As I told Jeff when I was informed about this redesign idea that he had, I love the idea. It would definitely change up things when it comes to choosing where to recruit. I've always felt it was sort of cheap in my dynasty, at FIU and now at Tulsa, having the entire state of Florida, the entire states of Oklahoma and Texas, getting 25% bonus on all of my recruits (it seems like 98% of my team at Tulsa is from only Oklahoma and Texas) because of pipeline bonuses. So stuff like breaking the states down into regions would definitely change things up.

It would definitely make it harder to game the game. Like for me at Tulsa, I now have Florida as a pipeline, to go along with Oklahoma and Texas. I have 7 guys on my roster from Florida (5 of them are seniors, but I'm targeting four new players in recruiting) so I am basically able to haul in 3 or 4 star recruits thanks to the advantage I get from pipeline bonuses. Louisiana may be a pipeline next season. I have two on my roster now, and I'm targeting three from Louisiana this year. Colorado, I have no players on my roster, but I am targeting three recruits this year, so get one more next season and boom, Colorado is now a pipeline. I don't have anyone from California, but I'm targeting two players this season. Sign those two and sign two more next year, and I'd have California, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas all locked up as pipeline states and be able to reel in talent from coast to coast with help of the pipeline bonuses.

And this is all with random targeting. I target by position needs and by what prospects are already interested in me, usually immediately adding those with me in their top 5 or 8 to my board in the preseason. So not even targeting specific states, I could have most of the major recruiting hotbeds locked up as pipelines by the 2018 season. Just imagine what I could do and what kind of pipelines I could have if I intentionally recruited and targeted specific states. And I could do that regardless of if I went 12-0 or 0-12. So yeah, this system would definitely make recruiting more realistic and make you have to put up actual results in the season to get those bonuses, as opposed to just targeting the right areas and locking up the talent hotbeds and make yourself into the next Alabama.

There is the issue of keeping it simple enough for Joe Schmoe to pick the game up and play it and not feel overwhelmed by the recruiting, but also keep it complex enough as described to make recruiting tougher and more realistic. We'd have to have some way of making sure it would actually get implemented correctly and not half-assed (or with EA's own interpretation of this idea), but if done correctly, it would without a doubt improve the recruiting in this game ten-fold.

So it has my vote of full support and I hope we can somehow get EA to look at this, talk with Jeff about it and see it implemented sometime down the road.