NCAA College Football Fantasy Database - V1.2 update is Out Now (final FM23 update)

[samba23]

EDIT: Final FM23 update Database V1.2 is OUT NOW!!!

 

To enable file - save to documents ---> Sports Interactive ---> Football Manager 2023 ---> Editor Data

 

Download

Graphics are available now too.

Logos

Icons

Competitions

Trophies

Kits

To enable files - click above link ---> click red download button ---> download as zip archive ---> save to documents ---> Sports Interactive ---> Football Manager 2023 ---> Graphics

For each download i would save to a separate folder to ensure that the config files work properly.

 

NCAA College Football Database

 

*Disclaimer: This is a fantasy database and not an accurate representation of the real USA NCAA soccer structure.

 

Hi all. I am a fan of College Football (and to a lesser extent every other college sport) so have decided to make an FM league which contains all of the top teams and attempts to mimic the conference structure. The structure that I have created does not complement the existing USA structure - rather it replaces the MLS and all other leagues/teams as the highest level in the USA. 

 

This database has been created as the result of two ideas I had;

1. What would football look like in America if the top colleges were professional football clubs?

2. What would the conferences look like if realigned by myself and promotion/relegation was a reality?

 

In this database the college teams and competitions are the only ones in the USA and as such the top teams in game are imagined as high-reputation professional teams.

I have been working on this database since the last version I released for FM18 (I can’t believe it was that long ago). Apologies if you played that version and have been waiting for an updated version since then.

You can check out that database here [FM18] NCAA College Football Database - USA - v2.1 Out Now - Editors Hideaway Download Forum FM21 and Older - Sports Interactive Community (sigames.com) but this version is much expanded and much improved so I hope that if you play this you will agree that it was worth the wait.

 

This is not college soccer expanded. Rather it is an imagining of College Football as actual football. Therefore teams are managed by the college football head coach, play in the college football stadiums and are ranked according to each college's football program's current level and history.

I have stayed true to the concept of each division level being split into regionalised conferences. I have tried to keep the existing conference structures from real life, with a few alterations. There are 19 conferences in total (all 10 FBS conferences plus 9 FCS conferences). Most conferences have 10 teams (two have 20 teams and the Ivy league has 8 teams). The structure is regionalised into 4 regions (West, Central, East & South) and into five divisions (4 conferences in each division, except the bottom division which has 3 conferences). The top 4 conferences (Pac-12, Big 12, Big Ten & SEC) are in division I-A, with Divisions I-AA, I-AAA, II-A & II-AA below it. There is promotion and relegation (except between the DII divisions), with teams remaining in their region.

 

If you played my FM18 database then most of this database will be familiar. However, it has been greatly expanded, most notably now consisting of 208 teams, with plans to eventually go up to 240 teams. Other improvements include an expanded conference season, most conferences consist of 27 games (i.e. a 3x round robin), the overall calendar has been revised and is more true to real life and most competitions have been made more accurate to real life.

 

Another important change in this version is that transfers are enabled. My FM18 database had every team under a transfer embargo, meaning that clubs had to rely on developing their youth players. However, with the transfer portal now a big part of College Football I have now decided to allow transfers. This has required some tweaks to the team finances to ensure a better financial balance.

 

As previously, there are no created players so I would strongly recommend selecting “add players to playable teams” to populate every squad. I have added coaching staffs for every team but no scouting/medical staff so I would also recommend selecting “add key staff” when loading a new game.

 

If you are a fan of USA College sports then most of this database should be familiar. However, there is quite a lot to understand for the uninitiated so over the upcoming few posts I will be writing an extensive manual for users to help understand the database. 

Edited September 15, 2023 by samba23

[samba23]

This FM23 version was heavily delayed due to an Editor error which affected most USA databases. That error has now been fixed but most of the data in this database has not been updated since FM22, as I didn't see the point in updating my FM22 editor database with 2023 data if the Editor 2023 error was unable to be fixed.

This means that coaching staffs are only accurate to the 2021 College Football season and other smaller data updates have not been done, such as 2021-22 competition winners. However, rather than spending months updating the data for FM23 I have decided now is the time to finally re-release my College Football database for people to play before I hopefully can post a full data update in the coming months.

I'm still in the final testing stages but hope to have the database up either tomorrow or Monday. In the meantime, please see the following few posts which will provide a guide for this database.

[samba23]

College Football

 

As mentioned already, this database originally came about because I am a big College Football fan. NCAA College Football will probably be unfamiliar to most people so I suppose some sort of explanation of it would be a good idean

In College football, teams typically play a 12 game schedule, 8-9 of which are conference games and the remaining 3-4 are non-conference games. The non-conference games are mostly played at the start of the season, before conference play begins. Teams are mostly free to play whomever they want to. Most teams will typically play a marquee game against a high level opponent, a local non-conference team of similar ability and a lower level "cupcake" game (often against a local FCS team). This non-conference scheduling is very important as the strength of schedule (SOS) is a key determining factor in team's Playoff chances and top 25 ranking.

The majority of College Football conferences are split into two divisions, typically East/West or North/South. Teams will play each team in their own division and 2-4 teams from the opposite division. These conferences are split into two divisions because they have too many teams (with the exception of the Big 12) to play a full round robin schedule, and still be able to play some non-conference games.

At the end of the regular season the top team from each conference division play a Conference Championship Game to determine the conference champion.

At the conclusion of the regular season the post-season consists special matches called bowl games. Although the non-College Football Playoff bowl games are technically exhibition games, many of them are very prestigious and the main objective for most teams is to qualify for a bowl game. Teams become bowl-eligible by winning at least half of their games (6-6 or .500% wins). Each bowl game is played at a specific host stadium and has conference tie-in's (e.g. SEC vs Big 12). There are currently 40 bowl games of varying history and reputation, with the Rose Bowl game being over 100 years old.

 

 

The database at a glance

 

As a 12 game regular season wouldn't be very interesting, teams in 10 team divisions play a 27 game conference schedule (3x each opponent). Teams in the 20 team divisions play 28 games (once vs each team, then the league split into two groups of 10 and once vs each group opponent). Teams in the Ivy league play 21 games (3x each opponent). The season is effectively almost split into three stages, being based on the real life College Football, College Basketball and College Baseball season. Don’t worry, this will all be explained shortly.

Before the conference schedule begins, all teams play 7 non-conference games against randomised opponents (excluding conference opponents). These non-conference games do not count against league standings, i.e. determining conference champions and promotion/relegation. However, the non-conference results do count towards qualification for extra competitions, e.g. the College Football Playoff, Bowl Games, NCAA tournament, etc. More on which later.

