NCAA Football 08: Recruiting FAQ by Decker12
Version: 1.6 | Last Updated: 2008-03-24 | View/Download Original File
Version: 1.6 | Last Updated: 2008-03-24 | View/Download Original File
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NCAA 2008 Recruiting FAQ
========================
Version 1.6, March 24, 2008
Welcome to my FAQ for NCAA 2008 Dynasty Mode Recruiting. Recruiting was
given only a scant few paragraphs of information in the tiny NCAA 2008
manual, and there was precious little specific information floating around
online about how recruiting works. This FAQ was written to provide more of
an accurate description of what all the options do, what to expect
throughout the Dynasty season, and finally some solid strategies to make
recruiting fun.
This FAQ was written for the XBox 360 version of NCAA 2008. While it is my
assumption that many of the concepts and tricks and tips will also work
fine with NCAA 2008 on other consoles, your results may vary.
CREDITS AND CONTACT INFORMATION
===============================
This is the first FAQ that I've written in a very long time, and I've
tried to get as many details as accurate as possible. However, I'm more
than open for corrections and recommendations, and will credit you
accordingly at the end of the FAQ.
I'm extremely interested in your feedback. My email address is
decker12@gmail.com.
All the contents in this FAQ are copy written in 2008. If you'd like to
post this FAQ to a different website or location than where you found it,
please drop me a quick line to decker12@gmail.com. Do not post this FAQ
anywhere else without my consent.
I have culled information for this FAQ from many, many sources. I regret
that I can't list every contributor. There are just too many little
paragraphs of information from so many different sources, all jumbled
around in my brain with the stuff I figured out myself.
Special thanks to James B. for providing me with some necessary
confirmation on Scholarships! Thanks also to Dave R. for some
clarification on Swaying Pitches.
All that being said, I have NOT read any official strategy guides or any
of the FAQs on the EA websites. This FAQ is all information that I've
experienced first hand, and because of that some of my terminology may be
different than the "official" terminology. For instance, I gauge
prospect's attitude as "Angry, Annoyed, Neutral, Happy, and Thrilled" -
but the EA site may label those attitudes differently.
Thanks to everyone in the Gamespot NCAA X360 forums, as well as the
GameFAQ forums. I'd like to thank the guys at www.2old2play.com for all
their help.
Finally, I'd like to give EA Sports a huge "thumbs down" criticism for
their awful instruction manuals. It's aggravating for a player to pay $60
for a game and then have to immediately spend another $20 for a Strategy
Guide because the game developer provided only 8 pages of minimal
documentation. It's a horrendous trend for many game developers and EA has
been by far the worse. They spend thousands of man-hours developing a
solid, fun to play product, and then once the gamer gets past the printed
control scheme, they take a "figure it out" attitude. Sorry if it sounds
like I'm patting myself on the back, but if a document like this FAQ was
provided with the game itself, I wouldn't have wasted 20+ hours "figuring
it out" by restarting dynasty after dynasty. Shame on you EA Sports!
RECRUITING OVERVIEW AND INITIAL STEPS
=====================================
Recruiting is an integral part of Dynasty mode. You may find yourself
spending as much time in Recruiting as you do playing the games each week.
We're going to assume that you've started your Dynasty already and have
gotten as far as the initial Prospect Search section of the pre season.
First things first! It's very important to Disable the AI assists for
recruiting. You can find the option to Disable AI assists by going into
the main Dynasty Menu (where you can view your highlights, check the game
schedules, etc). Go into Team Management, then into Coach Strategy.
Finally, hold down the RT to switch to the "CPU" page, and from there you
can disable all of the AI recruiting assistance.
Next, you want to get an idea of what your team needs will be at the end
of the season. You can use the Y button while in Pre Season recruiting to
determine your needs. Most of those positions that you "need" will be
filling in for the Seniors that will graduate.
You need to have a 66 to 70 man roster by the time the preseason starts
for the next year. If you have more than 70 people on your roster, you
will be forced to trim the roster during the Post Season, usually by
cutting underperforming players.
You'll be recruiting throughout the entire season. In general, it's broken
down into 3 phases:
1) Pre Season Recruiting
2) In Season Recruiting
3) Post Season Recruiting
It's a good idea to read every section of this FAQ before starting on any
part of Recruiting. Each phase has several different sub activities that
all factor into the final decision of a prospect. If you wait until the
end of your season to read the section on Post Season Recruiting, you may
find that you should have been doing things differently!
PRE SEASON RECRUITING (PSR)
===========================
In Pre Season Recruiting, your main goal will be to determine what
positions you'll need at the end of the current season. You'll be
searching the Prospect Database for the best possible recruits, and then
you'll be ranking them on your Prospect Board. At this stage, you won't be
contacting them or offering them scholarships. You'll start that when the
season actually begins.
While in PSR, you will use the Y button to bring up a quick snapshot of
what positions your team will need at the conclusion of the current
season. Most of those positions that you'll "need" are Seniors that will
be graduating.
Also in the quick snapshot Y view, you can see rough approximations of how
well your squad is at their particular position. Don't despair over seeing
many C and D ratings, especially if the team you chose for your dynasty is
not a top 25 team. While your D- offensive line will have trouble
protecting your quarterback against a A+ defense, you can easily overcome
some of those mismatches with proper play calling.
The one thing where letter grades are important is your kicking and punt
Special Teams. No matter how accurate you are with the analog stick, lousy
kickers simply won't be able to have the strength to make 40+ yard field
goals.
So your first steps in PSR is to figure out what you'll definitely NEED at
the end of the season, using the Y button quick view. I use a piece of
paper and I write down my needs so I don't have to continually go back and
forth to the Y view when you're in Prospect Search mode.
Next, head into Prospect Search mode. You can select various search
criteria in order to customize exactly what you're looking for in a
prospect. To be honest, I never bothered drilling down into specific types
of players other than Position and Pipeline Sate. I usually play mid major
schools and not top 10 power houses, so I often don't have the luxury of
filtering the top talent. However, your results may vary, but the game
does provide you with the functionality in case you're looking for a
specific type of WR or QB.
From Prospect Search, you want to start adding people to your Prospect
Board, based on your team's needs. Some notes on this process:
Green dots next to their name mean they're definitely interested or pre-
disposed for one reason or another with your school. You will have an
easier time recruiting those prospects.
Many players will have "minimal" interest in your team. This is
represented in-game by a VERY small white bar in the Interest level. For
all intents and purposes, treat these "minimally interested" players as
having what I like to refer to as "Zero Interest". When you try to select
these players to add to your prospect board, their backgrounds will turn
bright red.
