OT - Super OT - How the hell to recruit in NCAA 11

It'll be OK..............step away from the ledge.

for the first time ever we dont automatically get a #1 class....

the real key for me soo far has been only spending time on guys who have umich in their top 3 to begin with .... also since you only get 70 roster spots and i assume most redshirt almost all freshman, signing 15-20 guys is fine

like i said i love the change because for the first time ever its hard making the game actually not an auto championship every yr because you get 15-20 5 stars, I'm 6 seasons in and have yet to have a top ranked class however all of them have been top 10

make sure your only targeting 10-17 recruits at first.

if your lots of points behind ditch them.

Add recruits that are high ranked but also your high on their list. like max 300-400 points behind leader.

After adding a few high recruits reorder by interest and add more recruits that have you first.  Those recruits ignore the quick call in the next step and call for 20 mins and offer a scholarship.  These people can and will commit on the spot.  How many just depends if they were the right ones or not.

Realize you'll get people but not everyone. 

I also find quick call for the first week or two to get pitches then

switching to manual.  It takes longer but it works better since you can choose what to do more percisely.

My first class ended up only 27th overall but i had 8 4 stars and 6 3 stars.

2nd class not so well so far with only  2 4 stars.

EDIT: also this was on heisman recruiting

It's not that bad. In fact, it's much more realistic now. No longer can you sign a class with 15 5* in it. My first class with Michigan had two 5* a six or seven 4's and the rest were 3's. Seems pretty  realistic to me. I agree that the random topic thing sucks though. The main thing to keep in mind is that it's much easier to recruit players from pipeline states because you get a bonus for every pitch you make. Just like real life, it's easier to pull a player from MI, OH, or FL than it is to pull one from say, Washington or Nevada.

I like the recruiting way better actually, you just need to be very selective on how to maximize your time.

around week 7-8 ... when alot of players have commited .... target 15-20 low 4 and 3 stars ... makes sure they dont have any offers at that point ... you can normally snag about 5 of them for depth ... this is very useful with athletes as teams target them less

Sell them on "Wingedness of Helmets" every single week.

Also, make sure they are pipeline players... that bonus helps. And, also, I realized how beneficial it is to negative recruit against someone... once you discover things the player likes, if they come up, and you have more than 1/3 of a letter grade over the #1 or #2 team, recruit in comparison. gives you a big bonus, knocks them down about 1/3 of your jump... and both get the bonus from pipeline!

I disagree, recruiting is easy dont target people who arent interested in you. The more you win the more interest you create for yourself. Signed and sealed 4 5* recruits in my first yr.

It depends on your level of difficulty.

Yeah, the key is to not overextend yourself. Stay in your pipeline, only go after guys who have you in their top 3 (top 5 max, unless it's a lowly 3 star or below), and only offer guys who have you ranked no. 1 on their list. When you're ranked no. 1, there's a chance you might get an instant commit upon offering.

I like to keep my list of targets at 12, which has brought me great success. Feel free to go higher, but don't overdo it. 15 is a good base number, because it allows you to pump 40 minutes into each recruit per week. After a couple weeks, you'll have a good idea who needs more/less time to keep you in the lead, so start shifting your minutes to the guys who have multiple offers or the ones who have dropped you in their leaderboard.

Take this all with a grain of salt, as I've only been recruiting on Varsity. It's going well, though, so I think I'll step it up to AA in my next season.

Has anyone here compared Varsity recruiting to AA or Heisman?

The mistake I made in the first year of my dynasty was that I tried to spread my minutes pretty evenly. I wondered why my class wasn't looking so hot, so I used the recruit advisor to see how the CPU teams were spending minutes. I saw that the CPU was putting in 60 minutes of time on a few guys every week, then a few at 50, and 40. They didn't target a ton of guys. I like to go after the top guys that are interested in Michigan first with a lot of minutes hoping that I can sign a few of them relatively quickly, then I can use the minutes I don't have to spend on them anymore on a 4 or 3 star recruit. I actually think the recruiting is one of the better changes they have made. You can finally have a specific number of points that you are behind another team. I don't know if that's necessarily realistic, but it's better than guessing based on the interest bar in past games. If it's really too hard for you, just knock down the difficulty. We won't judge you.

...in the first 5 weeks of the season.  I've been struggling to find diamond in the rough 3 stars."

Hmmm, sounds familiar.

Don't forget, Michigan isn't as attractive a destination (in the game or real life) as it once was. You're just going through similar struggles as the program. Have to show you can win before the big names will come.

I love recruiting in the game, and like others, welcome it being a bit more challenging. In the game.