Each conference schedule is split into three parts. After the first set of round robin games (College Football season) are complete, the conferences take a break for the College Football Playoff, Bowl Games and the DII Playoff. After the second set of round robin games (College Basketball season), the conferences take a break for the NCAA Tournament (aka March Madness) plus the NIT and two other smaller tournaments. After the final set of round robin games (College Baseball season) comes the College World Series to end the season.

I have tried to make the database as accurate and as immersive as possible. This includes club and competition logos for all teams and conferences, competition histories, exact colours for kits, staff members, creating stadiums for all teams and much, much more besides.

As there is no NFL type pro league, players do not leave after a certain age so can spend their whole career at their club.

 

Other specific rules/changes that I should mention;

All tied games go to extra time (silver goal) and ET winners in conference games will get 3 points. If a conference game is tied after ET then both teams will get 1 point.

The game importance and youth rating for USA has been increased to make football the national sport and to make USA a top-10 calibre country.

Teams do not have any players allocated to them. Therefore it's essential to add players to playable teams to populate the teams. 

The North American Champions League and Club World Cup have been deleted. I spent forever trying to get the qualifications rules right but could never get it to work so just deleted them instead.

 

[samba23]

Teams

 

The highest level of College Football - Division 1-A (FBS) has 130 teams in total.

I have included almost all of the FCS teams from the better FCS conferences (Missouri Valley, Big Sky, etc) plus some teams from lesser FCS conferences to take the total number of teams to 208.

Teams have been rated from a Reputation of 8900 (comparable to Barcelona, Juventus, etc) to 3000 (comparable to National League teams) and given training, youth coaching, facilities, recruiting etc from 20 (Alabama, Ohio State etc) to 5 (Mississippi Valley State, Morgan State etc). Teams have been ranked according to their footballing history, recent and all-time (sorry Kansas and Duke).

These rankings work well in allowing the blue-bloods to remain elite and the smaller teams to remain small, but with the possibility of upward and downward mobility.

All teams are based in their college town (some have had to be created). General info such as founding year, nickname, club legends, rivalries, derby names etc has been added.

Each team has large and small logos. The club colours are exactly as specified on the University brand guidelines (so if any look a bit off, don't blame me).

All teams have at least two kits. All kits are the same kit style, with home kits being the primary school colour plus the secondary colour for trim, shorts. numbers etc. All teams have white away kits (except Georgia Tech and LSU). However, I have not been able to get it so that away teams always wear white. Many teams regularly use a third alternative kit (e.g. Oregon, Boise State, Miami etc) have these added, although they are very rarely used in-game.

All teams play in their college football stadium. Most have been created from scratch as very few already exist in the database. These have all been created as club-owned and all-seater and have year built, year rebuilt (most recent large expansion) and pitch-type data added. Capacities have usually been given as the official listed capacity, although many teams exceed this so many have the record attendance set as capacity.

Attendance has usually been set as the largest season's average attendance since the mid 2010’s. Minimum attendance has usually been set as the average 2010’s attendances. Exceptions include where the average attendance is far below capacity (e.g.Temple, Rice) and minimum attendance is the largest season's average attendance since 2009 and Attendance is set closer to capacity.

All teams are set to member owned (elections) and will remain fan owned. The real-life university president is the in-game president. All teams have the Athletic Director set as director of football.

The college Head Coach is set as the first team manager and given CA on a scale from 170 (Nick Saban) to 85. All have their correct year of birth set. Other staff have this too where found.

Teams have large coaching staffs included. Every FBS team has 11 coaches consisting of Assistant manager (usually the highest-paid co-ordinator), Head of Youth (often the remaining co-ordinator) first team coaches (positional coaches) main fitness coach (Head of Strength and Conditioning) and U19 coaches (usually lowest paid coaches). FCS teams mostly have fewer staff in total but still have all essential staff.

All FBS manager and other staff salaries have been set using the USA Today 2022 data. All FCS coaches have accurate salaries taken from other sources (where not available estimates have been given). Managers have contracts to 2027, other staff have contracts to 2025. 

 

I am still having a few minor issues, which although not game-breaking, I would like to fix if possible.

1. Elite managers if sacked early in-game rarely get another job. Lower-level managers do not have this problem, nor does it appear to occur later in-game. I thought this was maybe due to wages being too high, but this did not work.

2. AI controlled teams do not expand their stadiums, some teams build new stadiums but this does not appear to correlate to on-pitch success.

3. All managers contracts run until 2027. At the end of these contracts there is often a major reshuffling of managers, although many do stay at the same club for many years after.

4. Wages are too low. AI controlled teams' wages increase year-on-year before plateauing around 2026-28. I have tried editing weekly wage values on the nation page and setting a minimum wage of $40k in the nation rules but neither appear to have any effect. This was not a big issue when all teams had transfer embargoes but is more of an issue in this transfer-enabled database as transfer budgets stay high for many years due to the artificially low wage budgets.

 

 

 Conferences

 

I have kept all 10 college football FBS conferences (plus 8 from FCS and the Basketball-only Big East) but they have been completely realigned to make them geographically accurate. This realignment restores some old rivalries (Nebraska - Oklahoma, Texas - Texas A&M etc) but keeps almost all existing rivalries and creates a few new potential rivalries (Alabama - Clemson). Efforts have been made to keep teams in their correct real life conference, meaning that some rivalries are no longer played (Iowa State – Iowa, Kentucky – Louisville.

The regions are mostly drawn along state borders, with some exceptions. All of Louisiana except LSU is in the Central region. Memphis is the only Tennessee team in the Central Region. Iowa is the only Iowa team in the East region. Louisville is the only Kentucky team in the East region and Richmond and William & Mary are the only Virginia teams in the East region.

This database contains five divisions I-A, I-AA, I-AAA, II-A & II-AA. Each division is the parent competition for four conferences. Each conference is regionalised (west, Central, East & South) and is separate from the others in their respective divisions. There are three divisions in DI, which is the Bowl Subdivision and two divisions in DII, which is the Championship Subdivision. More on this late

 

There is one promotion and relegation spot between conferences in each division, except between DII-A & DII-AA, where there is no promotion or relegation. These are structured as the following;

West - Pac 12 >>> Mountain West >>> WAC >>> Big Sky

Central - Big 12 >>> American Athletic >>> Sun Belt >>> Missouri Valley

East - Big Ten >>> Big East >>> MAC >>> CAA

South - SEC >>> ACC >>> Conference USA >>> Southern

 

DII-AA is its own separate division level, with no promotion from it. This division has three conferences. These are the Ivy League and two HBCU (Historically Black) conferences, the MEAC and SWAC.