Players with Zero Interest in your team will be VERY difficult to actually
recruit. The game will gladly tease you with plenty of opportunities to do
so, however. You can add them to your board, spend time with them every
week, watch their interest rise, offer scholarships and impress them with
victories as you win the BCS championship, but they will most likely
ALWAYS join up with another team before the season is over. Their initial
Zero Interest level for your team is usually a hurdle that no amount of
recruiting will ever let you get past.
Don't get discouraged if all the 5 and most of the 4 star talent has Zero
Interest in your team, especially if it's the start of your first dynasty
season. That's just the way it goes, and unless you're a top 10 team, your
initial season of recruiting will be something like a desperate bid to
replace those graduating seniors with 3 and 4 star recruits (or lower).
That's fine, as most of the prospects you'll end up red-shirting their
first season anyway. Your first year of a dynasty, you should aim for
getting one or two solid recruits, preferably 4 stars or more, plus
filling out the rest of the holes with quality 3 star recruits. Finally,
you'll want to start working on establishing a new Pipeline state, for
both the X360 Achievement and to make future recruiting easier (more on
that later).
When you add players to the Prospect Board, notice how their backgrounds
change color. It can either change to Green ("Interested"), Gray
("Neutral"), or Red ("Uninterested"). The general rule of thumb for what
these colors is as follows:
"Interested" players are pre-disposed to join your school, for several
reasons. Could be your rating, coach integrity, available position, or
pipeline state status. Interested players will usually start phone
conversations happier with you.
"Neutral" players are exactly that. They can go either way, and with
steady recruiting their Interest level in your school will rise. Most of
the players you will encounter in your Prospect searching will be Neutral.
"Uninterested" players are already too "Interested" in other schools to be
receptive to your recruiting. This is not to say that you won't be able to
recruit them. It just means that you'll have an uphill battle, as you must
first interest them enough in your school BEFORE they sign with another
school. Uninterested players usually begin phone calls Annoyed or even
Angry with you, before you even say a word to them.
Throughout the season, it is possible for prospects to go from
Uninterested to Interested. Just keep in mind that you will have a harder
time actually recruiting those players.
JUNIOR COLLEGE PROSPECTS (JUCO):
Junior College transfer prospects are identified by the words "JUCO" near
their name and stats when you're adding them to the Prospect Board.
JUCO players have already been to a college and have used up some of their
eligibility. The game does not tell you which year they left Junior
College. In real life, this would be very important information because a
coach wouldn't be interested in spending time heavily recruiting a 23 year
old Freshman from a JUCO that only had 1 year of eligibility left.
Fortunately, the game doesn't seem to model JUCO eligibility on that
level. Instead, all JUCO players simply lose a year of their eligibility.
Therefore, a JUCO freshman will only be able to play on your team for 3
years, or 4 if you redshirt him for a year. While they may sound like a
risky (or even sloppy) investment, JUCO players on average have better
stats, which can easily offset their longevity. Personally, I use and
recruit JUCO players just as much as any other player.
*** AN IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT SETTING YOUR EXPECTATIONS ***
It is VERY IMPORTANT to realize that no matter how well your team does in
a season, you won't be able to sign the majority of the players that
you've put on your Prospect Board. Until you become a true top 10 Dynasty
Powerhouse (usually after 5 or 6 seasons of solid in-conference play and
BCS wins), most of them will eventually sign with other schools.
This fact can be immensely frustrating for newcomers to Recruiting and
Dynasty mode. Even though successful recruiting every week takes almost as
long as playing a whole game, most of your efforts will be wasted. Until
you gain momentum with your Dynasty, you just have to learn to be happy
with one or two 4* (or better) actual signing Prospects per year, plus
(hopefully) several 3* Prospects.
I usually target at least double the amount of players that I need for
each position. Furthermore, I try to keep the total amount of prospects
below 20. Although you can put up to 35 people on your board, doing so
will really limit the amount of time you can spend with each person.
Although the recruiting board can hold up to 35 recruits, you can only
actually sign 25 recruits in any given year. The game keeps track of how
many players you have left to sign by noting the amount of "Scholarships"
you have remaining.
Strangely, the players also seem to know what position they are on your
board, so the higher they are ranked the more interest they start to gain
with your school.
If your team really, truly needs 25 (or more!) players at the end of the
season, consider revising your red shirt practices. Even if you were to
land all 25 prospects, they'll all be freshman, they'll all graduate at
roughly the same time, and you'll be lining yourself up for problems in
the future. Don't forget the operative word is "Prospect". A 5 star
freshman QB is rarely as skilled as your starting Senior QB.. but in time
that 5 star prospect could be better than the Senior who graduated years
ago.
Note that if you didn't disable the CPU AI "help" for your recruiting, the
CPU will automatically fill in the remaining spots on your board so the
total is 35. The CPU will continue to keep this number to 35 as prospects
are recruited to other teams. This will be very distracting throughout the
season, so I highly recommend you disable the CPU assistance.
After you've filled your board with your necessities, it's time to go back
to the Quick Team "Y" button view and see where you can make improvements.
Is your kicker a Junior with a C- grade? Maybe it's time to start shopping
around for a freshman kicker to replace this guy in a couple of years. Are
your WRs rated C+ but most of them are freshman? Sure, it may be a rough
season this year.. but probably no reason to heavily recruit WRs, because
your current ones will easily improve to B or B+ by the time they're
seniors.
Most of the time I find myself shopping for kickers, punters, HBs, and
CBs.
Don't get discouraged with the Y Quick View breakdown of your roster, or
the "Rating" associated with your team when you match up before a game.
It's confusing and often mysterious how the CPU calculates these letter
grades. I've had a team with 2 five star kickers that could reliably make
45 yard field goals, yet the game still gave my "K" position a C- grade.
The letter grade also doesn't seem to take into account Impact players,
record breakers, or All Americans.
Finally, your last decision as far as the Pre Season Prospect Board is
looking for Athletes (ATH). They are skilled but generic players that
you'll shuffle around to actual positions during your off season. You'll
want to check their stats by pushing down on the RS to get a better idea
of what position they'll be eventually playing. Obviously, don't grab an
ATH with super low kicking ability to replace that Kicker position that
you couldn't find when you were searching for a prospect.
ATH's, being "generic" prospects, seem to have limits on their abilities.
On average, a 4 Star prospect who's listed with a QB position will make a
better quarterback than a 4 star ATH that you assign the QB position in
the off season. This is balanced by the fact that ATH's are usually
slightly easier to recruit that pre-positioned players.
Now that your board is filled, it's time to start putting them in an
"order of importance". As stated earlier, the players seem to know where
they stand on your recruiting board, and players will gain more interest
in your school the closer they are to #1.
*** IMPORTANT: Spending the time in the pre-season and putting all your
prospects in proper order NOW will make your In-Season Recruiting MUCH
easier. TAKE the time to do it during the PSR phase or chances are you'll
be making sloppy decisions later in the season!
