by MattP598 » Wed Feb 05, 2020 2:56 pm
There is a way to gauge a recruit's interest before the first week when you are adding them to the board. It's subject to change depending on what schools start recruiting them though. However when you add them to your board go ahead and put 10 points on the recruit then open their profile back up and you will see their interest bar has probably moved some. Occasionally it will shoot all the way up. If it doesn't move at all its a good idea to ignore that recruit and move on to someone else. Now it could shoot all the way up then after the first week you look at it and the guy's interest in you is still at like 10 or whatever....well in that situation what has happened is higher prestige schools than you are recruiting them. The more that do the less likely they are to be interested in you. Also if there are like 5 schools going after a recruit your initial interest is more than likely going to be lower because it's split over 5 schools so you might need to stick with that recruit if it is schools you are in similar prestige too. What I do, especially offline playing single player(not an online league), is after each week I comb over the list and you will see several highly rated players that still have none listed. I jump on those guys. It's possible to get them at that point however it's also possible a bigger school will come along week 8 or something and steal them from you. It's worth the risk in my opinion. I ALWAYS give a recruit 10 points each week except for if i have remaining points over i will put them into a prospect no one else is recruiting or into backup prospects in case I miss on a recruit. The reason is the CPU always puts 10 points into recruits. So if you are putting 8 or something they are going to win that battle more than likely. The recruits wants kinda help in judging who to target but in my experience it's not as important as prestige and who your battling against. For instance that recruit might be a mile down the road from your school and his biggest want is location, well say you are a mid 70's prestige school and alabama comes along you can kiss them goodbye. IMO prestige is given too much weight in the game really but anyways yea you can look at his wants but definitely don't let that be the deciding factor. Also it's entirely possible you could be recruiting a guy for weeks and him have only say like 50 interest in you, stay on him, especially if it's someone you have been recruiting for awhile because he may commit even at 50 interest at anytime out of the blue. Don't worry so much about filling out all of your scholarships. Say you have 23 available it's perfectly fine to sign say 20. With the transfer system now there is a good chance you can pick up 3. Even if you don't those 3 missing players aren't really going to affect you that much the following season. They will be filled in with lesser players that your coaches sign randomly but you can always cut them, but it's not a big deal really in that situation. I'm not going to say much on the whole talking points thing because I'm still trying to figure it out myself, but that's just from my experience from playing 18 and 19.
Oh I forgot to mention traits. If you see a player that has a trait listed after visiting him then you want to target those guys over guys who don't have one listed. There are LOTS of really good 3 star players out there if you know what to look for..... For instance for offensive lineman strength is VERY important. Pretty much everyone else on the field except maybe QB's speed is huge. Agility is very important for RBs, likewise hands for WRs..... Arm rating and intelligence trump accuracy for QB's imo. That's different than every college football game ive ever played but it seems to be the case with this one in my experience. Sim some seasons in sandbox mode for testing and take a look at stats and ratings and you will start to figure out who you should be targeting in recruiting.
Also look for coaches with a high recruiting skill, obviously, but also with a high charisma skill. High charisma coaches will help you in recruiting. As far as I know recruits don't care about the coaches offensive and defensive philosophies.
Use your recruiting overview chart. You will see it when you choose targets and in the drop down box on which recruits you want to view out of your targets. It will tell you how many offers a recruit has regardless of who is listed in his interests. You maybe recruiting a guy that isn't showing you any interest and instead you see Ohio St and Michigan listed, well it maybe a situation where neither of those schools have offered him a scholarship. Now it won't tell you which schools have offered just a number but most of the time you can figure it out.
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