Intro
In a previous post I covered everything about in-season recruiting. This post breaks down to most famous part of Dynasty Mode: Offseason Recruiting. I’ve been playing this game consistently for 20 years, and recruiting never gets old. Let’s dive in! You finally made it to the offseason and are ready to tackle offseason duties like recruiting. This video is a nice visual of what is written below.
School Budgets
Once the season is over, your first item of business is your school budget. You have to decide how to divvy up your percentage points between recruiting, training, and scouting. This greatly impacts how many points you can spend recruiting. Now most will focus their efforts on recruiting first and fill in with the other two afterwards. I actually take the opposite approach. I start with discipline. Over the years I have discovered that the bigger punishment I send out (forcing my discipline bar to lower) the less discipline issues I have in the future. When you start a dynasty, you are given a ton of (hidden) discipline points to use and I try to use every one of them. Whatever it takes to lower the bar the better since it pays off in the long run.
Therefore, the max percentage for discipline for me is usually 20%. As the years go by I will lower this to as low at 10%. Again, this all depends on how harsh you are when it comes to disciplining your players. Now you move on to recruiting and training. Recruiting and training go hand-in-hand for me. Keep it simple here:
- If most of your starters have left = majority points go to recruiting
- If half of your starters leave = split the remaining points between recruiting and training
- If most of your starters stay = majority points go to training
- If you need a total roster turnover (just need better talent overall) = majority points got to recruiting
- If you are short on the amount of players (well below 70) = majority of points go to recruiting
Managing your school budget should be common sense to most but the importance of it cannot be understated.
Players Leaving
I can’t find a rhyme or reason to how much points you should give to persuade a kid to stay for one more year. I have seen their bar be really high and I put a ton of points on them and they still leave, and vice-versa. Therefore, I give them the smallest amount of points possible until they make a decision. It seems the amount of points you spend on them has no bearing on their decision so I give them the lowest and see what happens. Besides, these points come from your recruiting pool. I have spent 1 point on a lot of these guys and they decide to return so go figure. You have nothing to lose going this route.
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.
Scouting
I believe scouting is the most important aspect in recruiting. I want to mention scouting first before actually looking at players. Scouting gives you the precise information you need on any player you pursue. I also think you should spend all of your time in week 1 on scouting so you can devote the rest of your last four weeks to finding pitches and offering scholarships. I have signed too many 3 star players who turned out better than some of my 4 star guys to know how important scouting is. Also (and I believe this is a glitch) but when you scout the game also thinks you pitched each player the Program Prestige pitch. This means that you offered them a “phantom scholarship”.
You still have your allotted 25 scholarships to give out though. This saves you a ton of points of using this pitch down the road when it is already done it for you. If you have scouted every player you wanted to scout and still has some points left over, then you can pitch and offer scholarships (more on this later). The bigger a priority you make of scouting, the greater the chances you have of signing great talent. Later, once we will look at the perfect example of why scouting is so important and how it impacts other areas of recruiting as well.
Uninterested Prospects
Before you start spending points on any player, we must first decide on who to actually recruit. You may be asking yourself, “But Al, don’t you just recruit players who are interested in your school, you know, the ones with the green dots beside their name?” Yes and No. It seems obvious to only go after players who are on the “Interested Prospects” report, but you are missing out on so much talent out there that you still have a chance with.
Look at the image above. You will notice that the QB and MLB are “interested” in me by the green dots. But look at the ATH, DE, and HB. Their interest level bars are pretty high, even though I am not in their top 5.
Now look what happens after I go to week 2. The ATH and the HB now have me in their top 5 which means you have a much better chance of signing them. And all I did was scout them. Now let me introduce you to that Athlete, Vince Hogan.
Notice that all I did the first week was scout him (see how important that is?) Most of his measurables went up and I’m now in his top 5. He is also from my school’s home state! If this doesn’t convince to at least scout these “not-in-my-top-5” players than I don’t know what will. The last thing about these guys: if they don’t put you in their top 5 after week 1, I think it is best to forget about them and focus on truly interested players from here on out. They are worth pursuing in week 1 but if they still won;t put you in their top 5 by week 2 then you don’t need them. There are plenty of other fish in the sea.
This video explains the Week 2 dynamic well.