In general, I sort my list like this:
1) Needed position (ie HB)
2) Star level of prospect (ie 5*)
3) Their starting interest in me (what percentage the bar is filled, ie
30%)
So, if my team needed 2 WRs, 1 K, 1 C, and 1 CB, my initial board may look
like this:
1. A.Jones WR 5* 15%
2. B.Thomas C 4* 20%
3. C.Nater CB 4* 20%
4. D.Smith WR 4* 15%
5. E.Rosch K 4* 15%
6. F.Holmes WR 4* 10%
7. G.Fairil ATH 4* 20%
8. H.Sahed ATH 4* 20%
9. I.Fox K 3* 30%
10.J.Duem C 3* 20%
11.K.Janton ATH 3* 20%
12.L.McBride ATH 3* 20%
(Note that this board is a simplification, usually I fill my board up with
18 to 22 prospects).
So as you can see, I have a couple of each position that I absolutely
need, plus a few interesting looking 4* ATH's in there, finally rounding
out with less desirable 3* players that may come in handy. Those 3*
players have something else in common: they're all from the same state.
That will help me with developing a new Pipeline state.
PIPELINE STATES
Developing a new Pipeline state basically means that your school is
becoming the Go-To spot for the prospects of a particular state. You will
know if you've obtained a new pipeline state after the post-season
recruiting is done.
You can view your current Pipeline states in the main Recruiting area (ie
the flipbook-like menu system, before you go into Prospect Board or
Prospect Search).
Presumably, behind the scenes, your recruiters are out in those Pipeline
states more often, going to their high school games, and staying in
contact with the small town coaches. As the years of your dynasty
progress, you can have an unlimited amount of pipeline states, and
prospects from your pipeline states will have more starting Interest in
your school.
What is unknown to me however, is HOW or WHEN the game calculates whether
a state is transformed into a Pipeline State. I'm not sure if it's related
to the sheer amount of people you successfully recruit from the state
(usually around 3 seems to trigger it), or the star quality of the players
from an individual state. I am pretty sure that you need to recruit
players from the same state during ONE season for the game to establish a
Pipeline state.
I try to develop a new Pipeline state every other year. During even
numbered seasons (2008, 2010, 2012, etc), I make sure to specifically
recruit players from states that are not yet Pipelines. With luck, I'll
land enough Prospects from non-Pipeline states and at the end of Post
Season, I'll get the confirmation that I've developed a new Pipeline
State.
When you're in Prospect Search, you can limit your search to only Pipeline
states. You'll have a much easier time recruiting players from your
Pipeline states, but if you only search from your Pipeline states you run
the risk of missing out on valuable talent.
The game figures out if you've developed a new Pipeline state after Post
Season Recruiting is done. There is a X360 Achievement for developing a
new Pipeline state.
CREATE-A-PROSPECT
A note about Create-A-Prospect: Don't bother with it! If you're really
interested in putting you and your friends in the game, at least give them
reasonable stats. Otherwise, if you generate a bunch of massive 5* super
men, that doesn't mean YOUR school will actually be able to recruit them!
They're treated JUST like any other prospect, which means that you'll have
to pitch them just like all the other schools do. You could even end up
having to play against them someday.
Note that there is a sort of trick/hack/cheat to generating a 1 Star
"Super" Prospect. It involves creating a Kicker with very high stats in
everything EXCEPT any kicking related skills. You just lower the kicking
skills down as far as they can go, raise everything else up to 99's, and
the game will consider him a 1 star Kicker. Then, during the off season
(and assuming you've successfully recruited him), you just change the
Kicker's position to something else, and viola, you have an overpowered
Super Prospect that's awesome at every position (except Kicker and Punter,
of course). The downside to this tactic is that these types of players
leave for the NFL draft very early in their college career.
I have heard scattered reports that using any Created prospect will break
any Dynasty related X360 Achievements. Meaning, if you Create a Prospect,
you are considered disqualified from unlocking the various Dynasty only
Achievements (Mr. February, Pipeline State, etc).
This will be VERY bad news if you're going for the time consuming "1 to 6
Star" Achievement, and years later you find out that the Create a Prospect
you made for fun and giggles back in Season 2 prevented you from unlocking
the Achievement!
CUSTOM SCHEDULE NOTES
When creating your schedule, keep a few things in mind. Unlike the real
NCAA, strength of schedule is not affected by home or away games. Since
the Stadium Pulse feature is gone from NCAA 2008, the actual in-game
differences between playing Away and at Home are now minimal. Playing Away
games at noisy, fan-friendly stadiums like USC or Florida won't change
your Strength of Schedule letter grade. The more games you play at home,
the more opportunities you'll have for prospects to Visit your school and
watch big games in order to improve their interest. When making your
schedule, you can use the D-pad to change whether a game is being played
at home or on the road. You can't edit the games with a lock icon (which
are usually In-Conference games).
If possible, schedule your ranked and rivalry games for the middle of the
season. It takes time until a prospect gains enough interest to want to
Schedule a visit, and they won't be ready on Week 1 or Week 2. That being
said, I know some conferences are notorious for having huge blocks of mid
season, strictly in-conference games (the MAC is like that). If you find
yourself in that situation, it's probably better to knock off those Top 10
teams as soon as you can in the season. The prospects will still be
impressed, just not as impressed as if they were at the game during a
Scheduled Visit.
See below for more information on Scheduled Visits.
IN SEASON RECRUITING (ISR)
==========================
ISR consists of contacting the prospects that you placed on your Prospect
Board, discovering their interests, swaying their interests to match those
of your school, offering them scholarships, and scheduling them to visit
your school.
You have 10 hours each week to talk to the players on your board. Every
week you should be using as much of this 10 hours as you can. Yes, it can
get tedious. Yes, it's not exactly a rip-roaring good time, especially
after you just won a 4th quarter nail biter against a top 10 team. No, you
should NOT Sim through it!
Hopefully you've already turned off the CPU AI's often disastrous "help"
with recruiting phone calls. Turning it off will make sure that the CPU
doesn't use up any leftover minutes calling recruits. By the same token,
turning it off means that if you Sim any week's Recruiting, no phone calls
from your team will take place.
Anyway, your first step for each of your recruits is to give them a call
and gauge their attitude. The little football icon at the top of the
screen shows their current mood. You can have Angry, Annoyed, Neutral,
Happy, and Thrilled.
SCHOLARSHIPS
In order to keep prospecting fair and competitive, the game treats
Scholarships as "the maximum amount of players you are allowed to recruit
in one season". If you don't offer a scholarship, a prospect will NEVER
sign with you, even if you're their #1 team and they have maximum interest
in you.
When you offer a scholarship, you'll often get a quick boost to their
mood. Usually, I offer every one of my 5 and 4 star recruits an immediate
scholarship, the very first time I call them.