Each division has past winners history included, although realignment makes some of these quite irrelevant. For example, Clemson has several ACC titles but this is now a DI-AA conference so therefore not at the same division level as the SEC, which Clemson is now in. I have also included past winners history for defunct conferences such as the Southwest Conference and Big Eight.

 

Edited April 3, 2023 by samba23

[samba23]

Non-conference schedules

 

In this database the season starts with a non-conference portion before the proper conference season starts. In the non-conference schedule, all teams play a total of 7 non-conference games, starting from the end of August. These games are all played before the conference games start in mid-October,

The main non-conference schedule is done by having all 208 teams randomly put into 26 groups of 8 teams. Teams play all opponents in each group once. Teams are not ranked in this competition and there are no winners, hence no season expectations for the competition.

The non-conference schedule is separate from conference-play, insofar as conference champions and promotion-relegation spots are determined from conference games only. However, as well as the conference standings for each division, there is also a combined table which includes non-conference results and also Conference Championship Game and Conference Tournament results (more on which shortly). This combined table “Overall Standings” is added to each conference once all non-conference games have been played and it updates in real time, along with the conference table.

The Overall Standings are used to determine the College Football Playoff teams, Bowl Game allocations, “basketball” tournament (NCAA Tournament, NIT etc) qualification and seedings and College World Series qualification and seedings. Therefore, the non-conference games are important (not just friendlies) as the aforementioned tournament qualifications and seedings are based on a team’s “entire body of work”.

 

 

Early Season Tournaments

 

In addition to the 7 game non-conference schedule there are 27 early season tournaments, all played before the non-conference schedule begins. An important difference between these games and the non-conference schedule is that these tournament results do not count towards a team’s overall standings, and therefore have no impact on Bowl Game selection or tournament seeding. In effect, these tournaments are just friendly tournaments to open the season.

Every tournament is a 4-team or 8-team competition, with all teams playing for the whole of the tournament. This means that for example in an 8-team tournament as well as a semi-final for the quarter-final winning teams, there is a consolation semi-final for the quarter-final losing teams. There is also a 7^th place, 5^th place and 3^rd place game as well as a final.

Tournament locations have been chosen from the following factors, locations that have Bowl Games, foreign locations that have had College Football or NFL games (e.g. Dublin/London) and locations of College Basketball tournaments (e.g. Maui Invitational/Battle 4 Atlantis).

Many tournaments will pick some of it’s field from local teams e.g. the Texas, Florida and California invitational all pick at least four teams from in-state. Higher profile tournaments will have mostly higher division teams e.g. London Invitational and lower profile tournaments will have mostly lower division teams e.g. Puerto Rico Invitational.

Teams can only play in one invitational tournament a year and teams that are not selected for an invitational tournament will play 3 Campus Games, effectively 3 home/away games against other non-invited teams, with opponents chosen at random.

In earlier databases, each invitational tournament was it’s own separate competition. However, with the sheer number of tournaments now included this was impractical and now each competition it’s a single stage within the overall competition.

[trebird]

I loved your fm 18 database looking forward to playing it now 

[samba23]

College Football Season

Once the non-conference portion of the season is completed, each conference moves into it’s first round robin stage, the “College Football Season”. Each 10-team conference plays nine games in a single round robin. MAC and Conference USA teams play 10 games (just over half of the single round robin) and the Ivy League plays 7 games. Once those games have been played then the top two teams in each division play a Conference Championship Game.

In this database I have added Conference Championship Games for most DI conferences. The MAC and Conference USA are the exceptions as a result of them being 20 team divisions, where at the break for the “Bowl Season” not every team will have played against each other.

The DII conferences do not have Conference Championship Games. This is because DII has its own 24-team Playoff.

The “overall standings” i.e. non-conference schedule results, conference results and the Conference Championship Game determine which teams will play in the post-season. The top 12 Division I teams will play in the College Football Playoff, More than half of the remaining Division I teams will play in a Bowl Game and the top 24 Division II teams will play in the DII Championship.

 

College Football Playoff

 

 

The concept of a true national champion in college football is a relatively recent concept. Before 1998 there was no one game to decide a national champion. Although bowl games had been in existence for 70+ years, and end of season match-up between the top two ranked teams in the nation was rare. Between 1992-97 the major bowl games combined to attempt to match up the top teams in the country but it wasn't until the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) began in 1998 that the #1 and #2 ranked teams would play a match to determine the national champions.

However, the selection of the two participating teams was often controversial as a series of complex computerised mathematical formulas were used to select the two teams. In 2015 the College Football Playoff (CFP) was formed. This selected the top 4 teams, chosen by a selection committee, and plays #1 v #4 and #2 v #3 in semi-finals at NY6 bowl venues on a rotational basis with the final played at a neutral venue.

Recently, the College Football Playoff announced that it would be expanded to 12 teams, starting from 2024.

 

In this database I already have a 12 team Playoff. This is almost the same format as what has been announced. 

The 12 teams are chosen from each DI-A teams “entire body of work” up until the end of the “College Football season” at the start of December. This includes the non-conference results, the first 9 conference games and the Conference Championship Games.

The top three teams in each DI-A conference’s “overall standings” qualify for the College Football Playoff. This means that a team can be top of the “regular season” standings and win the Conference Championship Game but if their non-conference results are poor then they may not even qualify for the Playoff.

The 1^st placed team in each conference’s “overall standings” receives a First Round bye and will enter the Playoff at the Quarter Final Stage. The 2^nd and 3^rd placed teams will play in the First round, with 2^nd placed teams playing against a 3^rd placed team from one of the other three conferences. This match up is determined on a three year rotation, meaning that every conferences 2^nd and 3^rd placed teams will play against all other conferences in that three year rotation. The 2^nd placed team will play at home in this round

The Quarter Finals are played as part of the “New Years Six Bowl Games”. For example, the 2022 Rose Bowl is the 1^st placed Pac-12 team vs the winner of the Big Ten 2^nd vs Big 12 3^rd match. This means that 4 of the NY6 games each year are also College Football Playoff Quarter Finals. These games are rotated each year, meaning that each NY6 game is a Playoff Quarter Final in 2 out of 3 years.

The National Championship Game is played at the real life venue (where already announced) or at a “National Championship Game calibre” stadium. The Playoff Semi Finals are played at the same venue as the National Championship Game.

