Whats the best way to recruit in Ct FB manager?

Whats the best way to recruit in Ct FB manager? plz help

I've got a few notes on this, more research is required to really be confident in the answers.                   

                

Recruiting in-state prospects seems to work.  Call them and sell them on the "close to home" idea.  This seems to only work for in-state, OH-PA for example gets no "close to home" bonus.                  

The prospect camp seems to have soft limit for attendees, after you invite so many recruits the rest will refuse to attend.  I can't tell how much the satisfied/dissatisfied impacts their choices.  Going hard after the recruits that liked the camp seems to help.                

Probably the best results would come from calling all recruits and offering whatever your school is best at, best practice facilities, conference rep, school rep, etc.  Then make a note of which players like what you said the first time and keep saying it to them.  Would probably require a notebook.  I'm lazy and haven't done this.  If they liked what you said, keep saying it.  If they didn't, say something else.

Going after Juniors is very important.  Often the best players in my recruiting class are juniors I recruited the year before.  Getting their attention early means a lot less competition.            

I haven't tested this enough to be sure it's true, but claiming you're a "bowl contender" seems to work a lot better midseason when you have a winning record.  If you're ranked, start telling recruits about it.              

Since the game has a limit of 25 recruits and lets you make offers past that anyway, offer all sorts of 5-stars that you probably won't get and hope for the best.  You can withdraw offers to lower recruits if they sign.

Edited November 30, 2021 by blackbear

To follow up on that, you definitely need to be recruiting the underclassmen as well.  I hit Year 3 and there were barely any recruits that weren't already verbally committed or signed by other schools because I didn't recruit any freshmen/sophomores the entire time.  I wasn't able to get anyone to decommit.           

I also ran another test: make offers to 25 excellent/high interest recruits, and make no effort to recruit them beyond offering the scholarship.  Was able to get 6 of them.

Thanks for those inputs which also shows us, that we have a few things we need to optimize

Even more followup.  Started the game over, this time not ignoring underclassmen recruits.  Got the #5 class with the following strategies:                      

February: Make 30 or so offers for each class year for excellent/high interest recruits immediately.  You wouldn't be allowed to sign all 30, but some of them will choose other schools and it will work itself out.             

Don't use any recruiting points yet, you've got way to many recruits offered to do that.  You'll get a couple recruits that sign right away, and a couple more that sign with someone else right away.  Keep making offers to excellent/high interest recruits to stay at the 25 per year cap, it'll give you a warning once you go over.                 

April: Now start using recruiting points and calling your recruits.  The ones that had a favorite school in mind are out of the system now.  Use 1-2 phone call topics and see how they respond.  (I notice some recruits say they want to start right away but there's no option to mention that in the phone call.  Maybe they look at your roster depth?).  Switch to 1 topic after you find out what they're looking for, keep calling them every few weeks throughout the season.  Sorting the recruiting board by interest helps.  Keep making offers to keep your recruits at 25 a year.

June: Make offers for the prospect camp.  Limit seems to be 17 players?  At this point you'll probably find you have to dip into medium interest recruits to keep your offers at 25.  Keep offering.                 

July: Prospect camp.  Give it a day or so and then call all the players who liked your camp.  The ones that didn't like your camp are probably a lost cause.                           

August - November: Call your highest-interest recruits every 2-3 weeks, 1 topic per call.  You want to have a bunch of points left for visiting recruits.  Keep offering to keep your recruits at 25 a year.                  

December: College contact period.  Go visit the best recruits left on your list.                      

December: Early signing period.  This is the point most of your 25-a-year offers are going to disappear.  Don't bother refilling it at this point, just check and see if any new recruits suddenly gained interest in your school after all the signings.                    

Day before National Signing Day: Use all of the rest of your recruiting points.  Visit as many players as you can afford to, and call the rest.  Make walk-on offers to 2 or 1 stars who still don't have a team if you need to.                

                 

 

Things I don't use: recruits visiting the school.  It just takes to long to pay off for the expense - I would hate using 60 recruiting points on some player in April, to visit my school in September, only to have him sign somewhere else in the meantime.                 

Pics, year 1 recruiting class, year 2 recruiting as of June.                         

 

Nice

I'll continue the recruiting saga.  Year 2, 1st-ranked class.  Although this is a bit misleading, because much of my first-year recruiting grade was from the juniors on the last class that are now the seniors of this class.

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After year one the recruiting changes a little bit, because in the first year you're recruiting all 4 years at once.  In year two, you already have commitments from some seniors, juniors and sophomores that you recruited last year - so instead of recruiting 100 guys at once, you're now only recruiting the freshmen and a few others across the various years that increased their interest in your program - maybe 45 players this time.  But you still have the same number of recruiting points, so you can go after these guys very aggressively.  Same strategy as before, except you can make more phone calls and visit them more times.

This is great. Is this prestige mode?

Arcade mode, I wanted to play as Pitt immediately.  I'll try prestige mode later and try to build a program from the ground up.             

An interesting trend happens as the game goes on - my recruiting classes are still scoring 76-78, but that's no longer enough to be in the top 10.  The usual suspects start dominating the recruiting rankings.

                       

Thanks for all the tips! V. helpful