I like the new recruiting a lot. I get a sick pleasure out seeing how many points I can rack up on a call. I also love the random topic. It just feels more fluid and isn't as much work. Just lower the level if you are having issues. If you are a fan of having arcade like classes(ten 5* and nine 4*) than you may want to go back to 09(10 is awful). I did get a bunch of "adviser" points on a few recruits and I am not sure where that came from. Any ideas? 

Also use your promises it really seems to help. I have fallen in love with the new recruiting system. I was honestly so sick of filling a class with almost all 5 stars. It is so much better now. I don't like the random though that's my only dislike with it.

I havent confirmed it yet, but it seems like offering a scholarship while you're in 1st place adds additional points.  I think offering a schollie to a guy that has you 5th nets something like 100 points while offering a guy that has you #1 gets you around 170.  Something worth looking into.  So if its true, don't just blindly offer scholarships week 1 to get a points boost, boost them up higher then go after them.

http://www.operationsports.com/forums/ncaa-football/428508-recruiting-st...

Why are these threads not banned because how sensitive these kids are about this game?  They love to attack anyone who might be better than they are at the game. 

just saying

I am having some trouble but I think it's my technique/strategy.  I usually fill all 35 spots -- but only with guys who have me in their top 5 or lower -- preferably top 3.  I usually offer everyone right off the bat and then from there, continue to talk to them every single day.  I also use some promises every so often.  So far I am a little bit lacking in commitments but I think my new strategy is going to slim down my target list and use more call points on those guys and see how it goes from there.

Stick to the pipeline and the top three interest guys and you will get your classes.

What drives me nuts is players committing to schools that haven't offered. I'm going through my second season of recruiting now, but it happened at the end of the first. Players just dragged their recruitment out all year, and then went with schools that didn't offer scholarships.

Also, regarding the difficulty: I think this is the first year (or at least, I don't remember it from past years) that recruiting has its own separate difficulty levels (Varsity, All American, etc).

What screen tells you how many points behind 1st..2nd..etc. you are?

Wow, thanks for all the tips guys.  I thought I'd get neg-banged into oblivion.

My solution for now is going to be to scale recruiting difficulty back from All-American to Varsity, and focus on 10 - 15 recruits at a time.  Try and get my 1-2 5*, 6-7 4*, and 10 3*.

Thank you MGoCommunity, you've potentially saved my e-happiness. 

My approach is working well (Varsity). Similar to what's been posted but here's a summary:

- Week 1: Offer every prospect of your target caliber that has you as #1. One or more will likely commit on the spot.

- I don't think it matters much how many prospects are on your board, but you'll only be able to actively recruit 12-16 or so or you'll spread yourself too thin.  I keep a larger board just to be able to move kids up when I drop others. For some reason, some players don't seem to build up a lot of negative points even if you ignore them, so you have a chance to pick them up later.

- Use your initial calls to identify interests. Change topics as needed to move away from weak pitches for your school. Save your promises until you're out of Change Topics and are stuck with a weak pitch.  (I haven't figured out yet what happens if you break promises though. Is there an "Integrity" score for coaches like there was a few years ago?) If you wind up with a bad topic for you and can't avoid it, find someone else on their list that is worse than you and compare, so at least you get some net positive result.

- If I'm getting behind on a prospect that has other offers, I'll go ahead and offer even if I'm not #1.  If I'm hanging in there, I'll try to hold off on the offer.

- Schedule visits for rivaly games (MSU game in A2 is awesome for visits) for the bonus. Schedule the visit when you have an unfavorable pitch come up as another means of avoiding talking about weak pitches for your school. I like to offer in advance of the visit so there's a chance of the on-the-spot commit.

- If you get behind by 400 drop the prospect. You are not likely to catch up (unfortunately you can no longer spend more than 60 minutes on any one prospect like you could in the past).

- If you don't make the cut, drop the prospect.  E.g., if they've narrowed down a top 5 and you're their #7 school, it's very unlikely they'll commit (the rumor is that you CAN move into a recruit's Top 10 list before they've narrowed it, but I haven't seen this happen yet).

- Once you get a commit at a position, you might want to ignore other highly-ranked players at that position unless you really need more bodies. Pick up 3-stars without offers for depth. In general, the approach that worked in the past was to go for multiple prospects for any position, with the chance of getting 1 or more. Now, it seems to work much better to target just one key prospect at a position and really focus on that player, then try to add depth later with lower-ranked players (particularly "Athletes").

Hope this helps.

That does help....in my first season of my dynasty on all-american play and recruit level, I only got 9 commitments(four 4 stars, five 3 stars), and was the 87th ranked class.  Awful.  I even went 11 and 1 on the season and won the orange bowl.