I'm totally without a clue on how grades work. There is nothing in-game that explains how and when academic suspensions could occur (I think Dec 31 is one date). Also, what do the STUDY MORE and TUTOR options actually do? Does your academic rating and/or the academic rating of your school modify what happens? I do know that grades go up or down randomly, almost independent of STUDY MORE and TUTORING. When should players study? What are the BIG DATES? If tell them to STUDY for more than a week, they respond 'something else won't get done'. What does that mean? Do players ACADEMIC ratings play a role in their grades?

Academic ratings for your school do not play a part the grades your players get once they are at your school. They can affect the interest level of recruits and of course, the GPA minimums for your school affect which recruits qualify to accept scholarships for your school. The academic rating of your school is not dependent on the grades your players get...it won't change. Stanford will remain an A no matter what and Podunk U will remain a D no matter what.

A recruit who comes to you with a good GPA and/or SAT scores out of H.S. or JC is normally going to do pretty well once he gets into your college. The reverse may often be true for those coming to you who have had low GPA's and/or low SAT scores...so be prepared to handle that.

Beginning on Sept 1, you can begin to direct your players to get tutoring or to study more for 1-4 weeks at a crack. Their responses are a reflection of their personalities and interest or lack thereof in academics. Saying that something else will suffer (won't get done) may be a valid point...maybe they won't become more familiar with sets as quickly as they otherwise would have if they are focusing studying and being tutored. For some, maybe their relationship with you as coach will suffer if they really don't want to study and get good grades.

Most players grades will improve with tutoring, although it may take several weeks or months to really help. Players grades will improve less with telling them to study more, but most will have marginal improvement after weeks or months of that.

Grades are released at the end of a term (end of December and April (within DDSCB all schools are shown to be on "semester" rather that "quarter" academic schedule), but if you wait until just before that to direct them to study more or get a tutor, just realize they have had several weeks of classes, reports, projects, and tests and the interim grades derived from those, and while those internal grades do not show up in GPA modifications throughout the term, they do affect the final grade, so it might be a little late to achieve much of a change.

As to the grades being "random", it's just like in real life, individual's do better at times and worse at times depending on many things...the courses they are taking, their attention at the time, the amount they study, outside influences, and their abilities.

Thanks for all that, it is helpful.

Grades do change, mostly going down, during the year. Whenever a kid gets down to about 2.3, I tell him to study and he bounces back to 2.5 and stays there. That was at Richmond, a top school. I switched over to UL Lafayette and boy is that a change! Lots of grade drops. No matter what I did, one player dropped to 1.9 in December. I reloaded and tried again, having everybody at 2.3 and lower study for two weeks and all got better. So the kid at 2.5 dropped to 1.9! That will show me.

I think you are right about learning the offense and defense. There has to be a trade off.

I wondered about the Spring term. After seeing what my recruits looked like, I noticed FIVE players (including the earliest flunk out) are now on academic suspension for the next full year. My fault because I stopped paying attention to anything except landing my third recruit. However that is a tale for a different post as getting that last commitment was tedious and ultimately flawed. I do think I learned some valuable things there, however.