Scouting begins early in the HD season and continues through the end of the primary recruiting phase. The primary recruiting phase starts during conference play and concludes before the conference tournament. For owners that change jobs, a second, smaller recruiting period takes place near the end of the HD season. Each school starts with a separate scouting and recruiting budget based on next season openings and division.
It's up to you, the coach, to scout and discover players to recruit. That said, the Top 100 national recruits are available to all. Granted, only D-I schools have a shot at landing one of these studs.
Building a dynasty starts with discovering the right mix of players. Your assistant coach plays a key role in scouting. Need to find a center within a couple hundred miles? Your assistant can get the job done. Sure, there's a cost involved but the coach decides how much to spend from the scouting budget.
Want to discover a large number of players with an array of skills? Attend one of the available scouting camps across the nation. It'll burn a chunk of your scouting budget, but you may find exactly what you're looking for.
Looking to scan a specific state for some recruit hopefuls? Take advantage of the scouting service to locate additional recruits covering a wide range of skills and positions.
Every scouting action and its results can be located in your Scouting History. Consider it your scouting budget ledger as it includes how much you spent and how many players were found. Plus, it includes a quick link to view the players that were discovered as part of the search.
For example, take a look at the potential recruits discovered from an individual Scouting Service action. Take advantage of the standard recruit pool search tools to dig even deeper.
The Recruit Pool search is deep and flexible. Filter your recruit list by any combination of criteria, then toggle your results to focus on player ratings, general information or player preferences. Want to compare a few to make some decisions? Add them to the compare list. Want to scout them even further, pick the players and then confirm budget to initiate the next round of scouting. Remember, each recruit has four levels of information. Each round of scouting unveils additional info about the player.
The Recruiting Home page gathers all the scouted players you've advanced to the potential recruiting phase. Here, you'll notice all the players you've categorized are represented. You can open the player to begin or continue recruiting, or you can scout further. Plus, your signings and recent actions are listed. Everything you need for recruiting is now in one centralized location. Here, general information about each recruit is listed.
Alternatively, toggle the results to show preferences and filter the list to focus on the recruits you've assigned Attention Points. Attention Points are at the heart of recruiting. You have a fixed amount to distribute each recruiting cycle (which take place every 6 hours at 5 AM/PM and 11 AM/PM ET). When a recruit starts feeling the love, more advanced recruiting actions are unlocked. Eventually, he may be interested in attending your school!
Recruit ratings are also available here, using the standard color-coded system to indicate growth potential.
When you've decided to scout players to the next level, you'll be presented with the aggregate cost. Remember, you're working within a scouting budget which is different from your recruiting budget. As you scout a player further, you'll learn more about that player. You'll go from general letter grades to individual rating letter grades to numeric grades to numeric grades including potential. Because you're investing in your program, it's a good idea to go all the way with scouting the players you are most interested in.
Recruiting is still done via the Recruit Profile. The process is now simpler to follow as your options are limited but grow as you invest more in a recruit. Here, for example, you'll notice you can't perform all the actions. As you increase Attention Points on the player, more options will unlock. Players may only make one campus visit to your school, and may only make five in total.
Follow the recruit signings to see how your conference rivals are faring, or scan D-I to see what schools are landing the top recruits in the nation.
When it's all said and done, you want to be near the top of this list because it confirms you succeeded with your scouting and recruiting efforts.
