Posted by kmasonbx on 8/20/2011 2:11:00 AM (view original):
OR pointed something out in another thread that is overlooked when it comes to mid majors. There are 2 reasons for them being less populated and it's hard to gauge which is the bigger reason, recruit generatoin and the fact that D2 and D3 get full rewards now. Mid major populations began decreasing when coaches could stay in D2 and D3 and get 100% reward points, they didn't need to jump to D1 to get those rewards.
Also 1 conference being full doesn't mean anything, because it doesn't mean the coaches are good. I didn't say all it would take is 1 conference being full, I said if overall the conferences were fuller, it would lead to better postseason performances. Let's say there are 50 coaches at non BCS, if that number was 100 do you not think there would be more mid majors making big runs? What about 150?
In real life there are over 330 D1 teams only 73 play in BCS conferences but those 73 teams make up 85% of the teams that make the Elite 8. And in real life 100% of the teams are human coached, in Tark there are 67 human coaches of a possibly 72 in BCS conferences and average of 11.2 humans per conference, there are 74 human at the non BCS schools in the other 21 conferences that is less than 4 humans on average per conference. In real life non BCS schools outnumber BCS schools by over 250 and still the BCS schools dominate postseason play. Why do people expect that in this game when there are only marginally more humans at non BCS schools and they're spread out very thin that they should be more succesful? If there is a world where there are 3 or 4 non BCS conferences with 9+ coaches and have had these coaches for a few seasons and nobody is having any sustained success I'll readily admit it's because of the recruit generation but until then I'll continue my stance that people didn't give the recruit generation a chance abandoned low D1 which made it very hard for the coaches still there to make things happen.
I don't know if I'm in the majority or minority on this one, but I personally think that, as things currently stand, having more human coaches in lower and mid-level D1 would produce even LESS deep runs than is currently happening. Here's why:
(1) Pretty safe to say that the "elite"-type recruits are all being snatched up by BCS schools. Sure there may be one or two here or there that a mid-major can actually sign, but let's be realistic, the big boys are signing the big boys.
(2) Pretty safe to assume that most coaches believe it's easier to out-recruit a Sim school as opposed to a human-coached school.
So......as it satnds now, the BCS schools are signing all the top talent. That leaves the few human-coached mid-majors trying to sign what scraps of good players are left. Knowing that Sim schools are fairly easy to beat in recruiting battles, these few human coaches can still pick up some decent players, simply due to lack of competition from other human coaches. However.........if there were MORE human coaches, these few decent players left would become the focal points in human versus human battles, leaving more and more human coaches with less and less quality recruits to go around. See where we're going with this?
In the last recruiting session in Tark, I watched a B+ prestige BCS school recruit a SG ranked in the 150's. He would have been a really good D2 player, but for a school with that kind of prestige and recruiting money, he was a player that should have been passed on. I've got a couple of D2 teams between this and my other ID with prestiges in the "A" range. I watch every season as D1 schools swoop in on recruits that I have pulled down. In one case last season in Phelan, it was a B- prestige D1 school, recruiting the same player as my D2 team. Why? Because the new recruit generation has killed mid-level recruiting in D1. The abomination that is the new recruit generation, plus fully restoring rewards points at the D2 and D3 levels (which I'm all for, don't get me wrong) is what, in my opinion, has killed everything in D1 below the BCS conferences.