The real life College Football Playoff will use existing NY6 games as Quarter Final and Semi Final games when it moves to a 12 team Playoff. However, I have been unable to get this to work satisfactorily as setting NY6 games as CFP QF and SF games messes up the history records in future years.

Bowl Games

 

 

I have included every College Football Bowl Game. In-game these are divided into four separate competitions; New Years Six, DI-A, DI-AA and DI-AAA Bowl Games.

As explained earlier, four of the NY6 games also double as College Football Playoff Quarter Finals. The remaining two NY6 games are between 4^th placed DI-A teams. For example, in 2022 the Cotton Bowl is Big 12 vs Big Ten. I have attempted to keep the NY6 Bowl Games as close to real life, where each Bowl has specific conference “tie-ins”. Therefore, for example, whenever the Rose Bowl is not a CFP game it will always be Pac 12 vs Big Ten.

 

In DI-A the teams placed 5^th-8^th play in a DI-A Bowl Game. These are the most prestigious non-NY6 Bowls in real life e.g. Gator, Citrus, etc.

In DI-AA the teams placed 1^st-6^th play in a DI-AA Bowl Game. These are next tier down of real-life Bowls e.g. Pinstripe, Liberty, etc. 

In DI-AAA the teams placed 1^st-6^th in all conferences, plus teams placed 7^th-10^th in the MAC and Conference USA play in a DI-AAA Bowl Game. These are the lowest level real life Bowls e.g. Frisco, Boca Raton, etc.

Each non-NY6 bowl game will always place teams from the same conferences together. Also each Bowl will always place teams finishing in the same position together. For example, the Citrus Bowl will always be 5^th placed SEC vs Big Ten and the Sun Bowl will always be 3^rd placed Big East vs Mountain West.

I have attempted to make each Bowl Game as accurate to its real life conference tie-ins as possible, but this has not always been possible.

FCS Playoff

 In real life the FCS College Football subdivision does not have Bowl Games, with the exception of the Celebration Bowl, instead preferring to have a 24 team National Championship Tournament. The winner of each FCS conference qualifies automatically, with the exception of the SWAC and MEAC champions (who play in the Celebration Bowl) and the Ivy League champion. The remainder of the 24 tournament spots are given to “at-large” teams, i.e. the best non-conference champions. This means that better conferences can get multiple teams in the FCS Playoff but weaker conferences will almost always only have one team in the Playoff.

 

In this database, the top five teams from each DII-A conference qualify, plus the top team from each DII-AA conference. The 2^nd placed Ivy League team also qualifies. The top two teams from each DII-A conference receive First Round Byes. The First Round is seeded so that the 3^rd placed DII-A team plays against a DII-AA team. In the Second Round each team receiving a First Round bye will play against a First Round winning team.

Also, the competition is drawn so that teams will not play against a conference opponent until the Quarter Final round at the earliest. The higher seeded team plays at home in each round except for the final, which is played at Toyota Field in Frisco, Texas.

 

[samba23]

College Basketball Season

 

The next stage of the season following Bowl Season is the “College Basketball” season. This is the second round robin stage (or the second half of the single round robin for the MAC and Conference USA) of the conference schedule.

In real life most College Basketball teams play around 18-22 conference games and around 10 non-conference games. Early in the season many teams play in Invitational competitions, such as the Maui Invitational and the Battle 4 Atlantis. These tournaments do count towards a team’s overall record so are not true friendlies. Some conferences also have Conference Challenges, for example, the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, where most (or all) teams from a conference play a one-off game against a team from a different conference.

Once the regular season is over, every conference holds its own Conference Tournament. The winner of each Conference Tournament qualifies automatically for the post-season NCAA Tournament. These conference tournaments usually have every team in a conference playing in a single venue in the space of a week. Some smaller conference tournaments have fewer teams and are played at home-courts.

In my database I have College Basketball invitational competitions being played at the very start of the season, before the main non-conference schedule and the results of these tournaments do not count towards a team’s overall record.

 

Conference Tournaments

Following the completion of the second round robin stage, each conference has its own Conference Tournament. In the 10-team conferences every team qualifies for the Conference Tournament. The top 6 teams receive a bye into the Quarter Finals and the first round is 7^th vs 10^th & 8^th vs 9^th. The tournaments are seeded so that the 1^st place team will play the winner of the 7v10 match, the 2^nd place team will play the winner of the 8v9 match, the other two matches are 3^rd vs 6^th and 4^th vs 5^th. The semi Finals are also seeded so that the winner of the 1 vs 7/10 game will play the winner of 4vs 5 and the winner of the 2 vs 8/9 game will play the winner of 3 vs 6.

In the 20-team conferences, the top 16 teams qualify. The top 4 teams receive a bye into the Quarter Finals. Teams seeded 5-8 receive a bye into the 2^nd round and teams 9-16 play in the 1^st round. In the Ivy league only the top 4 teams qualify for the conference tournament (as in real life). The MEAC and SWAC are also different as only the top 8 teams qualify for the quarter finals. This is because following the completion of these conference tournaments the top teams from these two conferences (as per overall standings) meet in the MEAC/SWAC challenge. The winner of this game qualifies for the NCAA Tournament. The loser qualifies for the NIT.

All Conference Tournament games are played at a single neutral venue. All of the results of the Conference Tournaments are added to the “overall standings” so therefore a good Conference Tournament run for a lower seeded team can help them qualify for a post-season tournament or receive a higher seeding for a post-season tournament.

 

There are four post-season tournaments in the “College Basketball” stage of the season. The most important one is the NCAA Tournament, which will feature at least one team from every conference. The next most important one is the NIT, again there will be at least one team from each division qualifying for this tournament. There is also the CIT and CFI for teams that did not qualify for the top two tournaments.

[samba23]

NCAA Tournament

The NCAA Tournament (commonly referred to as March Madness) is the main post-season tournament in College Basketball. It is a 68 team tournament separated into four regional brackets before the Final Four and National Championship. The winners of all Division I Basketball Conference Tournaments get automatic entries into the tournament, with the remaining 30+ teams being given “at-large” bids by a selection committee. All 68 teams are ranked 1-68, with the top 4 seeds being given #1 seeding and placed into their most geographically local regional bracket. The remaining bracket is filled out by the selection committee.

8 teams (2 in each bracket) play in the "First Four" to play-in to the main tournament. These “First Four games are between the four lowest ranked automatic qualifying teams (16 seed vs 16 seed) and the four lowest ranked “at-large” teams (seeding can vary but is usually in the 11-13 range).

