#55: Recruiting Affinities Refresh | Other Affinities

[alexfall862]

Hello Coaches!

 

Welcome to the second Dev Diary for 2022 on the new recruiting system for this coming season.

 

Recruiting Dev Diaries for 2022

Dev Diary 54: Recruiting Affinities Refresh | Close to Home

Dev Diary 55: Recruiting Affinities Refresh | Other Affinities

Dev Diary 56: Recruiting Efficiency Score

Dev Diary 57: Recruiting on the Interface

 

With this diary, I want to go over the cleaning run on affinities for the next season. The goal for this offseason was to look at all affinity assignments and make sure teams were getting bonuses that made sense and that the system overall was reflecting something close to reality. Specifically with the non-close to home affinities, the goal was to find a way to tie the affinity assignment into objective measurements as much as possible.

 

In some ways, the affinities aren't strictly objective qualities, but we made an effort as a working crew to find public reference points we can point coaches to, instead of 'well it just feels right'.

 

Academics

 

Academics is now tied to the 2022 US News Top 20.

 

 

 

Additions	Removals
Florida	Georgia

 

 

 

Service

 

No changes were made to Service, as those are tied to the Service Academies, Army, Navy, and Air Force [iSPOILER]...and soon to be Space Force? [/iSPOILER]

 

Religion

 

No changes were made to Religion, as those are the 11 schools aligned with a specific religious institution:

 

Baylor (Baptist General Convention)

Boston College (Jesuit)

BYU (Mormon)

Duke (United Methodist Church)

Liberty (Jerry Falwell)

[iSPOILER]Nebraska (Corn)[/iSPOILER]

Notre Dame (Catholic)

SMU (United Methodist Church)

Syracuse (Nonsectarian, formerly United Methodist Church)

TCU (Disciples of Christ)

Tulsa (Presbyterian Church)

Wake Forest (Nonsectarian, formerly Baptist)

 

Large Crowds

 

Large Crowds was made to include schools with attendance capacity above 70,000 fans. 3 schools were removed. None added.

 

 

 

Additions	Removals
N/A	Missouri (61,620)
	SDSU (35,000)
	UAB (47,100)

 

 

 

Small School

 

Small schools were pinned to enrollment data from US News. 7 schools were added, and 4 were removed.

 

 

 

Additions	Removals
Akron	App State
CMU	Illinois
EMU	Miami (OH)
Hawaii	New Mexico
NM State
NIU
Northwestern
Syracuse
Toledo

 

 

 

Frontrunner

 

Frontrunner was changed from the somewhat unknowable measure of team overall from before any games were played to a list of championship teams. These are the schools who won their conference championship and/or made the playoff. By changing this definition, it is also the first affinity in the sim tied directly to on the field results! 8 teams were added, 15 were removed.

 

 

 

Additions	Removals
Baylor	Alabama
North Texas	Arizona
Ohio	Arizona St
San Diego St	CMU
Oregon	Georgia Tech
Texas St	LSU
Boston College	Michigan St
Purdue	Notre Dame
	Ohio St
	Oklahoma
	Oklahoma St
	Oregon St
	TCU
	Wake Forest
	Washington

 

 

 

Climate

 

Climate has been removed from affinities, because after review, it seemed like assignment was completely arbitrary and since we couldn't tie it to a specific reference point, it was therefore also unfair. 17 schools were removed, 5 of which had no other affinity.

 

 

 

Removals

Arizona*

Arizona St*

Cal

Clemson

Coastal Carolina

FIU*

Florida

Hawaii

Miami (FL)

SDSU

South Carolina

Stanford

Tennessee

UCF*

UCLA

USC

USF*

 

*No other affinity

 

 

 

Current Affinity Assignments

 

See this thread for current affinity assignments.

 

Here are the numer of affinities by school:

 

 

