I like the way NIL has been implemented. I expect some small changes will happen before full launch and data will be analyzed moving forward. The amounts offered have been inconsistent which is interesting and kind of fun. In my first year at George Mason one recruit ranked 170 something received 80k and another recruit around 200 received 75k. In my second year a recruit ranked around 350 received the full 152k amount available. I offered NIL to a few players at the same time and all the money went to the one player even though some of the others were higher ranked. The lower ranked player was in-state and top 25 at the regional camp. I kind of like this unpredictable element though.

I really like the watch list added to the transfer portal. I did not really try to find info about D2 players because I had a bunch of scholarships available and not a ton of extra money for transfers and did not want to lose out on successful D1 players.

I would like to see some changes to the team expectations. Expectations were very high my first year and included the illogical combination of make it to the NIT and win the conference tournament. These should not be grouped together. I finished 14-17 overall and 8-10 in conference. The expectations for season 2 included win 15+ games and don't finish last in conference. I lost the conference player of the year in the transfer portal but had some decent incoming talent from recruiting and transfers. I am now at 16-13 overall and 9-9 in conference about to start conference tournament play.
I would like to see make it to a post-season tournament added as a goal, especially for lower prestige teams. For some schools just making to the CBI or the 4th tier tournament is a solid accomplishment.

I also feel that there are potential opportunities to interact more with the Athletic Director. My main ideas here would be a pre-season meeting about season expectations in the near and long term similar to what happens in the pro game. Also, given the current environment of conference alignment what if AD's held a vote about allowing new teams to join the conference and head coaches could give input possibly influencing the decision. A similar vote could take place for the number of conference games in the season schedule.

I do not like that freshman usually start out in the red for team relationship and often below 50 for coach relationship. I do not think it makes sense that new players essentially start out hating their new teammates and not liking the coach. It is often a slow passive aggressive grind to improve the team relationship even for players who are at least average in popularity and personality. I feel like freshman should start out with a positive coach relationship as long as you are the coach who recruited that player and start out fairly neutral in terms of team relationship.

i agree with all of your assessments and ideas

Thank you for the input. You are right on the NIL front - its totally new to the game so we'll see how it works and what tweaks need to be made. The offers are meant to be inconsistent so that its not a straight x OVR = x $ formula and also allows for some collectives to "want a player more". When it comes to offering multiples at once the collective is not going to offer way below market (unless thats all it has) so if you only have enough really for one player and you want it split four ways its not going to do that. It will just go after whoever the collective wants most. If you want to ensure one guy gets it then offer the scholarship and the NIL option to him that week and then go for a second offer the following week or whatever. Also some collectives are going to spend what they have to hope they get a guy which could lead to an overspend while others like a big time one might not pay up as much for a lesser player because they could easily get another one of those so there is quite a bit of unpredictability purposefully built in.

I will look into the team goal issue that you posted. The ideas on the AD interaction are cool - probably slated for a future addition though.

The reason freshmen start out so low is because its meant to reflect that they don't have any relationship with the players on the team and only know the coach a little bit from recruiting - a player might not even like the coach but wanted to play for that school for the exposure or the NIL or whatever. I will take a look and see if there is an adjustment to be made but in testing it seems that basically by the time you get to practice of year 1 the player already can build a 20-25% relationship with the team so I think its a reasonable pace to represent getting acquainted with a new environment and new people and all that but I will look at it.