The entire draw is fixed during "Selection Sunday" with the ties in each region being 1v16, 2v15, 3v13 etc for the first round, 1/16v8/9, 2/15v7/10 etc for the second round and so on for the remainder of the tournament. The tournament is known as March Madness due to the frequency of upsets during the tournament. The regional semi final and final are called "Sweet 16" and "Elite 8" respectively. The winner of each regional bracket qualifies for the Final Four which (along with the final) is played at a neutral venue, as are all matches throughout the tournament.

 

In my database I have broken down the NCAA Tournament into five separate competitions, the four regional brackets and the Final Four. The top team in every conference’s “overall standings” following the Conference Tournaments qualifies automatically. The remaining teams are all “at-large” qualifiers.

The top 9 teams from each DI-A conference qualify for the NCAA Tournament. In DI-AA the top 5 teams from each conference qualify. In DI-AAA the top two teams in the MAC and Conference USA qualify. In every other conference only the top team qualifies. The bottom four automatic qualifiers, the DII-AA teams and the bottom four “at-large” qualifiers, the 5^th placed DI-AA teams, will play in the First Four, a preliminary round before the main Tournament begins.

In the tournament, teams are seeded 1-16 in each bracket. The winner of each DI-A conference is placed into their region's bracket, with the remaining 64 teams placed equally across all brackets. The draw is fixed and seeded, DI-A teams are seeded 1-9, 1st-5th in DI-AA are seeded 10-14. The DI-AAA and DII automatic qualifiers are seeded 14-16.

The draw is fixed exactly the same as in real-life. The first round ties are 1v16, 2v15, 3v14 and so on. The second round ties are (assuming the higher seeded team wins) 1v8, 2v7 and so on. Also, the higher seeded team for each match is the designated home team.

In the real life NCAA Tournament, first and second round matches are played Thursday-Saturday and Friday-Sunday. In-game the First Round games are played a day earlier, in order to allow an extra rest day between games. This pattern is also repeated for the Third and Fourth Round matches – the Sweet 16 and Elite 8.

The stadiums used for this tournament are mostly all NFL stadiums. There are four stadiums for rounds 1 & 2, each getting two round 1 matches and one round 2 match, and one stadium for the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 rounds. Teams will always play their First and Second Round match at the same stadium and their Sweet 16 and Elite 8 match at the same stadium. In order to achieve this, each of the 4 regional brackets are divided into five stages, four stages for the 1^st and 2^nd round (all running concurrently) and one stage for the Sweet 16 and Elite 8. Each stage is named for the city the games will be played in.

As the Final Four is a separate tournament, the winners of each regional bracket is crowned champion of the region and qualifies for the Final Four. This means that in a club's history page you can see how many times they have played in the Final Four.

As the NCAA tournament is a basketball tournament, many of the past winners are basketball-only schools. To ensure the history record of the competition is complete, I have added all winners and runners up not in the 208 in-game teams as extinct teams and added their logos. This means that they appear on-screen but are not clickable. I have also added all of the basketball arenas to host the final four as extinct stadiums.

 

Edited April 2, 2023 by samba23

[samba23]

NIT, CIT and CBI

 

The NCAA Tournament is not the only post-season College Basketball tournament. The National Invitation Tournament (NIT) is actually older than the NCAA Tournament and up until the 1950's was more prestigious. It has traditionally been played at Madison Square Garden in NYC, although this season the Semi Finals and Final were played in Las Vegas . In modern times it has become of secondary importance to the NCAA tournament (often called "the small dance" compared to "the big dance" of the NCAA Tournament).

Any Conference regular season champion that does not win its conference tournament and receive an “at-large” NCAA Tournament bid (commonly happens to small-conference teams) will qualify automatically for the NIT. The remainder of the tournament is filled by the best teams that miss out on the NCAA tournament. 32 teams in total compete, split into four brackets of 8 teams seeded 1-8. The draw is fixed so that the first round plays 1v8, 2v7, etc. Matches are played on the home site of the higher seed until the semi final and final which are played at Madison Square Garden.

In most years there are also 1-2 further tournaments which invite non-tournament qualifying teams to compete in. These tournaments are typically for smaller conference teams and teams have the right to decline an invitation to these tournaments.

 

In my database I have created the NIT and two other tournaments called the College Football Invitational (CFI) and College Invitational Tournament (CIT). All three tournaments run parallel to the NCAA tournament so that many teams have a post-season tournament to play in. 

In the NIT I have the 10th placed DI-A teams, 6^th-8^th placed DI-AA teams, 2^nd-4^th placed DI-AAA teams and 2^nd placed DII teams (from all conferences). They are seeded 1-8 by their final league position, therefore 10th placed in DI-A will always play a DII team in the first round. Matches up until the quarter final are all played at the home stadium of the higher seeded team. The semi finals are played at Yankee Stadium and the final is played at Metlife Stadium. Therefore, the semi finals and final are all played in New York.

 

The CFI is the next most important tournament. It is a 16 team tournament and features 9^th and 10^th placed teams in DI-AA and 4^th-8^th placed teams in DI-AAA. In real life, pre Covid-19 the Final of the College Basketball Invitational was played as a best-of-three series. In-game this finals series is replicated by having the final as a league stage, with three games scheduled but the 3^rd game only being played if the teams are tied after both games.

 

The last tournament is the CIT. This tournament has 26 teams, which was the format of the 2019 Collegeinsider.com Postseason Tournament. This tournament features 5^th-14^th placed teams in DI-AAA, 3^rd placed teams in DII-A and two DII-AA teams. In this tournament there is a 26-team opening round, the top 3 winners from this round receive a bye to the Quarter Final.

 

[Suso30]

Is the download available?

[Rob 396]

14 hours ago, Suso30 said:

Is the download available?

"I'm still in the final testing stages but hope to have the database up either tomorrow or Monday. In the meantime, please see the following few posts which will provide a guide for this database."

I'm sure they'll release it when they feel it is ready

[redondos]

I'm very excited for this 

[samba23]

I'm having a couple of issues with the College Football Playoff and one other feature, so won't be released today sadly. Still hoping to release it tomorrow.

[samba23]

College World Series

Upon completion of the NCAA Tournament and the other “College Basketball Tournaments” each Conference plays its final round robin stage. With the league standings at the end of the 27 game conference season determining the Conference Champion and the promotion and relegation spots, (except the MAC and Conference USA, which split into two groups East/West and North/South).

At the end of the conference season is the final post-season tournament I have included in the database, the College World Series.

