For a lot of people who read this here blog it's most likely a moot question: college football = recruiting.
Right?
I wonder how much the average NCAA buyer plays with/cares about the intricacies of Dynasty Mode? I consider this a very similar idea to Franchise Mode in Madden.
How many people:
A) Use it
B) Care if it's screwy
Team Madden has unleashed stat head Josh Looman lose on Franchise mode. I dunno if it'll be any good, but I feel more comfortable knowing Josh is doing it.
The team who designs NCAA for EA Sports needs a Josh Looman on its team. They need a guy to go in and say,
"This is absolutely screwball central and we need to redo this whole damn thing.""Redo" might be a bit much but the devil is in the details--and I think, seeing as this franchise has been around for, well, a long time now, that we should see stuff that makes sense and should be able to criticize/point out/discuss the stuff that doesn't.
NCAA's Dynasty Mode has a whole lot that doesn't.
Chris Sanner of Operation Sports recently posted his list of stuff he thinks EA needs to do to make this mode more enjoyable.
Some of that I agree with, some of it I think is superfluous but what Chris fails to discuss is the meat and potatoes of what makes or breaks a college football game --
- Accuracy in Recruiting
- Believable Player Progression
Adding more busywork doesn't make recruiting "deep" -- it makes it tedious. It's like recruiting in College Hoops (rip) -- it's tedium. It's not compelling.
So, what's wrong with NCAA's recruiting? Plenty. I have been following recruiting for a long time. I have a pretty fair idea how this works in the real world, and there are some things that simply need a bit of fixing. Here's a few items of note from my current dynasty -- simmed through 5 seasons.
- Know where players on each team actually come from. Pipeline states are fine, but there is no way on God's green earth that three 5-star kids from Hawaii want nothing more than to come to play for Ohio State.
- A 5 star kid from Iowa doesn't have Iowa or Iowa State in his Top 10? Sorry, that doesn't fly either. He may not GO to Iowa, but they should be in the mix for ALL lowa kids. He's just one example but I see 5 star kids from Oklahoma, California, Missouri, etc without the home state school being even mentioned. That is INCREDIBLY rare. A kid playing football in Oklahoma? And he doesn't have the Sooners OR the Cowboys OR Texas in the running? No. Just no.
- The game needs to know the breeding grounds to a better degree. In most of my seasons, there are NO 5-star kids in Ohio. That's insane. Ohio might not be the best recruiting state but it is at least in the discussion. Ohio produces top shelf HS football talent every single year, but in NCAA 10 it's full of 2-4 star kids with the 5 star kids coming elsewhere. A common phrase amongst recruitniks is that a coach needs to "build a fence around his state" to keep other schools from coming in as poachers. In NCAA 10 I need to go outside of Ohio to get most of my players. Otherwise I am screwed. It should be a BIG deal if a Michigan or a ND snags a 5 star kid out of Ohio under OSU's nose. Here it's a big deal if Ohio HAS a 5 star kid to steal.
- How can a kid be a 'soft verbal' to OSU without a scholarship offer? Just curious...
In a word -- it's terrible.
Currently, progression works like this -- kids come in inside a certain ratings range depending on their star value during recruiting. Then, each off season, everyone gets better by anywhere from 3 to 12 points (or so). So basically every team's players get better each season and in a few years your Dynasty is littered with 90+ rated players on damn near every school.
It's a player ratings orgasm. In one preseason top 25 poll 20 teams were rated at least an "A" overall. It's bonkers.
It represents real college football like my daughter's soccer games represent Fifa. It's technically soccer.
What doesn't happen -- and what needs to happen is we should see a fair number of kids who are just plain busts--and kids who come in under the radar who end up being stars.
There are a lot of kids that fall under this umbrella in the real world -- but here are a few from Ohio State alone:
AJ Hawk was a 3 star LB
Nick Mangold was a 1 STAR center
QB Troy Smith was a "questionable" 4 star recruit (many had him at 3)
CB Malcolm Jenkins was a 3 star
WR Brian Robiskie was a 2 star
LB James Laurinaitis was a 3 star
DE Vernon Gholston was a 3 star
And that's just off the top of my head. Those are All Americans and/or high NFL picks we're talking about.
Conversely...
Jamario Oneal was a 5 star can't miss recruit who was not good enough and rarely played. Great athlete, but not a great football player.
Mo Wells was a 4 star HB from Florida who was a career backup at OSU. Wasn't good enough and was overrated out of HS.
DT Doug Worthington is a starter for OSU -- but he was a 5 star DE recruit who today is a solid player but nowhere near a star. He was overrated. Still decent, but 5 stars was 2 too many.
QB Rob Schoenhoft was an Elite 11 QB -- a 4 star kid who left OSU because he knew he'd never see the field. He's now in Delaware--and struggling.
LB Chad Hoobler -- 4 star kid who left school after his SOph season. Wasn't good enough.
These are the kids that hurt because you recruit them, counting on them to be big time contributors -- and they may not get WORSE but they either don't get better or they come in being less than the staff expected. You need backups and special teams players but rarely do you want those kids to be the jewels of your recruiting class.
This HAS to happen in any college football recruiting model.
In NCAA 10, it doesn't, and it really causes it to be an exercise in tedium rather than a compelling mode full of ups and downs. It's so regimented that it's turned stale.
And all of the data EA needs is right there on the net via Scout/Rivals.
