Pretty new to the game, and I haven't advanced past a few seasons in some saves, so before I dive too deeply now that I'm a bit comfortable, I had some questions I'm hoping the forum could help me out with. Thanks in advance!
1. Player ratings
I've noticed several of my players' ratings fell from one season to the next. Is this a result of my players actually getting worse, or whoever is scouting how good my players are (my staff?) getting better at scouting? This seems like the kind of thing that wouldn't happen if all things are equal (like the staff being the same, which is what was in place for me), so I'm assuming the latter. Though wouldn't a staff's assessment of a players' rating, if they were initially wrong, only take a couple of practices/games to figure out? It seems strange to me that college players would get worse over the offseason. I get it in an NBA game when aging is a factor. But in this case I've had a 3 star guy and a 2 star guy who were both starters come back the next year as 2.5 and 1.5 worse players. So they got an entire years' worth of experience and still got worse.
2. Staff ratings
Do they have the potential to improve from year to year with experience? I assume they do, but I haven't seen it yet. I've only seen myself go from 1 star to 2 stars in a category, but not my assistants.
3. Staff hiring
If I fire an assistant coach yet (I haven't done it yet because I wasn't sure what would happen), how exactly will it affect my budget? If he was making $35,000 for two more years would I lose $70,000 from my remaining budget including recruiting expenses? Plus then I'd have to pay for the new assistant's salary?
4. Recruiting Regions
I'm coaching a team in North Carolina. I'm in the Atlantic East region recruit pool, but there are adjacent nearby states in the Southeast Region so I look there too. Are recruits in my region still more likely to sign with me even though they are farther away? Like, will a guy from Maine show interest in my school before a guy from South Carolina? Is location within a region a factor? Like, will a South Carolina player have more interest, generally, than someone from Florida? Or Virginia over New York?
5. Scholarships and Budget
I'm in a season where I successfully recruited 3 players early with 3 scholarships available. Now, I have a big chunk of money left over to recruit with and no one to recruit. Should I still use it all? Does it matter? Should I still recruit backup plans in case an SAT score is really bad?
6. Tournament upsets
In the first three NCAA tournaments I simmed, a 16 upset a 1, a 16 upset a 1 the next year, then a 15 upset a 2 in the next one. Is this incredibly fluky stuff on my end or is this par for the course for this game?