The College World Series is the culmination of the NCAA DI Baseball Championship. The overall tournament is a 64 team double-elimination (more on that later) bracket tournament. Teams are split into 16 four-team regional brackets. All of the DI conference champions qualify, plus 30+ at-large bids (similar to the NCAA Basketball Tournament). The top 16 ranked teams overall are seeded #1 and can host their regional bracket (although other venues can bid to host). The winners of each regional bracket play-off against another winner in the best-of-three "Super Regional). The 8 Super Regional winners then advance to the College World Series, played in Omaha, Nebraska.

The College World Series is a double-elimination bracketed tournament. Double-elimination is difficult to explain but basically means that teams need to lose two matches to be knocked out. Teams are split into two brackets of four teams. The first round is "team A" vs "team B" and "team C" vs "team D". The winners progress to the next round and the two losing teams play against each other. The winner progresses to the second round. The loser (having lost two games) is out. The two winning teams of round one play against each other in round two. The winner progresses to the semi final. The loser plays off against the winner of the first elimination game. The winner of the first elimination game then plays off against the second round loser. The winner of the second elimination game progresses to the semi final. The loser (having lost two games) is out. The two remaining teams in each bracket then play in the semi finals. If the team that loses the semi final has already lost a match then they are eliminated. If the team that loses the semi final has not already lost a match then the two teams play another match to determine who will be eliminated (having then lost two matches). The two winning team then play in the final, which is a best of three series.

 

In my database, the College World series is split into two separate tournaments. The 64-team College World Series – Regionals and the final 8-team tournament the College World Series.

Unlike the NCAA Tournament (March Madness) only DI teams are eligible to play in this tournament. The qualifying teams for this tournament are determined by “overall standings” The top 8 teams in DI-A and the top 4 teams in DI-AA and DI-AAA qualify.

This tournament is split into 16 “Regional” stages, each consisting of 4 teams in a double-elimination stage. Teams finishing 1^st-4^th in DI-A are seeded #1 in each region, teams finishing 5^th-8^th in DI-A are seeded #2, the DI-AA teams are seeded #3 and the DI-AAA teams are seeded #4. The winner of each “Regional” stage qualifies for the “Super Regional” stage.

The 16 Regional stages are all paired up with another stage to make 8 “Super Regions”. Each Super Region pairs two “Regional” stage winners. In real life this stage is a best-of-three series at the home venue of the higher seeded team. However, in-game this is a home-and-away stage. This is to reduce the overall number of games played.

 

The College World Series is the final tournament of the season and features the eight winning teams from the College World Series – Regionals “Super Regional” stage winning teams.

This tournament is split into two four-team double-elimination brackets, with the winners of each bracket meeting in the College World Series Final. In real-life this final is a best-of-three series, however, in-game this is a one-off final. The reasoning for this change is to reduce the total number of games played. Another difference from the real life tournament is that the semi-finals in real life will have a replay if the losing team has not previously lost a match in the tournament, whereas in-game this replay does not take place and the losing Semi Final team is always eliminated.

[samba23]

College Cup

 

The final major competition I have included in this database is the College Cup. This is the post-season tournament for College Soccer. Although College Soccer is nowhere near the popularity of College Football, College Basketball and College Baseball, I still wanted to include the College Cup in my database.

In real life only approximately half of Division One Colleges run College Soccer programs. In fact the SEC and Big 12 do not sponsor men's soccer at all. Once the regular conference schedule and conference tournaments have been completed the top 48 teams qualify for the College Cup (all conference winners plus at-large teams). The top 16 teams are seeded 1-16 and are given byes to the second round. The remaining 32 teams are paired by geographical proximity for the first round. All rounds before the semi final are played at the home ground of the highest seeded team. The semi finals and final are played at one neutral venue.

I have decided to add the College Cup in-game as a midweek competition, with games only being played on Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s and scheduled to run across the entire season, from September to May. Also, I have decided to make it more of a FA Cup style competition, open to all 208 teams.

This is done by having a qualifying round for the bottom 32 teams. Then two preliminary rounds before the 48-team tournament proper. The first preliminary round has 192 teams and the second preliminary round has 96 teams. The winning teams then enter the 48- team tournament.

The preliminary rounds are drawn by geography, with teams drawn against teams within 650 miles (this would ideally be a much smaller distance to make the draws even more regional but some teams would then have very few possible opponents). Higher division team will always play at home and teams cannot be drawn against teams from the same division, i.e. DI-A teams cannot be drawn together.

Following the two preliminary rounds comes the main tournament. The 16 teams with the highest reputation receive byes to the second round. The remaining 32 teams enter the first round. The whole tournament is a straight knockout. Teams cannot play against a team from the same conference until the Quarter Final at the earliest. The tournament is played at home sites except for the final which is played at a neutral site chosen at random from a pool of stadiums with a capacity of 46,500 to 70,000.

[samba23]

This database is available to download now. Please see the first post for the download link.

I will be shortly adding further links to download all of the logos, although kit graphics may not be available for a couple of days as I am still working on this.

[samba23]

Junior Varsity Teams

 

All 208 teams feature a reserve team in the form of an U19 team. These teams are for U19 players only and are designed primarily to reduce the squad numbers for the first team. They are U19 teams to try and mimic real-life College Football where Freshmen often do not play at all in their first year of college.

The 208 teams are split into 10 leagues of 20-22 teams by region. Each team plays every in-state opposing team and teams from nearby states. The groups are;

Group 1 - Washington, Oregon, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Utah, Hawaii

Group 2 - California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Idaho

Group 3 – Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Louisiana

Group 4 – Texas, Arkansas

Group 5 - Indiana, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Illinois

Group 6 – Ohio, Michigan, Maryland, Pennsylvania

Group 7 - Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, DC, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island

Group 8 – North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia

Group 9 - Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama

Group 10 - Florida, Georgia, South Carolina

Teams play each team in their group once. All matches are played on Fridays. The season runs from September to May, therefore teams can often play just 2-3 games a month.

 

In real-life Freshmen are allowed to not play in their first year without losing a year of eligibility to play (standard eligibility is 4 years). This is known as being "redshirted" and is very common for all but the best Freshmen, who are ready to play right away. A College Football Freshman can play up to 4 games without losing a year of eligibility and this redshirt can be "burned" if the player is needed to play extra games for the first team due to injuries or because they have performed well in practice. If a player's redshirt is burned then they lose their extra year of eligibility. To try and mimic this in-game all U19 players are eligible to play for the Varsity Team at the start of each season but once they have played more than 15 games (the smallest number allowed by the editor) for the first-team then they are no longer eligible for the Varsity team for that season.

