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One of the most fun challenges that you can embark on inCollege Football 26is taking a team at the very bottom of the ladder, a one-star team, and over the course of a few seasons, turning them into a college football powerhouse, bordering on a five-star team.
This is no easy feat, and there will be bumps along the way. College Football does not have the same equalizer as the NFL, that equalizer being the worst teams getting the best draft picks. Oftentimes, bad teams have a difficult time in recruitment, which is one of the most important aspects of building a good roster.
Make A Realistic Plan For Your First Year
Your first year is going to be rough. You might have a few usable pieceson your one-star roster, but for the most part,you’re going to have glaring problems on your team, and an extreme lack of talented depth.
There’s no easy solution to this. The good news is, college football has a much more diverse set of plays, formations, and game plans to make use of compared to the pros. Lean into any weird strength that your team has; it might be difficult for opponents to gameplan against.
You’re going to have to get creative and come up with an offensive scheme and a defensive schemethat makes use of your biggest weapons. You’re not going to be able to cover up all the holes on your team, but you should be able to make use of at least a few key players.
You might not win many games in your first season. But, the more games you win, the easier time you’re going to have when recruiting. If you can manage to create a schedule where you have a shot at a .500 win percentage, you’ll be in good shape.
Take Notes On Your Roster
Take some time andbecome very familiar with your roster. See where your problems lie, and most importantly,make note of what players are Seniors, because you are not going to have access to them next year. Some of your most impactful players are likely Seniors, and you may need to have an entirely different gameplan going into your second season.
How To Improve Your Team In Recruitment
Your first recruitment season is not going to see you making big splashes by signing five-star recruits; maybe you’ll snag one, but it’s unlikely, and they are not going to make a huge difference on a roster with as many holes as yours is likely to have.
What is going to be important is filling up your recruitment with three-star recruits; there might be a couple of four-star recruits that you can grab, but three-star recruits are going to start the long job of transforming your roster over the course of a few years.
These three-star recruits should hopefully become Freshman that have a good chance of starting going into your second season. They should be filling in the spots on your roster that have players that are departing, or are severely lacking in talent.
If you have a young, good Quarterback, make the effort to get him some weapons in this recruitment phase. Those weapons are going to help him develop faster, and at the same time, they’ll develop well because they’ll have a good Quarterback feeding them the ball.
Do not exclusively look at the Recommended tab in recruitment; it is going to be missing some players that are interested in your school and are very talented.
Do Not Forget Your Offensive Line
Recruiting offensive linemen is not flashy, but it isevery bit as important as any other position that actually handles the ball. An otherwise good offense is going to be useless with a terrible line, and you can tank an entire season that would otherwise be successful by foregoing this part of your team.
Take Notes After Games
Immediately after a game,take notes on players and schemes that were a boon, and on those that were a detriment. Don’t be too overreactive; one game may not indicate a trend. But if three or four games go by with the same problem, it might be something that you need to focus recruitment efforts on, if not changing your entire gameplan.
Grow Success In Your Second Year
By the end of your first season, you’ll have signed a few recruits that you’re excited about, with a lot more on the hook that you’ll be trying to grab through the off-season. You’ll also see some players that transfer away from your school and to another one.
If you have important transfers leaving your school, you might need to slightly alter your recruitment priorities.
For example, I had my star Cornerback transfer schools, leaving my secondary in utter shambles. I needed to shift my focus away from a couple of players that I wasn’t sure about, and focus hard on grabbing a new member of my secondary.
Adjusting Your Gameplan
This second-year team shouldlook a little bit closer to the vision that you have in mind for how you’d like this team to run going into the future. They’re certainly not going to have all the pieces in place; in fact, it’s possible that their overall rating is going to be slightly lower than last year’s team.
If this happens, it’s likely only because you’ll have a lot of Freshman in important positions.Don’t panic; your roster is still probably in a better spot. It just has young players that need a little while to develop. But, if you’ve chosen well,these players are going to have a higher skill ceiling than those on your previous roster.
Year Three And Beyond
By year three, you should be able toshore up the last holes in your team by recruiting a solid bunch of three-star, and a handful of four-star, recruits. Your team is almost certainly not going to be reaching five-star status in year three, but you’re going to have a young roster that should have weapons in place that you need to spend time developing.
How To Develop Your Players
It’s going to become even more important that youcompete and win critical games from here on out. You’re going to have a team that has expectations, and you’re going to have young players that are in their most impactful years of development.
Make sure the players that you see as key components of your team get ample playing time.
If a Freshman and a Senior are close in ratings, it might be worth giving the playing time to the Freshman. They are going to continue developing, and that extra playtime is going to help them develop faster.
How To Get Five-Star Recruits
Once you’ve gotten some success,and your roster is around three-stars, you’ll have the opportunity tostart taking realistic shots at five-star recruits. You are not going to want to fill your recruitment board with dozens of five-star recruits; you’ll want to be extremely selective about the ones that you devote your hours to.
A five-star recruit is going to eat up a lot of the hoursyou have available each week for recruitment.
Don’t pin all of your hopes on one recruit, but don’t spend all of your hours on a lot of these recruits, either. There is going to be heavy competition for them, and some simply will not be a good fit at your program due to their own preferences.
Once you do get one or two five-star recruits, you’ll want toplan your gameplan around them.Start developing them as early as you can, and they’ll have the potential to develop into Heisman-nominated players in a couple of years.
Improve Your Roster Incrementally
Nothing is going to come fast when growing a one-star team; you’re going to need to trust the process, and grow naturally. This is going torequire smart choices when it comes to recruitment, andclever gameplans to utilize sub-par rostersin the early going.
Stay patient, and keep your roster slowly improving.
After a couple of seasons, take a moment to look back at your notes from your season one roster. It’s going to be a good indicator of how far your team has come, and give you an idea of how close you are to achieving the kind of roster that you’re working towards.
