Call List vs Watch List

[MrHoncho]

Searched the forum for an answer, but never really saw the difference answered.

I understand that the call list will have the recruit contacted for the $5, per week, and can help with interest in your school, but what is the Watch List, outside of just not costing $5? Is anything happening? Is there a reason to have a guy on your Call List, but not your Watch List?

I was going through recruiting, and kind of wanted a way to highlight players I had heavy interest in (high to tremendous work ethic, potential ratings that line up with my team, gpa not in murky water), so I thought about only having those more select guys on my Watch List, and then keeping the Call List full of potential guys that I still want to contact weekly. Am I losing out on anything not having prospects on both lists? Does the watch list represent more scouting of a player, essentially, or is it just a place to group players?

[CoachC]

Searched the forum for an answer, but never really saw the difference answered.

I understand that the call list will have the recruit contacted for the $5, per week, and can help with interest in your school, but what is the Watch List, outside of just not costing $5? Is anything happening? Is there a reason to have a guy on your Call List, but not your Watch List?

I was going through recruiting, and kind of wanted a way to highlight players I had heavy interest in (high to tremendous work ethic, potential ratings that line up with my team, gpa not in murky water), so I thought about only having those more select guys on my Watch List, and then keeping the Call List full of potential guys that I still want to contact weekly. Am I losing out on anything not having prospects on both lists? Does the watch list represent more scouting of a player, essentially, or is it just a place to group players?

If a player is only on your watch list, it allows you to keep him on your list of recruits without actually being in contact with him. So no, nothing is really happening other than you are keeping an eye on him. Probably the only reason to have a guy on your call list but not your watch list, is to do exactly what you are suggesting in the 2nd paragraph, which is actually pretty clever (although you'd want to do it in reverse. Guys you are REALLY interested in need to be on your call list so your recruiting assistant can keep getting information from them with their routine calls, the ones that you might only potentially have interest in are the ones you'd want on watch) Guys you might want to do that with would be, e.g., guys you aren't sure are going to qualify academically, and you don't want to invest any money in them until you know for sure at the end of January. Or a guy that has verbally committed to another school but appears iffy as to whether or not he'll meet that schools academic standards but may meet yours. (once a guy signs an LOI, you can forget about it though. I've never seen anyone sign an LOI yet in this game unless he knew he was going to qualify for a school.) Another reason might be that he might be someone you'd really like to have, but won't give you 5 minutes. He might later if nobody else makes an offer to him. Meanwhile, you aren't potentially wasting $5/week on him on a remote chance you might want him later. OR perhaps most usefully, would be when you are at a school with a dangerously low recruiting budget. You might initially want to put only your most promising recruits on call initially and keep everyone else on watch. Then when you need to remove one of the guys from your call list, you can add the next man up to call. I'd have to have a really really low budget though to bother with it all. I want all my potential recruits on call from the beginning so that my assistant can start getting information on them from the get go.

I always put all my initial targets on both lists, and then when there is a reason to take them off the list, I usually take them off both lists at once. Occassionally though, I will only remove him from the call list for one of the reasons above. Granted I can't keep those guys on a seperate filter the way you are suggesting, but since I never have more than one or twp of them at a time, it suffices just to keep them hidden by filtering by call list and occasionally filtering by watch list if i want to see what is happening with them. I generally try to get all my scholarships wrapped up with LOIs in november. It's only when that doesn't happen I'd use that strategy. And there's no real harm in taking them off both lists really. You can always find them again later if it comes to it. I never worry about it unless it's february and I still don't have my scholarships filled with at least verbal commitments. But that's why I put them on both lists initially anyway. Other than that there's no particular advantage to having a guy on your call list also on your watch list. But there's no real reason not to either. And it'll save you a couple of mouse clicks later if you decide to remove him from call but keep him on watch.

[MrHoncho]

Awesome, thorough, answer. I really appreciate that, CoachC. You pretty much broke down what I thought was happening. You do it the same way I have been, I think. I have been using both lists, and then removing players from both lists, to add others, when they fall out of favor. I am going to try using the watch list as more of a flag for the guys I’m preferring to offer, and see how that goes. So those will be the only guys on both lists, and then everyone else will be on only the call list, until money scarcity becomes a factor, or the guy with a good gpa verbals somewhere else. This way, I’ll quickly be able to get to “my guys” by filtering with the watch list, and add guys to it, as I keep learning more about them. I was hoping that would be the case, but I didn’t want to miss out on scouting, if that’s what was happening, from the watch list. I know prospect’s grades are a little bit dynamic, throughout the process, but wasn’t sure what was actually causing the subtle movement in attribute grades. Thanks, again.