[samba23]

All graphics, except kits, are now available to download from the opening post.

Kits should be available to download tomorrow.

[podunkboy]

Well, crap, now I'm dropping WHATEVER I WAS DOING, and downloading this. 

[samba23]

Opening post has been updated with the download link for the 2D kit graphics. All graphics are now available to download,

[isa-998]

been playing for some hours and im having a ton of fun with this. ive been looking for this kinda mod for the last few years and finally its here. kudos to you mate, did a superb job

 

 

could you just clarify further, why you have done the realignments you have done? some of them seem a bit odd.

[samba23]

Thanks for the kind words, appreciate it. Always happy to talk about my rationale for anything about the database. Which teams seem odd to you? I have tried to go by strict geography as much as possible but was also mindful of the competitive balance of the divisions and having enough teams for each division, e.g. having all Louisiana teams in the Central region except for LSU who are of course in the SEC.

[samba23]

Also please enjoy some screenshots from 10 years in.

 

[isa-998]

no worries mate looking good.

 

i was curious as to why its necessary to shake things up. for example no oregon state or arizona in pac12. SEC seems to be missing some teams as well and replaced with FSU. ACC has ole miss, kentucky and south carolina. boston college and cincy in big 10. etc etc

[Fmfan00]

@samba23 a couple of questions....

a) anyone see or know if MLS teams draft players from the NCAA for their league?

b) where do NCAA teams find their players from MLS academy teams or youth intakes?

c) Generally what is it 20 games for regular NCAA + say 15-20 for playoffs if you make it to the finals and then 20 for U19?

d) just wondering how does this NCAA deal with the rest of the USA leagues or is this just NCAA type thing not league1 league 2 etc after MLS?

Edited April 16, 2023 by Fmfan00

[samba23]

Hi @Fmfan00 thanks for the questions.

a) There is no MLS. In this database the NCAA is only division structure in the USA

b) Teams get the players from their own youth intakes. Also worth noting is that there is no age restriction so players can play their whole career in the NCAA. 

c) There's not really a short answer to this question but I will try and simplify it as much as I can. This is the season structure as simplified as I can make it, with the maximum number of games a DI team can play..

Invitationals - 2-3 games

Non-conference - 7 games

League - 9 games

Conference Championship Game - 1 game (not all leagues)

Bowls/CFP - 1-3 games 

League - 9 games

Conference Tournament - 3-4 games

March Madness - 6 games (NIT, CFI & CIT have fewer games)

League - 9 games

CWS regionals - 5-6 games

CWS - 4-5 games

College Cup - 7-8 games (throughout the season)

Therefore If a team was to reach the final of every competition, play every elimination round of the CWS & regionals and the 1st round of the College Cup (top 16 teams get a bye) then a team could theoretically play 70 games in a season. However, this is practically impossible as a team would need to finish top two in the first league round robin to play the CCG but would then need to drop to 7th or lower to play in the 1st round of the Conference tournament.

d) The NCAA is the only league structure in the USA. Also worth noting that there is no CONCACAF Champions League, Club World Cup or other intercontinental club competitions that USA teams can play in, mainly because these would potentially mess up my finely tuned season schedule.

 

[samba23]

16 hours ago, isa-998 said:

no worries mate looking good.

 

i was curious as to why its necessary to shake things up. for example no oregon state or arizona in pac12. SEC seems to be missing some teams as well and replaced with FSU. ACC has ole miss, kentucky and south carolina. boston college and cincy in big 10. etc etc

OK so each conference is named after a real life conference, as logically as possible. Therefore, the DI-A West conference is named after the Pac-12, the DI-AA conference is named after the Mountain West, the DI-A Southeast conference is named after the SEC and so on. Some of these make perfect sense (i.e. the divisions listed above) and closely resemble real life alignment. However, it's obviously not exactly the same. For example, the ACC in real life is comparable to the rest of the P5 but in this database it is a division level lower. The real life ACC also covers teams in this database's Southeast and East regions so theoretically the ACC could have been the DI-AA conference for either region in this database, I chose for it to be the division below the SEC and add the Big East as the division below the Big Ten.

In this database each division (with a few exceptions) has 10 teams, therefore two real life Pac-12 teams had to be in the DI-AA Mountain West. Here, I have chosen Oregon State and Arizona, although when I finish the 2022 data update then Oregon State will probably move up to DI-A and either Colorado or Washington State will move down to DI-AA because Oregon State have been quite good IRL the last couple of seasons (I haven't looked at this too closely to make a decision yet).

To give an answer to another of your given examples, in my database Clemson, Florida State, Miami and North Carolina all start the game in the SEC rather than the ACC (as they are IRL). Again, it is more instructive to look at teams as being in a geographical region IRL rather than what actual conference they play in. The four teams listed above are all among the best teams in the Southeastern region so therefore start in DI-A (although again once I do my data update then North Carolina could move down to DI-AA and one of Kentucky, South Carolina, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, etc could move up to DI-A).

Hope this helps to understand why divisions are aligned as they are

[isa-998]

6 hours ago, samba23 said:

OK so each conference is named after a real life conference, as logically as possible. Therefore, the DI-A West conference is named after the Pac-12, the DI-AA conference is named after the Mountain West, the DI-A Southeast conference is named after the SEC and so on. Some of these make perfect sense (i.e. the divisions listed above) and closely resemble real life alignment. However, it's obviously not exactly the same. For example, the ACC in real life is comparable to the rest of the P5 but in this database it is a division level lower. The real life ACC also covers teams in this database's Southeast and East regions so theoretically the ACC could have been the DI-AA conference for either region in this database, I chose for it to be the division below the SEC and add the Big East as the division below the Big Ten.

In this database each division (with a few exceptions) has 10 teams, therefore two real life Pac-12 teams had to be in the DI-AA Mountain West. Here, I have chosen Oregon State and Arizona, although when I finish the 2022 data update then Oregon State will probably move up to DI-A and either Colorado or Washington State will move down to DI-AA because Oregon State have been quite good IRL the last couple of seasons (I haven't looked at this too closely to make a decision yet).

To give an answer to another of your given examples, in my database Clemson, Florida State, Miami and North Carolina all start the game in the SEC rather than the ACC (as they are IRL). Again, it is more instructive to look at teams as being in a geographical region IRL rather than what actual conference they play in. The four teams listed above are all among the best teams in the Southeastern region so therefore start in DI-A (although again once I do my data update then North Carolina could move down to DI-AA and one of Kentucky, South Carolina, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, etc could move up to DI-A).

