I'm a season and a half in and have no idea how recruiting works, buy I've sent the house to so many players lol.
Rebuilt IL to a national championship in 5 yrs on Heisman with the #1 overall ranked recruiting class in year 5. Here’s my base recruiting strategy:
1: I sort the recommended tab by the number of stars, so it shows the highest ranked players on top.
2: I then add prospects to my board who: I’m targeting by default (the green dot on the left) and that are a need.
—> After I add the first 25 or so players, then I sort by position to make sure I’m adding players at every position of need.
3: I fill up my big board with all 35 slots, even though I usually only actively recruit a small portion of those players at any given time.
4: Then I go to my big board and sort by national rank. I’ll actively recruit the highest ranked players first because it’s easier to get in late on lower ranked players. I max out my available points on each player that I can.
5: My goal is to land the highest ranked players as soon as possible, so once the players get down to their top 5, I remove 40 points from some of my lowest ranked actively recruited players for that week, and I use those points to get players on visits. I get them to campus as soon as possible even if it’s a bye week or an unimportant game.
6: I also try to go from sending the house to doing the hard pitch on those same players that week (which is when you have all 3 green check marks on their 14 interests). Sometimes, even when I have just 2 green checks, I can figure out the 3rd by seeing if there’s only one possible combination available on that player. So I can do the hard pitch a week early.
—> Scheduling early visits and moving to hard pitch as soon as possible gives you a huge advantage and helps you start locking up those best players early, giving you more points available for future recruiting.
7: From there, I continue on. Some of the players will lock me out or commit elsewhere and I’ll remove them from my board. Others will commit to me. Both of which open up points. And I’ll just work my way down the list from highest ranked to lowest ranked.
8: Once every player on my original board has either committed to me or somewhere else, I start the loading the board back up. This time by position of need, even if lower ranked, to fill the class out with the players I need most.
—> I also look for Gems & Busts. Gems are usually worth one star more and busts are usually worth one star less. If I’m normally recruiting 4 stars and I find a 5 star bust, I’ll continue recruiting that player because it’s still as good as what I can normally get. If I’m normally recruiting 4 stars and I find a 4 star gem, I make sure to do everything I can to lock them up because they’re better than the players I normally land.
Hope that helps