Interested Players
Now that you understand how important it is to pursue the “uninterested players”, all you have to do now is pursue the interested players of your choice. Here are the reports I look at the most.
- In-State Prospects – I start here since I like going after local kids and they are cheaper to recruit.
- Interested Prospects – Here you will find the rest of the interest prospects. You will do most of your dirty work here. Try to focus on your Pipeline states if you can while trying to establish new ones.
- All Prospects – Since this lists all of the prospects in order, you have no need to look at the Top 100. This is the best place to find those “uninterested players” we talked about earlier.
Most of this should be common sense stuff here so just go after who you want and adjust your current target list accordingly. Speaking of going after players…
Pitches & Scholarships
After you scouted in week 1 its time to learn how I spend points the rest of the way. Let’s look at Vince Hogan again.
If there isn’t a “+” sign by any of the pitches you throw at a prospect, that means you have to throw different ones at them until you find the right one. In this case, Hogan didn’t care too much about Program Prestige. Therefore, I will try a different pitch. If you don’t get anything from this section, understand this: Unless you find the right pitch for a player, spend the minimum amount of points possible until you do so.
All that matters here is trying to find the right pitch. When the player likes one of my pitches, then I might go max with the points. Until then, don’t bother. The only caveat is if after you have offered all the players, if you have some points left over (points don’t carry over from week to week) for that week then you can bump this up. By using another pitch, you automatically give that player a scholarship, thus him going to your Target List (the scout glitch does this for you the first week).
Here is another great example of what scouting can do for you. Here is that HB who had us outside his top 5 but after scouting, not only does he have us in his top 5, but he also likes our Program Prestige pitch (remember the scouting glitch). Here I will spend the max points and hopefully he will commit the following week.
Manage Your Target List
Unless you write a lot of this stuff down, your Target List will be your go-to report to keep up with your targets. The Target list is great since you don’t have to go back to the other reports for your players, thus you can handle all of your maintenance process here. Over the weeks, players will commit to other schools so when this happens go ahead and delete them from the list and go back to your reports to find other players. Basically, let the Target list make your job easier, just for organizational purposes alone.
Discipline & Potential
When you scout prospects, you will find out their discipline and potential ratings. Pay more attention to potential since this truly correlates to how well they respond to their own play on the field as well as how they respond to off-season training. Discipline has been a crap shoot for me. I have signed players with supposed excellent discipline yet get in trouble and vice versa. Since there is no rhyme or reason to it, you can probably ignore it. If you are feeling froggy, do an experiment and track some discipline ratings for your players throughout your dynasty to see if the bad apples are consistently bad or not.
Recruit Athletes Hard
Simply put, the best players I have ever recruited in my 10 years of playing this game came from the Athlete pool. I don’t care what schemes you run, athletes can play multiple positions and can change your program around in one season; I can attest to this. When you scout these players, their numbers can jump all over the place. You can find 2 and 3 star Athletes who can truly make a difference. Sometimes it is hard to tell what positions they are best at (besides QB, K, and P) but it doesn’t matter. If their stats are comparable to other players you have scouted, go after them hard since you never know what diamond in the rough you might find. Again, Vince Hogan is the reason you go after players like these.
Fulfill Your Roster Requirements
This goes back to the offensive and defensive play styles you picked at the beginning of your dynasty. You must fill you roster requirements or the game will add walk-ons to you team that you can’t remove from your roster. Yes you read that correctly. You can’t remove walk-ons from your roster. Since these players are terrible (50’s overall), do what you have to do to fulfill the minimum. If that means signing a 1 or 2 star player then so be it. These players are much better than any walk-on added to your roster.
Position Changes
The best way I would change players around is to simply jot down their original ratings, move them over to the desired position, and then readjust their ratings to their original state. You can do this before you even start a dynasty by going to the Rosters section and do this. During dynasty you do all of this like normal during the “position change” phase. Who knows? You might get lucky like I did with those two HBs and the game done the adjustments for me. The three biggest changes in ratings initially will be Speed and Strength, thus automatically leading to a lower Awareness rating.
As long as you readjust to their original ratings, you should be fine. Anything extra rating bumps the game adds are just a bonus. Just be mindful that NCAA 06 will not let you move players over if it results in too few players for the original position. For example, in a Spread Offense you have to have 2 TEs minimum on the roster or walk-ons will be put there instead which is the last think you want since you can’t get rid of these players. If you only have 2 TEs you can’t move either one until you find a 3rd TE.
