Intro
In-season recruiting was first introduced in NCAA Football 06. It’s a simple setup that allows you to get a headstart on your recruiting classes. This guide will walk you through the entire process. This video is a nice visual of what is written below.
Coach Options
The first thing I always do after selecting a team is to make sure my coach settings are where they need to be. You do this at the Coach Options screen. From the main menu, go to Coach Options > Strategy. This is what you will see:
First things first, changing your philosophy is extremely important since this tells the game what your overall personnel will look like. Regardless of which offense you pick, each one will require you to have a minimum the following:
- 3 QB
- 3 HB
- 3 T
- 3 G
- 2 C
What differs between Balanced, Flexbone, West Coast, Option Run, and Spread are the WRs, TEs, and FBs. I could be off on one or two of these, but here is what each one needs:
- Balanced/West Coast: 2 FB, 5 WR, 2 TE
- Flexbone: 2 FB, 4 WR, 2 TE (4 HB)
- Option Run: 2 FB, 4 WR, 3 TE
- Spread: 1 FB, 6 WR, 2 TE
The defensive side of things is much simpler to memorize. If you know what defense you will be using, then pick it, otherwise, know that you just need to double the amount of your base defense to get the minimum requirement. For instance in 4-3, you need a minimum of 4 DE, 4 DT, 4 OLB, 3 MLB, 4 CB, 2 FS, and 2 SS. The coaching strategies below the base offense and defensive setting can be left alone since that is only if you sim your games, and since we all know 06 is so fun to play, why would you sim your games anyway?
The main point is that you MUST meet the minimum requirement for each position, otherwise the CPU will force walk-ons onto your team at the end of the season in which you cannot cut them so prepare accordingly. Now once you go into the In-Season Recruiting menu, you can see your Team Overview by holding down O/B to get an instead of what you need, more so than want. I cover more scheme & position specific recruiting strategies later on in this guide.
While you are on your Coach Options screen, now is a good time to turn off CPU Assistance. You need to be in full control of recruiting so you need to turn these settings off. To turn these settings off, go to Coach Options > Strategy > and L2/R2 CPU Assistance like show above. Go ahead and turn Discipline Assistance off as well. The last thing you want is for the CPU to decide how to handle your troubled players. This is what that screen looks like.
Schedules
Your schedule will vary depending on which team you select. Conference-based teams get to change up their non-conference opponents. Independents can schedule whoever they want. The biggest thing to keep in mind here is to have enough home games on the backend of the schedule for recruiting purposes. This video provides more info on how to add teams to your schedule.
Preseason Recruiting
This video breaks down the basics of what it written below.
You only get 12 slots/scholarships to use in In-Season recruiting so choose wisely. I say this because when you pick your 12 prospects, you are only given a small amount of info for each prospect. Regardless of position, you only get to see their 40-Time, Bench Press, Squat, and Field Awareness. Now if I was basing my offense around throwing the ball 50 times a game, I would never recruit a QB during the season.
Why? Because as of now, I have no clue what Chris Cobb’s Accuracy and Throw Power are. You will once you start the season but when you pick your initial 12, you won’t. Here is a basic breakdown of how I recruit each position:
- QB – only if my QB will run a ton
- HB – as long as they are not catching the ball a ton in my offense
- FB – see HB
- WR – only if I am a run-heavy team and I need them more for size and strength instead of catching it all the time
- TE – see WR
- OL – you have all the info you need here, go after them
- All Defensive Players – you have all the info you need here, go after them
So basically, if you are pass happy team, be careful if you decide to recruit QB, HB, WR, and TE since you don’t know what their most important attributes will be. It kills me when I recruit a QB and then find out is Accuracy is terrible. I could have just gave that coveted spot to another player in which i new is most important attributes. Now I don’t know how accurate this is but Evil Dave described what each of these things convert with regards to ratings so refer back to his stuff to see that. Obviously 40-time is speed, bench press is strength, and squat is for several things. These numbers are so important because height and weight matter in this game compared some other games I won’t mention here, you know which ones they are. Yes, that means you can recruit behemoths on the line and everywhere else and it effects the game.
I once created a DE that had 99 on everything but was 5’5 150. Guess what? He couldn’t do much of anything since he was so small. So make sure you take height and weight into account and not just the 40, bench, and squat. Finally, be realistic when picking stars. If your school is in a small conference, don’t bother with recruiting 5 star kids, or 4 stars for that matter. I won’t give you any hard rules on this, but just use common sense and don’t get upset when a 5 star prospect doesn’t want to come to your MAC school. What do you expect?
