the summer camps start and a new group is looked at. I do not know how many people would enjoy that. Realistic..sure. The problem would be like that of TCY, and why I put it up. It just seemed like being on an endless cycle, if recruiting was broken up, it would give the game a feeling of "starting fresh". I have experience in coaching at the college level, albeit, at a small school, but I look forward to recruiting being broken up and put after the season. Even if you are having a bad season, any game that is won or lost should impact recruiting. Every aspect of the game could be tweaked to be more realistic. We could have game plans that go down to individual matchups and make that more complex. But what Arlie has to be concerned with, whether we want to admit it, is how to make his product appealing to the most people. To sell the most games. The majority of people will not care about the realism being a little off. But in Arlies opinion those people will enjoy the game more with the recruiting being split up. The more people that but the game the more likely we will see BBCF 2.

[SkyDog]

Heh. Stafford has called a press conference for 3pm today to make his announcement.

[Scott Vibert]

The rivals website is focused and dedicated on recruiting, so of course the subscribers there will share your passion for it, it's only natural that they'd want to see more of a focus there; after all they care enough to pay a monthly fee to read about recruiting year round. A recruiting heavy game with football in the backdrop doesn't interest me. As I mentioned, to me the biggest thing is Saturday. I'm playing the game for Saturday, the fans in the stands, the games. I also play the game to relax... I don't want to feel like I have to work, just to "play" a game. I don't want to be doing 11 people's jobs at once. I want to set the game plans, watch the games, manage my lineups, maybe even call the plays in key spots, I want to experience Saturday. At the same time though I do want to be able to spend my time pouring over the recruits that are going to make or break me in the year ahead. I just don't want to be pulling my hair out because of all the multi-tasking. Most Head Coaches spend more then 12 hours a day on their job... because of the dual focused nature of their jobs. I don't want to simulate that (again I play to relax, not to work)!... as a result I'm fine with seperating recruiting and gameplanning into seperate areas of the season, so that I don't have to divide my focus and can still play the game to enjoy the "Saturday's" without compromising my teams future.

[SkyDog]

[QUOTE=Scott Vibert]The rivals website is focused and dedicated on recruiting, so of course the subscribers there will share your passion for it, it's only natural that they'd want to see more of a focus there; after all they care enough to pay a monthly fee to read about recruiting year round.[/QUOTE]Actually, it is more of general UGA talk. Their subscriber message board is generally recognized as the #1 place for serious fans to discuss UGA football--whether it is a debate on the benefits of the stretch play versus tossing the sweep, a request for a firsthand opinion of a Junior CB down in Tifton, the place to gather to await the results of Kregg Lumpkin's MRI, or a heated debate on whether Richt should finally suspend Swain this time. I really have no idea how someone can be a fan of a college football team and *not* follow their recruiting, though.

[Tayhey]

Personally, I think the deciding on the stretch or the toss sweep depends on your backs field vision and cut back ability. I am a big fan of the stretch play, but you need the right back to run it. I consider myself a college football fan, and I do not know a single person you just talked about. Do I know who my favorite schools are recruiting right now? I know some of the recruits, but for the most part I have no idea who they are recruiting. Do I have any clue who the best recruits are coming out of high school this year, outside of my local area...no. Do I consider myself less of a fan because of it ....no. There are different levels of fans. I am sure the majority of college football "fans" could not tell you much about there schools recruits. Like I posted earlier this is the type of fan that Arlie has to target with this game. Those of us that love college football, but do not have the time not desire to get into all the fine aspects of the game. There is nothing wrong with having a passion, and I do have mine, it is not college football recruiting.. It does not make me less of a *fan*.

[SkyDog]

[QUOTE=Tayhey]Personally, I think the deciding on the stretch or the toss sweep depends on your backs field vision and cut back ability. I am a big fan of the stretch play, but you need the right back to run it.[/quote]Agreed, but Richt has a stubborn love for the stretch play--period. His stated logic is that it helps freeze the linebackers on the play action, but I still fail to understand how tossing the sweep two or three times a game would have *that* much of an impact on play action passing. Barring severe injury, even casual fans will know who Stafford is within the next 24 months.

