Small School Recruiting Guide

I started as 1-star Rice and just finished my 3rd season, brought it up to 3 stars already. My roster is pretty much all 3 and 4 star players with one 5 star mixed in. Thought I’d write a little guide on what I’ve done so far.

When you pick a small school, you only get like 300 hours and variable NIL, for this example I’ll just say 500 NIL is all that’s available.

Preseason scouting

Honestly not super important. With 300 hours and scouting taking 50 hours each, this means you can only scout a handful of players. If you have a little more hours or decreased scout time attributes, you could do a few more. I just focus on the position I need most (usually QB on a new save file) and add 6-10 of them and pray I find a gem. If not, not a huge deal honestly. If you do find a gem, I’d send the house next week when you’re able to put in hours (and NIL only if his requirement is super low, like 20 or less)

Week 0

Now you are able to actually use hours. If you found a gem, go ahead and send the house. Otherwise, first filter by 3 star recruits that want zero NIL. Add a bunch of the same position to your board and then see which ones have the highest “playing time” grade. This directly correlates to their overall, which is important when these guys are going to start day 1. It does NOT correlate at all to dev trait, but again doesn’t matter as much the first year or two when you just need decent quality starters. Offer 20 contracts (costs 100 hours) using this method. I would go ahead and max NIL only these too, which comes out to 200 NIL total. Don’t worry, you’re going to get most of that 200 back, but we’ll get to that later. If you started with a school less than 200 hours, 5 or 0 NIL should be fine, as long as you gave them a contract. For the rest of your hours, pick 3-4 of the players you offered a contract that you most need/like and just send the house, you’re about to take off these hours anyways.

Week 1

By now, you have 20 contracts out plus or minus NIL. You may not see any movement yet, but that’s okay. Now you take off all of your hours (unless on a gem you scouted) and filter by 4 and 5 star recruits. You need to find 4 or 5 stars that BOTH have no offers AND have no movement on their bars. The other schools will send hours without offering a contract, and you will likely not be able to compete since you’re a small and bad school. Find these unnoticed recruits and send the house on as many as your hours allow. I’ve only ever seen one 5 star here, so most likely going after 4 stars.

Week 2-16

Pretty much the only thing you do at this point is see if other bigger schools are offering the guys you’re going after. If their offer is bad and they don’t have much movement or you feel like you have enough of a lead, you can try to wait it out. But if another school comes in with a noticeable huge chunk of interest, get them off your board and find another 4 star to send the house on. Hard sell when you can and if your grades are good enough. Rinse and repeat. If you run out of 4 stars, there are plenty of 3 stars that want too much NIL and go unrecruited because of it, so you can go for them instead. You may get a few commits from just NIL or hours at this point, but I am often not using both unless it’s a 3 star gem with low NIL requirements.

Transfer Portal Season

This is where it gets a little exploit-y. This is where we rug pull. By now, you should have a board full of uncontested or minimally contested 3 and 4 stars that you’re offering NIL or hours as well as a handful of commits.

Go back to prospects and find 4 stars that are still not in their top 5. Even if they are being semi-pursued by another school, as long as they aren’t in the top 5 you can jump them. Send the house AND at least 1.5x their NIL wishes, ideally maxing it out which is double their expectations. You are going to jump to the top of their list in just a week or 2. Do this for as many 4 stars your NIL can afford. Don’t worry, they will not have enough time to commit and you will not lose your NIL. Once you get to week 4, you should be in the lead for these people you spent everything on.

PAY ATTENTION, THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART.

When you are on week 4, adjust your offer for EVERYONE ON YOUR BOARD, to zero NIL. This goes for the 4 stars you offered a crazy amount for as well as the 3 stars you offered 10 on week 1. If you are top on their list, you will still get them. If they already committed, you cannot adjust the NIL however.

When you advance, the screen will pop up and maybe half of them you got and half will say they committed elsewhere. But they didn’t. They will end up on your squad when the season starts. Congratulations you have an entire squad of 3-4 stars recruits (potentially a 5 if you got lucky).

You can theoretically do this same thing for transfers in the portal as well, but beware that their interest is MUCH faster than high school players. So if you offer them all the money and max hours, they might commit in 2 weeks and you can’t alter their contract to bring it back down to zero NIL, then you’re screwed.

I do realize this last part is likely not intended, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a patch addressed it. That being said, even without the last rug pull, you can get a 15 or so 3-4 star recruits for very little NIL with this method