It IS possible to immediately sign a player by offering them a
Scholarship. Out of all the recruiting, week after week, season after
season, it has only happened to me once. The reason for this happening
appears to be completely random. The one time it happened to me, it was
the first recruiting of the season, before playing my first game. I had a
5 star unranked team and it was a 5 star recruit who had some interest in
my school, but I wasn't in his Top 5. I offered him a scholarship and
Poof, he accepted the offer right on the spot.
Regardless, I do know that if you don't offer them a scholarship, his
other schools probably will... and you'll gain Interest much slower from the
prospect.
Since you spent so much time in the pre-season figuring out exactly the
right candidates for your school, and filtering them accordingly, you
should already be willing to offer those guys scholarships. If you offer
someone a scholarship and they decide to sign with another team, you get
that scholarship back.
Remember, even though you can have 35 people on your recruiting board, you
can only offer 25 Scholarships at one time. This also means that you can
only sign 25 people each year. This allows you to keep people "on the back
burner" without a Scholarship. You could spend Recruiting time adding to
their Interest throughout the year, and then if a Scholarship opens up,
you can immediately offer it to them.
This strategy can be a powerful tool in your recruiting - just keep in
mind it's often hard enough to be persistent and effectively recruit 15
players, let alone juggle 35. But as your dynasty progresses and your
integrity and school ratings rise, you will find players with High
Interest that are more than willing to sit on your Prospecting Board for
weeks without a Scholarship.
THE PHONE CALL
Let's return to the actual phone call. You are allowed one phone call to
each player each week. If you call them and hang up without saying
anything to them, that still counts as your phone call for the week. Note
that later, when you "Set Activities for a Player's Visit" in the main
Prospect Board screen, it is not treated as a phone call. So if you have a
player visiting that week, it is possible to call him first, have him hang
up on you by getting him Angry, and then still schedule his activities for
the visit (what an awkward dinner with the coach that must be!).
During a phone call, you have three goals. First of all, discover what
their interests are. Second, leave them Happy or Thrilled. Third, Sway
their interests to match what your school offers. I'll go over each, one
at a time.
STEP 1: Discover their Interests
--------------------------------
The rankings for the Schools are:
Subpar
Poor
Fair
Average
Good
Very Good
Great
Excellent
Elite
This scale roughly matches to the player's Pitch Importance:
Least
Very Low
Low
Average
Above Average
High
Very High
Most
Therefore, here is the table that matches School Rankings with Pitch
Importances:
SCHOOL PITCH IMPORTANCE
Subpar & Poor <==> Least
Fair <==> Very Low
Average <==> Low
Good <==> Average
Very Good <==> Above Average
Great <==> High
Excellent <==> Very High
Elite <==> Most
The game appears to treat the "Subpar" and "Poor" categories with the same
weight when it comes to recruiting and Swaying Pitches. If there is a
difference between the two ranks, it's minimal enough that it has never
made a difference to any of my recruiting over any of my dynasties. For
simplicity I have just lumped the two together as one rank.
Keep in mind that the categories and pitches are for all intents and
purposes, completely generic. Although TV Exposure and Conference Prestige
might sound like "football-centric" types of interests, they're treated
the same as Campus Lifestyle and Academics. The best 5 star WR prospect in
the country could actually have minimal interest in playing early, being
on TV, or winning the conference.
The important thing is learning how to match your school with the
prospect's interests. If your school isn't good at something that the
prospect highly desires, it obviously won't be as good of a match.
Your first step is to use the Find Pitch selection. Ultimately, you will
want to find out each one of the player's Pitch Interests. However, keep
in mind that you have only 10 hours a week to find out as much information
as you can about ALL your prospects. You often only have a couple of weeks
worth of discovery before they will come to visit your campus. If you
don't know what they're interested in by the time they visit, you won't
know what parts of your school to show them, and they won't become as
interested.
When I'm faced with a recruit filled with Unknowns, their attitude is
usually neutral. I pick my school's best attribute and I find their
interest. The timer ticks away as I chat them up, trying to find out what
they like and what they don't. Eventually, they'll fess up and their
interest will appear. Sometimes it'll appear with a Lock icon, meaning you
won't be able to Sway their interest any further.
Finding Interest is a boring thing for the prospect, and if you do it too
long their mood will decrease. Once they get Angry, they'll hang up on
you.
When using Find Pitch or later, Hard Sell and Sway Pitch, you will want to
keep an eye on their mood. Simply hit A to start the process, and hit B to
cancel out of the topic. During the Find Pitch phase, they will be less
likely to become Angry if you're talking about something that interests
them. It is possible to press B to cancel the topic, go talk about
something else, and then come back the original topic and get a different
response.
Rapidly tapping A during any process is the equivalent of "starting and
stopping" the conversation in rapid succession, and it seems to really
annoy the prospect and drops their mood in a hurry.
Likewise, I have heard reports that you need to talk to the prospect, for
better or worse, until you see "Pitch Complete". I don't buy into this
speculation. As soon as they are happy enough for me, I stop spending time
with them and stop the pitch and move onto another topic.
Check the chart above to determine if their interest matches with what
your school is good at. If the two ranks are close to each other, you can
Hard Sell the pitch to them, which will make them Happier. You can use
Hard Sells to improve their mood, and once their mood is improved, you can
safely Find Interest for other categories. Don't try to Hard Sell a topic
if the interest level and pitch importance are too far apart, or you'll
just decrease their Mood.
Back to my strategy: I pick my school's best attribute and pitch it to
them first. Why? Because if by chance I am pitching an Excellent attribute
to them and it also happens to be their Most or Very High Pitch
Importance, I just killed two birds with one stone! You initial goal with
these first couple of weeks worth of prospect pitching is to discover
their Most and Very High interests.
Each prospect has at least 2 Very Highs and 1 Most, and as soon as you get
this information from them, you can usually pull off a decent Campus Visit
for them.
Conversely, each prospect has 2 Very Lows and 1 Least.
STEP 2: Boost the Mood
----------------------
Once you've obtained some information from a prospect, remember to try to
boost up his mood as much as you can before you hang up on him. You do
this using the Hard Sell option. It's always better to leave a prospect
Thrilled than it is to leave him Annoyed. Of course, you have to balance
out the amount of time you want to spend with him. Spending 4 hours trying
to get your #1 prospect to Thrilled when you don't make any progress or
learn a single thing about your #2 prospect isn't a good idea.
Each week, you can also only Hard Sell a prospect so much. After a point,
they just won't be receptive to your Hard Sells. You can usually only Hard
Sell them for a little bit in each category, which is okay because often
you have several categories that are a good match between your prospect
and your school. It pays to mix it up, but if you find that they're just
not getting any happier, it may be time to hang up for the week and move
on to a different prospect.
