For giving assignments to coaches to run practice, scouting and recruiting. Would you rather use a coach with high player development or a coach who has better offense and defense ratings? Not sure which option would be best for the practice assignment.

Reputation rating is most important, then for your practice coach I would go with Player Dev.

Is reputation rating most important for all of them?

What are the Offense/Defense ratings used for in the college game? In the pro game, it's a scouting indicator, but the college game already comes with a scouting rating.

Intuitively, I want to say Offense/Defense is tied to players' system acclimation improvement whilst Player Development is for individual ratings of skills, but I don't know if that's right.

Why is Reputation the most important rating? That seems odd to me.

I really don't know how off/def skill ratings affect player development/practice/game play, but I assign the guy with the highest player development rating for my practice coach.

When hiring an assistant I look at a mix of "reputation" and the skill rating (player dev, recruiting, or scouting) for the position that I'm hiring the coach. Since I typically coach at colleges with low budgets, I normally can't afford to hire a coach with a high reputation rating so then my focus shifts more heavily to the specific skill rating for the assistant position that coach will be filling.

PG makes a good point. A difference of a point or three for Reputation is no big deal. I go with Player Development with other things being about equal.

I have always wondered if it was better (reputation being roughly equal) to have an assistant with solid across the board ratings or just get the guy who has a 40 something in say recruiting and a 20 in everything else because that's a cheaper hire.

In that situation I go for the guy with the high number in the area I want him in.

When trying to work within the budget I find myself hiring new coaches quite often because they either retire or leave or I get rid of them to find higher ratings. I don't know that I have ever had a 'long time assistant' but it seems quite a few of the more successful college coaches have that guy in real life. He would be the guy with the average or worse ambition but good ratings in an area that makes him valuable but still he is affordable on my budget. Is anyone else able to do that?

It might be easier to identify those guys for your staff and add a bit of depth if coaches had some kind of affinity factor... like you graduated from the same school or you have the same coaching philosophy or you are from the same coaching tree. If that could be somehow identified as part of the coaching information and then used by the program (yeah I am a developer so this game is a fun program to me...) to give you a little discount when you try to sign a coach.... or just a little advantage to get him and keep him around... that would be interesting. What do you think?

Interesting idea. Next winter, when Gary starts looking for ideas for DDS:CB 2020, I will post something asking people for ideas to pass along to him. This is definitely one worth his consideration.