Pipeline States
As I mentioned in the video, pipeline states are very important as establishing these makes recruiting easier and more affordable. The biggest tip I can give is until your are an established powerhouse (and if you want more of a challenge), stick to states closest to you. The close the state, the cheaper it is to recruit, simple. Once you become a national power, then you can recruit all over the country as by then, you will be winning enough to spend more points on recruiting, especially going after big time talent. There are several states that produce more talent than others. If your school is in one of these states or is close to one, I highly suggest making them as pipeline states. Here are some states that are prone to have a ton of prospects to choose from.
States: Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas
The map below shows which states are easier to recruit based on how good or bad adjacent states are in terms of producing talent. Basically, any state in green produces more than enough talent to where you do not have to recruit nation-wide all the time but can recruit closer to home. States in yellow simply do not produce as much talent on year-to-year basis. States in red are the same as the yellow states in terms of not producing much talent, BUT these states are surrounded by only low-recruit-producing yellow states.
Point Distribution
During the season, you get 100 percentage points to spread throughout any of your 12 chosen prospects. There are two schools of thought when spreading your points out: putting points on most players or just focusing on a handful of them. I’m a firm believer of only focusing up to 5 players. My reasoning is that the more attention you give a player, the more likely he will come to your school. If you go around barely putting 5-10 points for the majority of your players, you might not get any to commit in the end.
I focus all of my efforts on those who already show extra interest like Justin Franklin shown here. Normally you will have 3-5 players who will show this extra interest like he does. What is funny is that in this case, Justin Franklin was the only one of the 12 I picked that showed extra interest. In this case I press the Prospect Info button to see where I am at on the list. If I am in the top half, then I will probably go after them. Now you might be thinking that 5 players is not enough to commit during the season. You have to remember that the most players you can have on the team at the same time is 70. Divide that into 4 classes and you get 17.5 per class. You get 25 scholarships to hand out every year but you don’t need to have the mindset of “I must sign 25 every year because I can”.
Sooner or later you will be cutting a ton of kids when you didn’t have to. The only time I would go over more than 5 prospects during the season is if I am a powerhouse that is so well known that most prospects want to come to your school. But even then, up to 5 commits during the season is fine for me as I prefer to get most of my commits in the offseason which is more fun anyways.
Pitch Feedback
Pitch feedback is super important because sometimes you will get a + or – sign on a pitch from that player. Here is my simple rule to follow:
- If they have a positive feeling on any of the pitches, go after that player, hard!
- If they have negative feelings toward a pitch, you can still get them but it is an uphill battle.
I have recruited too many players who have shown a ton of interest but have a negative reaction towards a pitch. These guys are hard to get to commit. Don’t get mad if they don’t commit to you. You have been warned. Positive guys are great especially when it comes time for official visits.
Weekly Checkups
This sounds obvious, but you never know when a kid decides to drop you form his list for whatever reason. If that happens, then take his point allotment and put it somewhere else. After every week, a player may or may not respond to a new pitch. You need to adjust your points accordingly here. If any of them have a – sign during the season, you better think long and hard before you decide to continue to go after that player.
Official Visits
If you have made it this far, you should still have your 4 or 5 players ready for their official visits. Unless that prospect has a + sign next to a pitch, you are going to have to guess which one he likes. This sounds obvious but don’t pick the pitches already listed that does not have a + sign. Even if pitch has no – sign by it, that still means he does not like that pitch. It helps a ton if you pick a game you know you can win. I have lost before on a game when I had a prospect visit and was still able to get him to commit, but I believe I just got lucky. It helps a ton if you can win that game.
Also, the sooner that game is the better since if he doesn’t commit after the game, you will have more weeks to try to work on him getting to commit. Finally, when it comes to prospects who have a + sign by a pitch, you can schedule them on an off week and still see the possibility of him committing. It might be a risk, but I have done it several times before so try it if you are feeling froggy.
Ratings Conversion Chart
Below is a chart showing several ratings and how they convert to certain attributes for most, if not all of the NCAA Football games for the Playstation 2 & Xbox. As far as I know, these ratings are the same for NCAA Football 2002-11 but I can’t confirm this. I do know they are compatible for NCAA Football 06 & 07. This info originally came from someone who gave it to Evil Dave which is on his NCAA Football 07 Recruiting Guide.
I have tested and proofed many of these ratings, but it is possible something maybe off one point or so. This chart is best used to see what how good prospects will be when you recruit them. Speed (SPD), jump (JMP), strength (STR), tackle (TKL), run blocking (RBK), and break tackle (BTK) attributes are shown. Other attributes like catch (CTH) are position specific so I hope to provide those conversions in the future among any others I can configure.
Conclusion
That’s pretty much it. Make the most of this feature as it sets things up easier on what you do in the offseason. Some schemes will be easier to recruit for than others with what limited info the games gives on players in the preseason, but it’s a fun feature that lets us enjoy recuiting even more.