Chances are, the first few weeks, you won't get to learn anything about
your prospects that are ranked 15 or lower on your board. That will
balance out, however, because as you learn more and more about your
prospects, you'll have less reason to spend hours talking on the phone
with them. Thus, you'll have more recruiting time to work on those guys
ranked under 15. Remember, back in the pre-season you already sorted out
these players and decided that they're under rank 15 for a reason, thus
it's not critical that you recruit them as hard.
It is important to leave at least 10 or 15 minutes left on your clock to
offer scholarships to those players you haven't talked to yet. A prospect
with a scholarship offer in hand usually gains interest in your team
faster, even if you don't talk to them that week. 10 minutes is the
minimum time it takes, per prospect, to simply call them and offer the
scholarship. As I said earlier, I try to offer scholarships to all my
players as quickly as possible. If this means I lose an hour during my
first week of recruiting, then it's a risk I'm willing to take in order to
start the Interest level building in every one of my prospects.
STEP 3: Swaying Pitches
-----------------------
After you've learned as much about a prospect as possible, you'll want to
consider using the Sway Pitch feature. You can only Sway Pitches for
things that don't have the Lock icon on it. Things that are locked mean
that the player just won't budge anymore on his opinion about the
particular pitch.
Note that Swaying Pitches is more "expensive" in terms of mood change than
simply Finding Pitches. A prospect can go from Thrilled to Angry in just
20 in-game minutes of Swaying Pitches, so you have to use this tool
carefully. It's probably better to leave a prospect Happy or Thrilled than
it is to Sway him too much and leave him Angry.
Refer to the now familiar School Strength / Pitch Importance Chart:
SCHOOL PITCH IMPORTANCE
Subpar & Poor <==> Least
Fair <==> Very Low
Average <==> Low
Good <==> Average
Very Good <==> Above Average
Great <==> High
Excellent <==> Very High
Elite <==> Most
At the best, each week, every time you Sway a pitch, you're hoping to move
the prospect one "step" closer to what your school's strengths are.
The fewer "steps" difference between your school's strengths and their
current Pitch Importance, the more successful you will be in swaying them.
For instance, take this example:
MY SCHOOL'S RANK HIS CURRENT PITCH IMPORTANCE
Academics: Great Very Low
Conf Prestige: Excellent High
TV Exposure: Fair Low
Looking at the above example, it is not a good idea for me to attempt to
Sway Pitch for Academics. The gap is just too big. Since he'll only sway
one step, the most I can hope for during the week is bringing his Very Low
up to a Low. Then I would have to sway him again next week for another
step up to Average, and risk making him Angry and getting hung up on.
Swaying Prestige is a good bet. I'll most likely move his High importance
up a notch to Very High, which it will then Lock.
Swaying TV Exposure is also a good bet. You'll move his Low down to Very
Low, which it will then probably Lock.
But wait! If your school is so bad at a particular category like TV
Exposure, why would you want to Sway the player to be happy with your
school's faults?
The biggest reason is this: Other schools are ALSO trying to recruit this
player! By Swaying the prospect, you're making the player more interested
in everything your school represents, for both good AND bad.
The more pitches that you've Swayed and Locked, the easier it will be to
recruit the prospect. Be aware that Swaying and Locking pitches is VERY
time consuming. If your prospect is already extremely interested in your
school and your school is his #1 pick, you probably shouldn't waste the
time Locking everything. If you intend to Sway and Lock every pitch, over
the entire season you'll usually run out of recruiting time before you
reach #12 on your Prospect Board.
Also, the CPU will never Sway prospect pitches. That gives you a certain
advantage, however the CPU also seems to have unlimited time to pitch it's
prospects. That's why they're often able to schedule visits for certain
players on Week 2.
Personally, I am happy if I can successfully Sway two pitches a week, per
player. Usually I can only manage to Sway one pitch before their mood dips
too low, and then I have to spend time Hard Selling them so when I hang up
the phone, they're Happy or Thrilled.
Swaying pitches is a powerful recruitment tool, but it's very expensive in
terms of time spent using it and potential to ruin the mood of your
prospects. Doing the Post Season Recruiting phase (and the In-Home visit),
the more Pitches that you've Swayed and Locked, the more likely the player
will be to sign with your school.
SCHEDULE VISITS
Hopefully, your prospects will eventually show you a little clock icon
near their name. This means they're ready to schedule a visit to your
school, and is the next big step in getting the player to sign with your
team.
When you schedule a visit, you give them a call and pick a Home game or
BYE week for them to come see you. Before you schedule, however, make sure
that you've already discovered their High, Very High, and Most Pitch
Importances. You'll need this information in order to know what parts of
your school to show them.
Ideally, your school's Rank will match fairly close to their Pitch
Importance. I'll cover this more in when I discuss the actual Visiting
Activities part of recruiting. However, just keep in mind that when they
visit, you want to show them what they want to see the most, and you need
to temper that decision with what your school is good at. I don't have any
hard data on this however, it's just a general feeling I get during
recruiting.
Anyway, your first step is to figure out a time for them to come and
visit. After their visit, they will rate their experience at your school
with a letter grade by their name (F to A+). There are several factors
that make up what your final letter score will be, and it all has to do
with the week you schedule them.
Here are some general guidelines on what prospects want to see during
their visit:
1) They like to watch big wins against ranked teams.
2) They like to watch big wins against rival teams.
3) They like to watch their positions having big games.
4) They like to watch you win games against conference opponents.
5) They like to visit without other prospects being there (who play their
same position).
Further information:
1) Obviously the prospects will be thrilled if you win a game against a
top ranked team. They really, really love it if the top ranked team that
you beat is also a school's rival.
2) If you can't schedule them to watch a game against a top team, pick
them to visit when you are playing a conference rival. Winning this game
gives you a better visit.
3) They like to see their on-field position have a big game. If the
visiting prospect is a HB, then go a bit heavy on the running plays to
your star HB. The prospects give you a better grade if they see success on
the field in their position.
4) When in doubt, make sure they're coming to visit when you're playing
(and plan on beating) one of your better conference opponents. Avoid
having them visit when you're playing a non-conference game against an
unranked rival. If you can't help this, make sure your players put up big
numbers, as per #3 above.
5) I'm not entirely sure, but I think the prospects give you a better
grade if they don't have any other prospect competition when they come
visit. For instance, don't schedule 3 WRs and 2 HBs to come to watch the
same game. If possible, spread them out throughout the season so each one
doesn't feel like they're competing with the others for the position.
All this MUST be balanced out with the visits and offers that the other
schools are giving them. If you're heavily recruiting the latest 5 star
QB, you'll want to get him in to see a game as fast as possible. The CPU
seems to cheat on this aspect, and will have visits scheduled for the top
talent in week 2 or 3 - something that would be impossible for you to do
with only 20 or 30 hours worth of Interest building for the prospect. You
can check on a prospect's other offers and scheduled visits by pushing
down on the RS. I personally feel that it's better to have a prospect see
an Okay game early in the season than wait until Week 10 when you're
playing your top 10 rival. Chances are that if you wait, he'll already
sign with another team.
