• NCAA Football 11: How are default Team Pitches determined?

    Yesterday, we looked at Team Pitches when Recruiting in NCAA Football 11's Dynasty Mode. Today, designer Ben Haumiller shares with us his commentary on how the default Team Pitch ratings are determined.

    Every year we take a look at the ratings from the previous year and look to see what makes sense to change for this year. Most of these are 100% perception, but a few of them have a pretty easy way to determine the ratings. When determining the ratings, a most of the time the decision comes down to how we feel a school would treat that pitch when recruiting for/against a particular school. For example, Florida’s Program Stability rating took a big hit this year. That was partly because of the number of assistant coaches that left the program this off-season, but also in a large part because of Meyer’s mini-Christmas breakdown. There’s not a coach in the country that won’t attack that angle until he proves it was a fluke moment. Conversely, when Coach McMackin is sitting in a kid’s living room trying to convince him to come to Hawaii you better believe he’s talking up the concept of living in Hawaii for 4 years as a great reason to become a Warrior.

    Click Read More to see how each category rating is determined.

    Academic Prestige – We use the US News & World Report rankings to determine the grades for schools. This is one of the categories where there’s some concrete evidence on how a school should be ranked.

    Campus Lifestyle – This rating is mainly based on a school’s reputation since it’s a very subjective concept. The location of the school comes into play (i.e. Tulane’s high rating is due to the proximity to the French Quarter), as well as the party school rep (Arizona State for example) are used to come up with this ranking. The tough part about this is that you have to apply the same standard to all schools, which hurts a school like BYU. For a Mormon prospect BYU’s campus lifestyle would likely be an A+, but for someone else it might be a D-. So you have to shoot towards the middle. This is a category I’d expect to hear a lot of feedback on since it is such a subjective rating. I’d imagine the reaction will be to the extreme highs (my school should be an A+), or extreme lows (there’s nothing to do at my school, it should be a D), but not much in the middle.

    Coach Experience – This one is based on the head coach, and is really all about time served as a head coach. Some coaches get an accelerated rating based on performance.

    Coach Prestige – On field performance, championships, and reputation of the coach are the main factors for this one. Tedford might not have won a PAC-10 title, but he’s got a rep as a great QB developer (well, not as much recently) which will help to raise his prestige rating.

    Conference Prestige – Perception, Perception, Perception. Everyone says the SEC is the “most dominant” conference, so they get the top spot. The ACC and Big East are generally considered to be at the bottom of the BCS conferences, and a conference like the MAC would have been near the top of the mid-majors back in the earlier half of the decade, but they’ve fallen on hard times. It looks like we might have our first F grade ever soon with the WAC losing Boise, Fresno, and Nevada. The rest of that conference is just brutal. The biggest question I get on this pitch is why Notre Dame has an A+ in conference prestige. The simple answer is that they are the only school that doesn’t need to be in a conference (for now), so they get the A+.

    Championship Contender – This rating is based on a school’s ability to regularly compete for a national championship. There are a handful of schools that you can always put on the shortlist of title contenders, and even in their “down years” they are still near the top of college football. Then there are schools that were in that contender group that have lost a step (Florida State, Notre Dame, Michigan) or others that have moved into the championship discussion, but haven’t made that next leap yet (Oregon, Virginia Tech, etc.). Other schools (Northwestern, Wake Forest, etc.) are schools that build towards one year when everything comes together, then have to start from scratch when the core of that team graduates. Finally there are schools that are just happy to make a bowl.

    Fan Base – In 1999 South Carolina went 0-11 and sold out every home game. Nebraska is well known as a school that travels very well. Wisconsin fans stick around for the “5th quarter”, these are the sort of things that help to determine something as subjective as Fan Base.

    Facilities - Finding info on a school’s facilities has proven to be difficult for a majority of the schools. But those schools that have facilities that are so state of the art they have to show them off find themselves high up on the list. Then you have a school like Miami that has somehow turned lesser facilities into a badge of honor. Cincinnati doesn’t even have a practice field, the line up 5 days a week at Nippert Stadium. Anyone who remembers June Jones’ comments about Hawaii knows that their high school probably has better facilities. For the schools we can’t get concrete evidence on (i.e. photo reference of locker room, weight room, in-door practice facilities, etc.) we tend to let the school prestige dictate

    Pro Factory – This one is simple, what’s your rep for sending guys to the league (both all-time and recent)?

    Program Stability – This one is all about coaching turnover. If a school gets a new head coach, there’s a good chance they are going to take a stability hit (although this can depend on who the new coach is, since often the hiring of an alum can be viewed as a good way to stabilize a program). Florida is a prime example how a school can drop in a year. A number of top assistants (including the heart and soul of their defense Charlie Strong) are gone, and Meyer has a 24-hour retirement. If I’m an opposing coach that’s the topic I’m going to target most, and if I’m a Gator coach, that’s the thing I have to know I’m going to have to defend on the recruiting trail. Head Coach in Waiting tags help to increase this value even in situations where the results on the field have been questionable at best (ahem, Maryland).

    Television Exposure – Notre Dame gets their own infomercial on NBC for every home game, so they get the only A+. The upper echelon of the BCS schools (and Boise State) are on the next tier since all of their games can be found on TV every week. Then you get down to the BCS schools that you only get to watch if you order ESPN Gameplan. Finally you have the schools that you only find on TV when you randomly flip on ESPN U on a Tuesday night and say to yourself “Nice, I didn’t know there was a game on tonight”.

    Program Tradition – This rating is based on the career portfolio of the school. Navy and Army might not be near the top of the polls anymore, but they were very instrumental in the formative years of college football and that can’t be overlooked when discussing something like tradition. However you can’t just look at time served and call it tradition. Rutgers has been playing football longer than anyone, but it’s hard to put them anywhere but middle of the road when it comes to tradition.

    Team Prestige – This is always the most hotly debated rating each year and really comes down to how you view the concept of “Prestige”, are you looking at the life of the program (as you do with Tradition), or recent results (as you do with Championship Contender) when determining Prestige. Michigan and Notre Dame have more tradition than any other school in the nation, but their recent on-field performance has tarnished that image some. Since there are two very different schools of thought behind this we do our best to take both in account, which is why Michigan and Notre Dame are still 6-stars (for now), and a school like Boise State has rocketed up to 5-star status.


    Do you agree with the Team Pitch rating decision process? If you feel that a particular school is rated too high or too low in a certain category, share your thoughts with the community.
    Comments 1 Comment
    1. JeffHCross's Avatar
      JeffHCross -
      Quote Originally Posted by cdj View Post
      Academic Prestige – We use the US News & World Report rankings to determine the grades for schools. This is one of the categories where there’s some concrete evidence on how a school should be ranked.
      I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.

      U.S. News admits it has some faults with the rankings, though those faults are getting fewer and fewer lately. Most interesting, going forward, is their new "Undergraduate Academic Reputation Index". The current ranking, I believe, factors graduate programs, research, and other opportunities that, let's be honest, a lot of football players don't care about. Unfortunately, there's no good measure (or ranking) of undergraduate education without the inclusion of graudate education. If their new Academic Reputation Index is published, that would be very good information for the team to have.

      I can say with certainty that, purely from a reputation standpoint (as in, how the students believe the schools stack up academically), the current ratings for Ohio schools do not reflect reality.

      A much longer discussion on this topic can be found on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College...rsity_rankings It's something I've invested considerable time looking around for, without success, unfortunately.

      The rest of the ratings come out about where I'd expect, in terms of criteria. Good to see Ben lay these out for us. For those of us that work on Teambuilder teams, this information is really helpful.