[Arlie Rahn]

[QUOTE=SkyDog]What appears to be happening is that gameplanning is being scaled down to, say, 1/1,000th scale, but that recruiting is being scaled down to, say, 1/100,000th scale. [/QUOTE] If you break up the game into 45 weeks, you will basically have the following breakdowns: Gameplanning and playcalling: Heavy for 11-12 weeks Light for 1-2 weeks Recruiting: Heavy for 10 weeks mid-range for 3-4 weeks Light for 15-17 weeks So, if you look at the amount of time available to get into recruiting in BBCF as opposed to that of gameplanning, it's much more. So, I don't buy the premise that recruiting is scaled down all that much from a complexity standpoint. In fact, the more I read what you are saying and compare it to what BBCF is doing, the more I see differences being that: - I would like recruiting spread out over 25-30 weeks, with most of the complex work housed in a 10-week timeframe in the offseason. -You would like recruiting spread out over 40-50 weeks, with the complex work evenly distributed throughout the early offseason and season timeframe. Now, while they are certainly different stances on recruiting, I don't see one as being necessarily "dumbed down" or "easier" than the other. It just seems that my way consolidates much of the work over a shorter period of time. [QUOTE]Your expectations are off, Arlie. I floated TCY in front of this crowd a couple of years ago or so, and the feedback was that there wasn't enough attention given to recruiting.[/QUOTE] Again, BBCF is not going to be TCY (for better or worse). It has been setup with a completely different design. I would say that it's probably safer to see what the feedback is on the recruiting aspect of BBCF before assuming people will view it in the same manner they viewed TCY.

[SkyDog]

[QUOTE=Arlie Rahn]mid-range for 3-4 weeks Light for 15-17 weeks[/QUOTE]1. What's the "mid-range" time? 2. Realistically, without anything to actually DO during the "light" time other than just look, my strong suspicion is that most people will just give the prospect list a passing glance until there is actually something to do. The only time I see myself looking at an eye candy recruit list is if I'm trying to decide whether or not to red-shirt a player, and all other aspects of the decision are split down the middle. Then (and probably only then) would I say, "Hmmmm...I wonder if I might be able to land a stud from my state/region this year..." If having the list available doesn't demand that action be taken based on it, it is likely to be viewed as largely irrelevant at the time.

[dime]

>Again, BBCF is not going to be TCY (for better or worse). > Nothing wrong with that...the fear is that it's going to be a re-badged TPF, with the pro draft swapped out for an isolated recruiting phase. I don't think what Sky Dog is selling is realistic for this game, but I definately think recruiting in this game should be closer to his vision. I don't really know what the current vision is, you look but don't touch all year, and after the bowl games you do some active recruiting? I don't want to criticize it because we really don't know what it is...only what it is not. I worry that by the time we DO know what it's like, we'll hear that it's too late to change it. Hopefully it will be great, but all I'm reading so far is rationalizations for why it's *not* this or that.

[Mr T Jobs To Me]

I agree that recruiting should be a very big part of the game, but my only concern is that the more in depth it gets for the player, the easier it will be to "out-recruit" the computer. All I really want is to be able to play this game without setting a bunch of "house rules" against myself because recruiting is too easy. The way I see it, even if college programs couldn't recruit until the offseason in real life, it wouldn't have that profound of an effect on where recruits go, so it isn't of paramount importance to me WHEN I recruit as opposed to how realistic the results I can get are. I want the top programs to resort to taking the 3 star recruits if some of their main targets signed away, I want other mid-level programs to be reaching for the same 4 star local prospect who just doesn't want to leave his momma that I'm trying to get. If this game gets that right, than I'm happy.