School	SUM of Total Affinities
Notre Dame	4
Boston College	4
Wisconsin	3
Wake Forest	3
Tulsa	3
Duke	3
Baylor	3
Vanderbilt	2
USC	2
UCLA	2
Tulane	2
Texas	2
TCU	2
Syracuse	2
Stanford	2
SMU	2
Rice	2
Northwestern	2
Navy	2
Michigan	2
Illinois	2
Florida State	2
Florida	2
Army	2
Air Force	2
Wyoming	1
Washington	1
Virginia	1
UAB	1
Troy	1
Toledo	1
Texas State	1
Texas A&M	1
Tennessee	1
Southern Miss	1
South Carolina	1
South Alabama	1
San Diego State	1
Purdue	1
Penn State	1
Oregon	1
Oklahoma	1
Ohio State	1
Ohio	1
Northern Illinois	1
North Texas	1
North Carolina	1
New Mexico State	1
Nebraska	1
Michigan State	1
Miami	1
Marshall	1
LSU	1
Louisiana-Monroe	1
Louisiana Tech	1
Louisiana	1
Liberty	1
Kentucky	1
Iowa	1
Hawaii	1
Georgia Tech	1
Georgia	1
Eastern Michigan	1
Coastal Carolina	1
Clemson	1
Central Michigan	1
California	1
BYU	1
Bowling Green	1
Auburn	1
Arkansas State	1
Arkansas	1
Alabama	1
Akron	1
Western Michigan	0
Western Kentucky	0
West Virginia	0
Washington State	0
Virginia Tech	0
UTSA	0
UTEP	0
Utah State	0
Utah	0
USF	0
UNLV	0
UMass	0
UCF	0
Texas Tech	0
Temple	0
San Jose State	0
Rutgers	0
Pittsburgh	0
Oregon State	0
Old Dominion	0
Oklahoma State	0
New Mexico	0
Nevada	0
NC State	0
Missouri	0
Mississippi State	0
Mississippi	0
Minnesota	0
Middle Tennessee	0
Miami (OH)	0
Memphis	0
Maryland	0
Louisville	0
Kent State	0
Kansas State	0
Kansas	0
Iowa State	0
Indiana	0
Houston	0
Georgia State	0
Georgia Southern	0
Fresno State	0
Florida Atlantic	0
FIU	0
East Carolina	0
Connecticut	0
Colorado State	0
Colorado	0
Cincinnati	0
Charlotte	0
Buffalo	0
Boise State	0
Ball State	0
Arizona State	0
Arizona	0
Appalachian State	0

 

 

 

Future Affinity Plans and Ideas

For those 5 schools schools who lost out on their affinity, and for any other coaches that find themselves either out of affinities or are down one - there's no need to fret quite yet! Our next dev diary will go into the ways that affinities are being reworked in the actual recruiting process. You'll have to stay tuned to hear the specifics, but in general expect affinities to have ~5-10% boost to recruits as opposed to the ~900% boost possible when gaming the previous system in the most efficient way possible.

 

As a team, we also floated some new affinity ideas, but with recruiting moving entirely into the interface and a pretty substantial recruiting process overhaul, we've left the affinity additions out of this next recruiting cycle.

 

Here are some of the ideas floated out by team members in the past, that are under consideration:

 

Party School

Schools were the students party pretty hard. Issue with adding is that's arguably any school.

 

Urban/Rural Schools

Schools located in urban areas could get a boost with kids who want to live the city life, rural school the opposite. Issue with adding is having to find the delineation between urban and rural - especially with so many schools being in bedroom communities around larger metro areas. Is Northwestern urban because Chicago or rural because Evanstown is a "small town"? Probably not, because it's pretty clearly part of the metropolitan area. What about Ames and Des Moines or Bloomington and Indianapolis?

 

Large School

This is the corollary to the small school affinity already listed. Issue with adding is whether this really does anything different than the large crowds affinity.

 

With the move into the interface, there's also long-term potential to tie affinities into on-field performance in a more direct manner. Some of the affinities suggested that fall into that category are:

 

Play Style

Players could get an affinity match with schools who have particular schemes assigned. Issue here is how to measure that, and what happens to teams that change scheme - is it fair to penalize a team for switching scheme? What even defines a scheme?

 

 

NIL Opportunities

Players could get an affinity match with schools who have large endowments and high enrollments. Issue with adding is similar to a Large School affinity. Does it really add anything different or just reinforce that affinity?

 

Playing Time

Certain players look for where they will start immediately. Issue with adding is how that would be measured without becoming a particularly hairy evaluation each recruiting week.

 

Play with a Legendary (QB/RB/WR/TE/OL/DL/LB/CB/S/K/P/Coach)

Players with this type of affinity want to commit to a school where a particular position player or coach is at - and they want to learn or be in the same position group room as the best of the best. Issue here is how discerning how it's different from the frontrunner affinity, and it also has the same challenge as the playing time affinity. Evaluating anything over 130 rosters could become hairy very quickly.

 

Feel free to suggest your own affinity ideas here as we will use the 2022 season to start planning recruiting changes in 2023.

 

Wrap Up

 

I asked some users to help out with this job, and special thanks need to go to @PoopyRhinoPickle @subsequent @TuscanSota @Rocketcan @tsweezy for their help and especially to @PoopyRhinoPickle as this dev diary would probably have been posted a month from now without his help compiling all of the changes.

Edited April 10, 2022 by alexfall862

[Minnow]

Ames and Des Moines

I never would have considered Ames being close to Des Moines. It's 40 minutes away by car.

[npklemm]

That's not far, that's about how far I drive each way to work every day.