New Possibilities
Changing players around will actually be more beneficial for you before you start your dynasty. Since you can’t switch players around before your first season, there is no reason why you shouldn’t do this yourself before you start your dynasty. This will also open your eyes to some teams you never thought you would use. Perhaps you always wanted to run the Flexbone but just a few teams have a FB that can carry the ball. Now you can just look for teams with bigger stronger HBs, move them over to FB, and readjust their ratings to their original state.
Maybe you have always wanted to have great speed at OLB but was never pleased with the overall speed of that position when recruiting them. Now you can convert SSs to OLB and get that speed you’ve always wanted. Jimmy Johnson done this for years while he was the Coach at Miami. Why can’t you do the same? The possibilities are endless here if you think hard enough.
If you plan on taking this thing to the max, I highly recommend you write all of these original ratings down, just in case you want to move these guys back over to their original position. You never know when you want to use a different scheme and you need that one guy to play back at his original position.
Common Position Changes
Now let’s look at some possible and realistic changes you can make to your squad.
QB: The only thing you can do here is recruit athletes who have Throwing Power and Throwing Accuracy with their attributes. Yes you can move a WR or any other speedster to QB if you use a run heavy offense but there is no point in this since these guys can’t throw, period. Speedy QBs are easy to find and recruit in 06 so there is no reason to go crazy here.
HB: There are plenty of HBs, both big and small, powerful and fast in this game so there is no real reason to convert another player to this position. However, there is one option that I believe can be very useful. If you are an Air Raid, Run & Shoot, or any other pass happy gamer, I think you should convert a receiving TE to FB and use the FB sub packages for all of your spread formations. Now you have a SuperBack! He will be big, can catch, and can pass block. He is the perfect HB for your offense. Good luck finding HBs who can catch and pass block as well as any receiving TE. His Carry rating will be sub par at best, but if 95% of the time all he’ll be doing is blocking or catching passes, then it is a no brainer to convert these guys. This conversion alone was the inspiration for this post!
FB: Power HBs run the ball better than FBs and TEs are better at receiving and sometimes blocking than any fullback you will recruit. Outside of my SuperBack scenario, there is no point in recruiting FBs when there are better options out there.
WR: Natural WRs in 06 are really great. They come in all sizes and flavors. So there is very little reason to convert a player to WR. However, if you are a run heavy team, there is no reason why you can’t convert a receiving TE to WR. Yes they will never have the speed but if their main job is to block, move them over since their blocking skills will be better than any behemoth WR you can recruit.
TE: If you never throw the ball to your TE, maybe you can find an offensive lineman to move over for extra beef up front. Other than that, TEs are pretty great themselves, both receiving and blocking, that you will probably never need have to convert someone here.
OL: This doesn’t work well here and you don’t need to really. Besides, you can move around your tackles, guards, and centers to the other line positions and you won’t skip a beat.
DE: Big, strong LBs work well here. I actually never recruit DEs. I always convert big LBs since they give me the speed I need. If you are a 3-4 guy, you could mover smaller DTs over but there are probably enough really big DE anyways, but it won’t hurt to experiment with this though.
DT: The hardest position to convert to. 06 creates DTs that range in weight from 250s to 320s. No reason to convert anyone here. I would love to move huge OL over to DT but their tackle ratings would be terrible. If you are a 3-4 guy, maybe you experiment with this since there are plenty of 6’2 350 OL in this game. Surprisingly though, there are several huge “athletes” that work well here so be on the lookout for those guys. I once recruited a 6’10 340lb athlete and moved him to DT. He was a beast. He probably would have played even better in a 3-4 defense instead of my 4-3.
OLB: You can convert SS to OLB for your speed-minded 4-3. Outside of that, the weight and size range of natural OLBs work just fine for the position.
MLB: These guys are designed really well in 06 so I have never felt the need to convert someone over to this position.
CB: WRs are a possibility here. Other than that, you need speed at the position, regardless of which defense you use. On average, the fastest players in the game are CBs so I doubt you will ever have to convert someone to CB.
