Overall Picture of Recruiting

[cdcool]

Where can I go in the game to get an overall picture of what each team is doing in regards to Recruiting?
It's needed.

[brooks_piggott]

The recruiting screen shows target players, commits, and all sorts of recruiting information. The bottom right corner of the game shows significant commits. The game shows a recap of signings after signing day. Not sure what more you are looking for, but if you have ideas we can look at them for the next version.

[JDB]

One suggestion I would like to make is when pulling up a recruit's info screen where it shows the teams that are actively recruiting him, is there any way we could have his "level of interest" percentages for each school added to that list so that we can get a better idea of which school he is 'leaning' towards?

[zac]

Don't think I'd really be in favor of having exact percentages of interest being displayed for all schools. In real life, I don't think recruiters always have a great deal of confidence in knowing the exact interest of a kid. I kind of like to be a bit in the dark and have to make decisions based on that.

[AKH]

in the dropdown on the recruiting screen, if you select "OVERVIEW" you get a list of all the recruits the school is targeting, including info on how many scholarship offer he has, and how many are on him in total (i.e. scholarships + the ones who have points on him by no ship).

[b1gd51]

Don't think I'd really be in favor of having exact percentages of interest being displayed for all schools. In real life, I don't think recruiters always have a great deal of confidence in knowing the exact interest of a kid. I kind of like to be a bit in the dark and have to make decisions based on that.

Coaches may not have a great deal of confidence in the exact interest, but they still have tools available to give them a general idea. For starters -- from a USA Today article -- coaches get recommendations from high school/club coaches:

Recommendations from high school/club coaches – Weiss pointed out that athlete recommendations from high school coaches go a long way with DI coaches. He explains that if a high school or club coach takes the time to point out a specific player to a recruiting staff, they will probably take a look at that athlete’s highlight video.

As far as suggestions go:

This could easily be implemented into the game by way of each recruit having a list of his top-10 or so favorite teams already shown to you before the recruiting process begins. This could simulate a recruit's high school coaches "sending you information" on the kid, thus signaling to you that you're at least on his top-10 list before adding him to your list of targets. Right now, you have to go in completely blind by randomly adding recruits to your list and assigning them recruiting points to even see where you stand, interest wise, which is not only time consuming, but unrealistic.

It also wouldn't hurt if recruits trimmed down their list of teams from their top-10 to top-3 as the season progresses. Example HERE. If this was implemented in the game and your team doesn't make the cut, it could basically "lock you out" and give you back your recruiting points and the scholarship you offered him w/o having to wait until he commits to another school before doing so, thus giving you an opportunity to move on quicker instead of wasting time on recruits you have no chance at getting.

They could have some sort of "prediction" system similar to 247sports, as you can see HERE. If you view his profile page HERE, at the bottom you can see if his interest level is either "warm" or "cold" for each school. The thing about this is they don't always turn out to be correct, so there would still be a layer of being "in the dark". For example, Trenton Simpson's profile had him as 79% likely to sign w/ UNC, but Clemson swooped in at the last second and got him w/ only a 14% chance.

You don't neccessarily need that prediction system, though, so long as you implement the system of recruits trimming their list of top choices as the season progresses. Whether you're 7th place, 4th, 3rd, or 1st place, so long as you make the cut each time the recruit trims his list, you know you have a chance. Your specific rank on the list wouldn't matter, so you still wouldn't need to know where you're at percentage-wise or rank-wise.

Other things that can improve the recruiting process:

1. Official visits - Being able to schedule a recruit coming in for a visit during a week of the season to improve or lower your chances would add a layer of strategy.

2. Pipeline States - I know this is already somewhat simulated by filtering the "distance" to 100 or 200, but having a list of states in your pipeline and knowing what those states are would help out a lot. Just research each team's real-life pipeline states, add a new Pipeline filter, and have it show all the recruits from those states. But the key is to have those states actually matter, not just exist as a filter. You should get certain bonuses via recruiting from pipelines.

3. In-state recruiting should matter a bit more than a team's prestige rating. For example, by default, UNC's prestige is 62 in the game... which puts them around the 500 recruit rank for recommended targets. It's almost impossible to land 4- or 5-star recruits w/ this prestige rating, yet in real life, UNC was able to land EIGHT 4-star recruits for 2020, 5 of which are from NC, 1 of which is ranked top-50 nationally.

4. If we are given a player's potential through email after being fully scouted then there should be a visible potential indicator on a recruit's profile page somewhere so we don't have to keep cycling back and forth from our email to the recruit page to know what their potential is.

All of these things would make the recruiting process deeper and more convenient. Most of them were also implemented in the old NCAA Football series from EA Sports and based on real-life processes, so you could imagine how surprised I was that they weren't already in this game.

[Matty86]

in the dropdown on the recruiting screen, if you select "OVERVIEW" you get a list of all the recruits the school is targeting, including info on how many scholarship offer he has, and how many are on him in total (i.e. scholarships + the ones who have points on him by no ship).

Is it possible to have the overview page sortable? I'd love to be able to sort by interest or offers ect on that page.. and to be able to click on the player from that page to go into their player profile. That would make the recruiting process a million times more user friendly IMO. I can't imagine that's never been requested before, is it not possible for some reason due to coding??

[Soonerfan09]

Are there any plans to add high school stats to recruits or the ability to recruit JRs and SOs in future versions?

[cdcool]

The recruiting screen shows target players, commits, and all sorts of recruiting information. The bottom right corner of the game shows significant commits. The game shows a recap of signings after signing day. Not sure what more you are looking for, but if you have ideas we can look at them for the next version.

"The bottom right corner of the game shows significant commits"

But not the school, can you add that?

Ideas should be taken from Front Office Football: The College Years.

[cdcool]

in the dropdown on the recruiting screen, if you select "OVERVIEW" you get a list of all the recruits the school is targeting, including info on how many scholarship offer he has, and how many are on him in total (i.e. scholarships + the ones who have points on him by no ship).

The Overview should list the Suiters, the school/s.
The way I play, I'm trying to get an overall picture of what every school is doing.
Having every team on Human control, I can see who committed to each school in their emails but seeing this in the Overview would be cool.