Finally, avoid having them visit during a BYE week. Since you're not
playing any games that week, the only way you have to impress them is on
the merits of matching your school's rankings vs. their pitch importances.
THE VISIT
When the week has arrived, you'll get a little pop up in the recruiting
section telling you who's scheduled to visit that week. At this point,
you'll notice another option when you select the prospect: Set Activities
for Upcoming Visit.
Note that you can (and should) still call them this week. Make sure you
know what you want to show them - that is, make sure you know their High,
Very High, and Most pitches, and make notes to what your school strengths
are in relation to what's important to them. Finally, Hard Sell them up to
leave them with a huge Thrilled grin. Note that you don't Set Activities
during the phone call itself. Therefore, you can still Set Activities with
them if they hang up on you, or if you run out of recruiting time.
When you Set Activities, you are given a list that will show your school's
categories and their pitch importance that you discovered throughout the
rest of the season. Note that you won't see how your school is ranked, so
you should try to remember that from all the pitching you've been doing.
You can choose up to 3 things to show them during the visit. You want to
show them what's most important to them. However, temper this with what
your school is ranked in. If your school's TV Exposure is ranked Subpar,
and it's their Most important thing, then you'll want to skip showing them
that. Instead, choose 3 other things ranked High and Very High (that also
happen to match with your school's ranks).
Finally, don't forget to hit the Start (>) button when you're done
choosing the activities! It's a weird button change from all the other
recruiting duties where you've been used to using A, B, and the RS.
Hitting B to go back won't save the activities, so remember to use Start
instead.
Quick hint: If for some reason you don't know what the players interests
are yet, they'll give you a hint during the Set Activities screen. If you
read the text at the top, they'll offer hints like, "I always wanted to
sit down with the coach and talk strategy". This means his Very High or
Most pitch importance is Discuss Depth Chart. Don't worry too much about
deciphering these hints. If you've been doing your recruiting correctly,
you'll already know their top Pitch Importance for a week or two before
they visit.
When you start the week's game, a quick pop up will tell you who's
visiting that week. As far as I know, that's the ONLY time in-game for you
to remember what positions/prospects are visiting your school. If you plan
on impressing the prospects with big plays, make sure you remember who's
watching that week.
ISR PROSPECT BOARD RE-ARRANGING
As your season progresses, you may find it necessary to make minor
ordering adjustments to your Prospect Board. Try to keep a constant eye on
your top Prospects and where their interests are swaying. After week 6,
you may want to consider bailing on Prospects that don't yet have you in
their top 8. Don't necessarily remove them from your board, just demote
them down a few ranks. Try to then put prospects that may be less talented
but more "on the fence" in their place.
After several prospects have you as their #1 pick, you can safely drop
them a few positions on your recruiting board. You can also reduce the
frequency of your phone calls to them, with the logic being that they've
basically made their decision and they're waiting until the end of the
season to actually sign.
Dropping their position and not calling them as often will free you up to
pursue the other Prospects that don't have your team as their #1 pick.
Just remember to click the RS on them every week and make sure another
school isn't creeping up too high on their Interest level.
END OF SEASON NOTES
As the season winds down, many of your prospects will most likely sign
with other teams. When this happens, they'll be put at the bottom of your
Prospect Board with a big "X" icon near their name. At this point, it's
time to remove them from your board, and withdraw their scholarship offer.
If you have convinced prospects to sign with your team, they will also be
put at the bottom of your Prospect board. They're at the bottom because
you no longer need to actively recruit them. Don't remove them from the
board, or they won't sign with your team!
POST SEASON RECRUITING
======================
After the season, you'll have 5 weeks (and thus 50 hours) worth of
additional recruiting to further convince prospects to join with your
team. During this time, your main goal is to schedule In-Home Visits with
your prospects.
One very important part of Post Season Recruiting: Be careful using the
Advance button! It is possible to accidentally Advance past ALL FOUR weeks
of recruiting. It's not very well documented and it's very easy to
accidentally think you're "advancing to the next week of Post Season
Recruiting" when in actuality, you've "advanced through the entire Post
Season Recruiting task".
I recommend you Save your Dynasty before you begin any Post Season
Recruiting tasks, and Save after every week, just in case you accidentally
Advance at the wrong time. Since you have CPU AI recruiting assists turned
off, accidentally Advancing through the entire task means no phone calls
and no visits will happen!
To successfully advance only 1 week worth of Post Season Recruiting, head
to the Prospect Board, THEN use the Start button to advance to the next
week. You will have 10 hours each week as usual.
IN HOME VISITS
You should be able to schedule In-Home Visits with several of your top
prospects. During this time, it works very similar to the regular Campus
Visits you've been seeing during the season. However, now your action item
is to specifically match your school's strengths with the prospect's Pitch
Interests. If you remember, back during Campus Visits, you wanted to do
this if possible, but in the Campus Visit days you probably didn't know as
much about the prospect as you do now. Plus, back in Campus Visit days, it
was much more important to show them a good game than it was to show them
around the school.
During the in-home visit, you can achieve a higher letter grade by:
1. Know as much about the player as possible. No "Unknown" Pitch
Importances remaining.
2. Have as many pitches swayed and locked as possible.
3. Match up the Pitch Importances with the appropriate School Rank.
Note that for #1 and #2, you won't have much time during Post Season
Recruiting to complete those tasks. Hopefully you've been doing those
tasks throughout the regular season.
For #3: during the In-Home Visit, you'll want to use the chart again to
figure out what to talk to them about, and match up your school's ranking
with the prospect's pitch importance.
SCHOOL PITCH IMPORTANCE
Subpar & Poor <==> Least
Fair <==> Very Low
Average <==> Low
Good <==> Average
Very Good <==> Above Average
Great <==> High
Excellent <==> Very High
Elite <==> Most
Hopefully, this should be an easy task. If you've Swayed pitches in the
past and done your recruiting homework, you should already have decent
matches for most of the categories.
At this point in the process, the "level" of importance isn't as critical
as making a "match". For example, let's assume this scenario:
SCHOOL RANK PITCH IMPORTANCE
Conference Prestige Good Average
TV Exposure Subpar Least
Early Playing Time Excellent Low
Academics Fair Very High
For the in home visit, out of the above choices, you would want to choose
Conference Prestige and TV Exposure. Why? Regardless of how your school's
ranking is, those two are the best "matches". Because it's such a
mismatch, you wouldn't want to choose Early Playing time, even though your
school is highly ranked. Same with Academics: even though it means a lot
to the prospect, it's not a good match because your school is only ranked
Fair.