FS/SS: Another set of positions in which I doubt you will ever need to switch anyone over to these. Besides, you should never have trouble finding quality safeties anyways.
K/P: I think these guys are interchangeable and I often have the same guy handling both duties anyways.
Athletes: You have no choice but to move these guys to other positions but don’t forget about these players 2-3 seasons down the road. You might have a 3rd string Athlete turned QB that you know will not see the field anytime soon. He maybe be better suites somewhere else. The best player I ever recruited was a JUCO Athlete who was equally good at QB, HB, WR, OLB, FS, and SS. Just because you have him at one position doesn’t mean he might need to play somewhere else before he leaves your school.
Recruiting for a Winless Team
This is what happened in my UNLV dynasty when taking over Mississippi State… Nothing is more fun and rewarding for me than turning around a program, especially one that is at the very bottom of a conference. What worries me though is the lack of points I will get to use in my first offseason as those points are directly correlated with how many wins you have the previous season. This situation has motivated me to run a few tests in Dynasty Mode by seeing what happens when you take over a zero-win program during a dynasty from a recruiting and school budget perspective. Let’s find out. Again, this is only a test as I’m still currently the head coach at UNLV.
The First Test
Here you can see my current team, UNLV, about to finish our third season that will more than likely begin the following season as a 5-star program.
And here is Mississippi State, 0-11, that badly needs a new coach to change their program for the better.
I decide to resign from UNLV and take over the reigns at Mississippi State.
Let’s put all of our points into Recruiting to get a better idea of how many points (if any) we will be working with.
With no points being spent on convincing players to stay, I should have 100% of my points in Recruiting. Will you look at that, I have 184 points to spend! This is not what I expected. I thought the game would give me zero points to spend but no, I can do some actual recruiting with those numbers. This is good news for anyone who had doubts about taking over a winless team as you should have points to play with in the offseason. I don’t know if some of these points came with me from UNLV. I’m guessing not but either way, this information is very helpful.
The Second Test
I decided not to stop there. I also wanted to tinker with the school budget to see if there was anything odd with the points.
Let’s see what happens when I set Recruiting to 50% instead of 100%. Will I get to spend exactly half of what we saw above which was 184?
It looks like we don’t. With Recruiting set at 50%, I received 115 points to spend which is well above what I was expecting. This means that school budgets are weighted in some way. This situation reminded me of my first offseason at Yale. I finished the first season 1-10. Here’s what happened in that offseason.
I set the Recruiting budget at 70%, hoping to use some points to recruit players.
It turned out that I only had 23 points to play with, much lower than I ever expected, especially when you compare it to the numbers above with Mississippi State. And by the way, how awesome is the name “Stanford Stanford”? And from Beverly Hills no less.
The Third Test
The last test I wanted to run was if Coach Prestige had any effect on the amount of points you get to use in the offseason. In the first test I resigned from UNLV before the season ended. Anytime you quit a job your Coach Prestige goes down one star so since I was a 4-star coach, I became a 3-star coach at Mississippi State. For this test I took the Mississippi State job after the season ended. I became a 5-star coach, quit the UNLV job which made me a 4-star coach. Here is what happened when I put 100% of my points in recruiting as a 4-star in stead of a 3-star coach.
As you can see, I start out with 207 points. That is a 23-point jump from 184 when I was a 3-star coach. This obviously means that Coach Prestige directly effects your school budget. Also, both the first test and this one had Mississippi State demoted to a 2-star program.
So what does all of this mean? At least we know it’s possible to start out with a decent amount of points to play with if you ever decide to take over a winless team. My biggest fear with taking over a team like this has now gone away. More importantly, we also found out that Coach Prestige effects how many points you receive every season. How much of a percentage that factors in remains to be seen. I was a 1-star coach at Yale when I only had 23 points to play with so there is some correlation there. I believe previous season wins and Coach Prestige factor in this equation in some way. Also, it seems that school budgets are weighted. You would think dropping the Recruiting budget in half will yield half the points but that’s obviously not the case.
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
Hopefully this guide provies everything you need to succeed at recruiting in the offseason. The part of Dynasty Mode is so fun yet if feels like it goes by so quickly. Maybe that is because I hurry through it at times for video content purposes. Take your time, find players that fit what you are trying to do, and have fun!
