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- Obviously I'm not going to give away major secrets here, but there are some
- things that are useful to get new (and old) coaches on the right track.
-
- 1. The basics. If you can't figure out how to get a team, follow this
- procedure. First, add yourself in the first menu (just after the opening
- screen). Then wait for the season to initialize. After that, in college,
- you will get a choice of jobs. In pros, you will be told how much money
- you have to buy a team, and can select any team that costs less than that
- for purchase.
-
- 2. Especially when drafting, trading, or signing free agents, the primary
- way to rate a player is by looking at his attributes. The stats are nice,
- but there are so many factors that keep them from meaning the same thing.
- The quality of the quarterback when rating receivers, for example. When
- comparing two players on the same team, I would still recommend looking at
- attributes first and stats second, though the stats are at least somewhat
- more useful here.
- PS: make sure you find the "M" key when viewing players in a menu. It
- shows offensive stats, defensive stats (not in basketball), attributes,
- and salaries (in pro only).
-
- 3. How to rebuild a team, pro. Of course there's no "set way" to do this.
- But this can work as a start... The first season, cut or trade all of your
- expensive players and try to build as good a team as possible cheaply. Or
- better yet, trade your expensive players for cheap prospects or draft picks.
- It's not as tough as it sounds - you can get good players fairly cheaply.
- The extremely expensive free agents are generally the top-notch players, and
- you can get a player 80% as effective for 30% the price. Then you have to
- coach well. If you take over a bottom 5 team, you should shoot for .500
- your first season. The second or third season, once you have a solid team
- with decent players at every position, you can look to start filling the
- most key spots on your roster with the expensive guys. If you were thinking
- ahead and drafted well your first year, you might have some budding stars
- at this point too. If you can keep up the good coaching, you should easily
- make the playoffs. The key words in rebuilding are "patience" and "budget".
- It's not going to happen in one season unless you're lucky, and you'll
- rarely go wrong by keeping your team on a tight budget.
-
- 4. How to rebuild a college team. Building up a college program means
- getting the feedback system to work for you. In general, solid programs
- have an easier go of in in recruiting, which allows them to keep their play
- good. The trick is in the coaching - if you can get your current players
- to perform well, then you can be more effective recruiting next season to
- help get better players. In general, you will rarely be offered a good
- team. A realistic goal is a solid (not stellar) recruiting class your
- first season, redshirting as many as possible for the future, while getting
- the team above 0.500. By your third season, your first recruiting class
- should be mostly starters, with spot recruiting to fill the other
- positions. You should expect to be at your top level of play by season
- five, at which point your first recruits will be 5th-year seniors, and your
- second and third recruiting classes (which presumably were stronger than the
- first class) will be upperclassmen.
-
- 5. What do I do with my minor league team? At first glance, the minor
- leaguers seem like dead weight on the roster, eating up salary and doing
- nothing. But at second glance, you get a chance to develop your own
- future players, instead of taking chances through the draft and free agency.
- Thus, although careful drafting takes many seasons before you see its
- effects, you will be rewarded with a steady stream of quality players.
- There are two significant reasons to put young players in the minors. First
- is that until they reach 27, they will only ask for $0.04 million per
- season (baseball and hockey) and you need not worry about their contracts.
- Thus you have a farm system of players being developed, which costs you
- almost nothing. (In fact, I will cut any minor leaguers making more than
- that amount.) Second, a player will get more playing time in the minors
- than he would sitting on your bench. Thus, I will usually keep a kid in
- the minors until he is ready to start or until he turns 27. The major
- league reserve spots I usually leave for journeymen, cheap free agents who
- have probably never started and never will.
-
- 6. What do I do with training squads? Training squads are the basketball
- and football equivalent of minor leagues. What is said above is equally
- true here.
-
-
- copyright (c) 1996-1999 Andy Dolphin
-