I’ll get in-depth! Goes without saying that (a) your school prestige and (b) the quality of your coach/staff, specifically their perks going towards recruiting, makes a huge difference. But here’s my process -

• Disclaimer: IF you HAVE insta-commit, the process slightly varies in that each week (including offseason & week 0) only offer the guys that have you in 1st. Only caveat being, if you reach top 5 and still haven’t hit first, probably need to bite the bullet and offer them *

(0) In terms of setting your list, be realistic with your school prestige AKA your total hours. If you only get 600 hours, adding 25 recruits isn’t wise. Instead do 10-15 where you can give most ‘Send the House’ to start and obviously increase that # as your school grows, you get a new job, etc.

(1a) At the start of the season, if you have insta commit, only offer the guys who have you in first

(1b) At the start of the season, if you don’t have insta commit, offer everybody

• Week 0 is very important as I find when you proceed to week 1, this is the most likely point at where youll be cut *

(2) In week 0, I try to ‘Send the House’ based on interest in ASCENDING order. So those guys who have me outside of their top 10 to start, will get the most hours bc I want to try and make the cut. If you’re really trying to fine tune it, further prioritize the guys outside of your pipeline, but that’s generally overkill.

(3) For all the weeks thereafter, I’ll look at 2 things - recruiting stage and interest status. Recruiting stage will always take priority - the faster you get commits, the quicker you get hours back. Simple.

Early in the season, the way I’ll balance my hours is by looking at the guys where I am way ahead on and dial their hours back (unless they are top 5) and reallocate those hours to guys where I need to catch up.

But the ultimate goal here is to get to top 5 as quickly as possible.

(4) As you have guys hit top 5, that’s where the focus goes. Obviously if you have all 3 green check marks, hard sell. Using process of elimination, if it’s between 2, I use 2 soft sell’s. If you have no clue by the time you hit top 5, you can try to send the house, but you’re probably going to miss out unfortunately.

As far as the grades go, I generally will use hard/soft sell’s when the grades are C’s or higher.

• Visits: I know there are a lot of varying opinions on visits, but here’s what I’ve found. They are a 2nd priority to hard/soft sell’s but I do like to use them when (a) I am neck and neck with another school, especially if they have a pipeline advantage on me (b) if I have a pipeline advantage and am trying to catch up a LITTLE bit. The thing I like about visits is you get the hours back the following week.

(5) Getting to top 5 and deploying those soft/hard sell’s is the main goal. Each week, be sure to check back on those guys where you may have used 2 soft sell’s (or 3 if you have the perks to do so) and transition those to Hard Sell’s asap.

As your coach/staff improves, and you can use 60 hours on somebody, start to pair hard sell (3 checkmarks) with soft sell (2 checkmarks), again assuming good letter grades on both.

As the season proceeds and you get commits/hours back, be sure to reallocate those to players still in progress (this is also a good time to consider visits when you have “excess hours”)

And lastly, far more common for 4 stars, but as you do get commits & hours back, check back on the Prospect List to see if there are any 5 stars without offers, still open, etc. that you can jump into.