Remember, you still have the ability to call them and leave them Thrilled,
so by all means make sure you do that.
Since this is your last opportunity to recruit for the season, it might be
a good idea to check the Prospect Search board and fill any holes that
have popped up during the recruiting process.
Another note on the Y button Team Quick View. During post season
recruiting, this quick view isn't entirely accurate. It doesn't seem to
take into account the Seniors that graduated only weeks before, nor does
it take into account the recruits that have already promised to join. This
can get confusing, because during Post Season Recruiting, the Y button
Team Quick View shows you what you needed at the beginning of last season!
If you don't fill the positions that are required (use the Y quick view to
see who's leaving), the CPU will assign 1 star Walk Ons to those positions
before the start of the next season.
Therefore, it may be a good idea to do some additional recruiting. Check
the Prospect search and see if there's any talent that has a high level of
interest in your team but is currently un-recruited. You will sometimes
find nice surprises, such as 3 star ATHs and 3 star CBs (which you could
easily turn into WRs).
Add them to the board, send them a scholarship offer, and chat them up a
bit. More often than not they'll decide to join up simply because you're
the only school that showed them any interest. This becomes much easier
the more stars your school has, as many 2* prospects seem to prefer being
4th string to a 5* program than 1st string to a 3* program.
Note that you can also cut these players before the season starts in case
they end up being really poor. But, I'd rather have 2 star versatile ATHs
on my team than 1 star randomly assigned Walk Ons.
Quick View gets even more messed up when you start shuffling positions
around in the pre-season. I've never been able to figure out at what times
in the post/pre season it recalculates the position needs of the team.
Learn to mistrust Quick View at the end of PSR or you may end up shuffling
around the wrong players to the wrong positions.
PROMISES
During the Post Season Recruiting, you can also offer the prospect a
Promise. You start with only a few Promises unlocked, and as you fulfill
those Promises, your Coach Integrity will go up, and more Promises will
become available. Note that there is also a Xbox Achievement for issuing a
Promise to a prospect.
Prospects LOVE promises. They are huge mood boosters for them. However, if
you fail with a promise, your coach integrity will suffer. Coach Integrity
is a strange value that I've never been able to really figure out. It's
easy to gain Integrity, which presumably means you'll get better job
offers and more players will be interested in your school.
However, the game's idea of Coach Integrity logic is flawed. I'm not
interested in job offers - if I wanted to coach a different team for my
Dynasty, I would have done that in the beginning. I'm not about to bail on
my team after I've spent hours and hours building up the talent with
year's worth of recruiting. Next season, the initial Interest of a
prospect is far more affected by your school's top 25 ranking, school's
star rating, and pipeline state status.
I assume Coach Integrity fits into that equation somewhere, but I'm just
not sure how much. As your Coach Integrity goes up, so will the Coach
Integrity rating in your School Rankings. This could help you recruit more
prospects that have Very High or Most interests in the Coach Integrity
category.
Anyway, back to Promises. Out the initial Promises you're offered, some of
them are easier to Promise than others. My favorites are Win Conference
Championship and Defeat Rival. Both are usually easy to obtain, and they
rely on YOUR actions instead of CPU randomness.
By that statement I mean this: I can always play a great set of games and
win the conference championship or defeat a rival team. Worse case, I can
save and load my Dynasty if I lose a big game. What I can't control is how
the BCS standings shake out for the year, if my players get injured, or
how controlling the CPU is going to be with the depth charts or with
substitutions (and personally, I hate micromanaging those during a
season).
Therefore, promising your freshman solid playing time or that you'll win
the BCS are very risky promises. The prospect could get hurt in game 3,
and the game doesn't tell you what "solid playing time" actually means.
Just because you're in a strong BCS conference doesn't mean you will even
have the opportunity to play in the BCS championship game.
I've had this happen several times: I schedule a game with a top 10 team
at the beginning of the season, they drop out of the rankings by the time
I play them, and I'm left with no other top teams for the rest of my
schedule. Thus I have no ability to get into the top 5, even if I go
undefeated. Then my BCS Championship promise can't be completed.
Also, make sure that if you choose the "Beat a rival" promise, make sure
you actually schedule a rivalry game! Ditto with "Conference Champions" -
make sure you're actually part of a conference first (I'm talking to you,
Army and Notre Dame).
I also avoid the No Red shirt promise. Unless you're really hurting for
players in a particular position (or you have a truly stellar 5 star
prospect coming in), you'll most likely be red shirting freshman prospects
for the first year they are part of your team. What makes matters worse is
that at this stage in the Post Season Recruiting, you don't know who you
are going to Red shirt yet, because the roster isn't finalized. The game
just doesn't provide you with this information yet, so the No Red shirt
promise is a tricky one to plan for.
Some other promises to be wary of are the Top 10 promises. The "Top 10 in
2 years" promise can be read the wrong way. Originally, I read it as "At
some point in the next 2 years, I need to be in the top 10". What it
really means is this: For both of the next two years, you must end the
season in the top 10. It's a hard promise to fulfill, especially if you're
in a weak conference and lack the Custom Scheduled games to even play Top
10 teams.
FINAL THOUGHTS
==============
At this point, you should be well on your way to having a successful
recruiting season. It takes a lot of time and some practice, so don't be
afraid to save your Dynasty at various stages in case you make any big
mistakes. You can back out to the main Dynasty menu and use the "Save
Dynasty" submenu to save various stages of your Dynasty. When you push
down on the LS to bring up the Quick Save box, it'll Quick Save over
whatever you named your last saved dynasty.
ACHIEVEMENT HELP
================
Two of the most time consuming achievements in NCAA 2008 are related to
Dynasty mode and Recruiting.
The 1 to 6 Star Dynasty achievement is worth 50 points. Expect to spend at
least 20 hours completing this achievement. I used Army to accomplish this
task. As a 1* school, your first few seasons worth of recruiting will be
difficult, so start by loading up on 3* Prospects. With luck, you'll have
plenty of pipeline states and some decent talent knocking on your door by
the time you're a 5* school.
Because this achievement takes so long to accomplish, you'll want to
follow a few ground rules when you start your Dynasty. I have heard of the
achievement "breaking", and you'll have no feedback to your progress until
you actually get that sixth star. So just to be sure:
1. Throughout the Dynasty, pick a difficulty level, and don't change it.
2. Don't change the game length.
3. Never use the Create a Prospect feature!
4. Use only the DEFAULT rosters that come with NCAA 2008. Do not use any
of the "Real World Roster Files" that are out on the Internet. Those
roster files make significant changes to the teams, and those changes can
break the Achievement.
5. Save your Dynasty to a new file at the beginning of Pre Season
Recruiting. That way you can always go back to a previous season to try
again in case the achievement breaks.
Create a custom schedule that allows for plenty of BCS opponents, and beat
them. Put up big numbers, win your conference and/or the BCS, have your
players win trophies, and physically play every game (instead of simming).
That will guarantee that each season your program gains a star. Don't
forget to recruit - you'll need that talent to beat the better programs.
If you Sim your games from the Dynasty menu, you won't be as likely to
gain a star at the end of the season. As you work your way through the
seasons, you'll usually get the Invite to BCS Conference achievement.
Note that going from 5 to 6 stars requires some additional effort. Plan to
have an undefeated season, be ranked in the top 5, and win your conference
championship. Ideally, win a January bowl game, and hopefully you'll get
the Achievement right before Post Season Recruiting begins.
You can shave some time off completing this achievement by lowering the
game's difficulty to Freshman, and using Super Sim during all your
defensive downs.
Mr. February is the recruiting achievement. You'll have to be ranked #1 in
the Recruiting Class to gain the points. You can check where your school
is ranked by going into the Recruiting menu, and selecting Top Classes.
For the year that you're going to try for Mr. February, you'll want to
recruit as many players as possible. Obviously, go for 5* talent if you
can, but the Top Class calculation seems to put an emphasis on sheer
numbers.
While you can try for Mr. February while you're working on the 1 to 6 Star
achievements, I wouldn't recommend it. Too much is at risk for the 1 to 6
Star achievement for you to waste a year and load up on unnecessary talent
just to get the Top Recruiting Class.
Instead, if you're looking for an easier way to get Mr. February, try
starting a new Dynasty with USC or Florida or Texas. Put the difficulty
down to Freshman. Spend a season or two and focus on landing 25 players,
regardless if you need their positions or not. Many prospects will already
be thrilled to join your top ranked program, so you won't have to go nuts
Swaying each and every pitch for each individual. Go for quantity over
quality, but make sure you have at least a couple 5* and 4* prospects sign
with you.
Depending on your coach's Contract Status, there's another quick way to
gain Mr. February which involves using your 1 to 6 Star Achievement
Dynasty. After you've reached 6 stars, you'll usually be offered a job at
another school. If a top 5 school offers you a head coach position, go
ahead and take it. Because you're coming from a hugely successful multi-
season Dynasty, your Coach Integrity and Coach Experience ratings will be
through the roof. This will give you a huge head start in recruiting with
your new school. Play a couple of seasons with the new school, following
the above instructions, and Mr. February should be yours in no time!
ADDITIONAL TIPS
===============
As stated previously, the CPU doesn't seem to have any time limits on
their recruiting. Prospects for the CPU seem to gain interest in the CPU's
schools based on some other factors. Also, possibly due to a bug or
oversight, the CPU can schedule Prospect Visits on their Away games. This
is offset to your advantage by the fact that:
1) The CPU never Sways Pitches
2) The CPU never does any post-season recruiting
3) The CPU never makes Promises
4) The CPU's School Rankings never change. Yours can go up or down
depending on your Coach Integrity, past BCS performance, Conference
invites, etc.
The Change Position tool during the Post Season is more powerful and
easier to use than you may think. If you select a player, it will show his
Overall ranking for his current position. Moving him to a different
position (by pushing left or right) will show you his new Overall
position. This is a very quick and easy way to determine if it makes sense
to shift a player to a new position.
I often find myself with way too many defensive players, and many of them
are easily swapped into offensive roles with only a minimal loss (or even
gain) to their Overall rating. You may be very surprised to find out that
a CB with a (70) Overall ends up being a better WR with a (75) Overall.
This is a great way to fill holes in your positions. Remember to dig
deeper into each player's stats before you re-assign his position. A CB
with a high Overall rating but low WR-type stats (such as Hands,
Awareness, etc) will make for a poor WR.
When you start a Dynasty, keep in mind that you will be playing 25 or more
games with your initial 2007 group of players. It's much easier to keep
track of their positions, injuries, motivation levels, and Impact Player
status if you can actually associate a name with the player. That is why
it is extremely helpful to Auto-Name the rosters before you start a
Dynasty. You can do this in the My NCAA 2008 options. After you Auto-Name
remember to Save the Roster using the default name "ROSTER". That way
it'll be auto-loaded, with names, every time you start the game.
The US Service Academies (Navy, Army, and Air Force) are unique in NCAA
2008 in that their players never leave for the NFL draft. They only leave
your team due to graduation or if they transfer to another school. Army is
a great team to do the "1 to 6 Star" Achievement. They start with a decent
HB and QB as Impact players, and since they're Independent you'll have
complete freedom with their schedules. Recruiting with Army is
challenging, but highly rewarding, because you immediately see the results
of signing even 3* prospects. Just be careful with your Promises: you're
not in a conference so you can't ever fulfill the Conference Champs
Promise. Likewise, your only rivals are the other Service Academies, so
remember to schedule them to impress your prospects and fulfill any
Rivalry Win Promises.
Don't be afraid to pseudo-Simulate a few seasons to get the hang of
Recruiting. Try picking a 3*, mid major school that should have some
trouble attracting the big 5* talent, such as Fresno State or Utah. Give
them a realistic Custom schedule, and perform all the Recruiting as per
this FAQ. However, each week just simulate all the games instead of
physically playing them. You should be able to zoom through a season in an
hour or so. Since you are simulating the actual games, you'll have to make
do with wins and losses the CPU gives to you. However, that randomness
will give you added Recruiting challenges and learning experiences.
On the forums, I've answered several questions regarding "How can you
rename your coach?". Here's the quick answer. You need to actually start
the Season in order to have the Coach Options in the main Dynasty menu.
You won't be able to change your coach's name (or appearance) until after
you are done with all Pre Season tasks. Note that the in-game effect is
minimal - you never see the coach on the sideline and you're rarely even
referred to in any dialogue boxes.
REVISION HISTORY
================
Version 1.6, 03/24/08
Fixed formatting problems (thanks Microsoft for that AutoCorrect-to-Text
nightmare with smart quotes). Added some clarification regarding the
Achievements.
Version 1.5, 03/22/08
Added information regarding Achievements. Fixed some issues with Sway
Pitches.
Version 1.4, 03/21/08
Added a few paragraphs in the PSR sections regarding ATH positions. Added
some info regarding Pipeline states. Added information regarding bugs with
how the CPU does it's recruiting.
Version 1.3, 03/13/08:
Added information about Disabling AI assists. Clarified items regarding
JUCO and player interest levels. Fixed Pitch Importance to Interest Level
tables.
Version 1.2, 03/03/08:
Changed formatting. Added some information for Swaying Pitches. Updated
some info about Scholarships and In Home Visits.
Version 1.0, 02/29/08:
Typos fixed, minor grammatical errors.
Version 0.9, 02/11/08:
Few paragraphs added, some clarification made on several topics.
Version 0.8, 02/08/08:
Initial Release.