Hope this helps to understand why divisions are aligned as they are

oh ok i think this makes sense, its more for promotion and relegation purposes

[Daniel Evensen]

Man, this is absolutely awesome!  I'm going to play with this for one of my future projects.  Very well done!

[isa-998]

@samba23Ive also been playing around with making my own kits for my save. super fun

[Daniel Evensen]

A question for you, @samba23: what are the rules around work permits?  All I see on the rules screen is "Foreign Players: Players with good potential."

[Daniel Evensen]

Apologies for the double post.  I've also noticed that it seems that the new players generated with this editor data file are incompatible with the NewGans manager.  The RTF file the game generates seems to have a blank first nationality; I'm not sure if anybody else is encountering this or not.

[Daniel Evensen]

Not sure if you know this already or not, @samba23, but the game crashes if you try to look at the rules page for any of the pre-season invitational tournaments.  Not quite sure why...

[samba23]

I was not aware of that. I'm not sure it's anything that I would be able to fix unfortunately. All of the stages for that competition do work as intended though. Have you noticed a similar problem with any of the other competitions?

[samba23]

On 24/04/2023 at 01:12, Daniel Evensen said:

Apologies for the double post.  I've also noticed that it seems that the new players generated with this editor data file are incompatible with the NewGans manager.  The RTF file the game generates seems to have a blank first nationality; I'm not sure if anybody else is encountering this or not.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this. Are you using other editor data files in conjunction with this database? Are players being generated with no first nationality? I haven't noticed anything like this. This also does loosely tie in with your other question which I promise I will answer later but I'm a little busy right now.

[Daniel Evensen]

Thanks for the reply!

It's only the Pre-Season Tournaments that cause the game to exit suddenly when I try to look at the rules page.  The others work fine.

I'm not using any other editor data files.

I believe that the players are being generated without any first nationality.  Here are the first few lines from the RTF file I generated for NewGans:

However, when I go through the players one by one with the game open, they show with the correct first and second nationalities.  Not quite sure what has happened here.

Also - you mentioned that the AI tends to not use most of its wage or transfer budget as time goes on.  I think that's caused to a combination of the 4 transfer limit in each transfer window and the fact that work permits are restricted to only players with a PA of 200.  Basically, the AI isn't using its entire wage budget or transfer budget because it cannot purchase players due to those restrictions.

[isa-998]

its not possible to buy real players from outside the usa unfortunately. i tried to buy danny drinkwater and even he was ineligible for a visa/permit. if he is denied one i dont see how any other play will get one

[samba23]

On 22/04/2023 at 18:26, Daniel Evensen said:

A question for you, @samba23: what are the rules around work permits?  All I see on the rules screen is "Foreign Players: Players with good potential."

Okay, so the general idea of this database is that it is designed to be played completely independent from any other league/nation. In my mind it is in its own separate universe. Of course if someone also wants to manage in England or wherever else too on their save that is 100% fine, it's just not how the database has been designed.

Therefore, in order for this database to exist in its own universe, all existing USA links have been removed. For example, all USA teams, MLS and others have been deleted so that no friendlies can be played between NCAA and real life teams.

Also, all American players have been deleted. Firstly this means that the USA national team is 100% comprised of NCAA players. However, it also means that if you were to manage in other countries, some players will be missing, e.g. Chelsea would be missing Christian Pulisic.

On top of that all American non-players have been deleted. This means that there are no existing real-life American coaches, physios etc. Again, this has been done to ensure that this database exists in its own universe as I think it would be immersion-breaking if Jesse Marsch was the manager of Ohio State, for example.

Lastly, to answer the question posed here, this database is designed to be 100% NCAA and entirely separate from any real life football. Therefore, foreign transfers (of real players) are not allowed. This was easy to do when every team was under a transfer embargo in my FM18 database version but as transfers have now been enabled the work-around to ensure no foreign transfers was to make the work permit rules only for players with a PA of 200. Technically this probably means that you could still buy Messi, but practically speaking foreign transferred are banned. There's probably a cleaner, better way to do this in advanced rules, but it does at least work as intended, with the caveat that the in-game work permit rules do not properly communicate this.

[Wolf_pd]

3 minutes ago, samba23 said:

Lastly, to answer the question posed here, this database is designed to be 100% NCAA and entirely separate from any real life football. Therefore, foreign transfers (of real players) are not allowed. This was easy to do when every team was under a transfer embargo in my FM18 database version but as transfers have now been enabled the work-around to ensure no foreign transfers was to make the work permit rules only for players with a PA of 200. Technically this probably means that you could still buy Messi, but practically speaking foreign transferred are banned. There's probably a cleaner, better way to do this in advanced rules, but it does at least work as intended, with the caveat that the in-game work permit rules do not properly communicate this.

If it works, it is good enough. 

An option to do it in advanced rules fixture rules is by allowing zero foreigners in the matchday squad and zero foreigners in the squad. Weirdly both are needed, but I think it is because otherwise it will still try and transfer players.

[Daniel Evensen]

Gotcha - thanks, @samba23, for the explanation.

I think that a lot of the wage and financial issues you note in your above post are probably caused by the combination of not allowing foreign players and the extreme transfer limitations.

It probably would have been nice to explain in the initial post that foreign signings simply can't take place in this save.

I suspect that these transfer restrictions will likely make it extremely difficult for teams that don't have high reputation ratings at the start of the save to improve.  You're basically dependent on your youth intake.  It's not entirely a forced youth intake challenge, but it's really close, and it applies for all teams in the country.  It's interesting because you are forced to play with players that you'd probably skip over otherwise, but it also becomes pretty frustrating when you're looking at a two-match-per-week schedule with no realistic chance at expanding the size of your squad.

[samba23]

On 01/05/2023 at 14:38, Daniel Evensen said:

 

It probably would have been nice to explain in the initial post that foreign signings simply can't take place in this save.

 

That's fair. I did write a lot in my initial posts and overlooked probably one of the most important points for anyone interested in playing this database. In my defence, for most of the database's development all teams had been under full transfer embargoes so could only rely on youth intakes, therefore foreign transfers were obviously impossible. Obviously, for someone new to this database the answer to the important question of "are foreign transfers allowed?" is not clear, nor did I communicate it well.

 

On 01/05/2023 at 14:38, Daniel Evensen said:

 

I think that a lot of the wage and financial issues you note in your above post are probably caused by the combination of not allowing foreign players and the extreme transfer limitations.

 

I think I have actually discovered a fix for this problem, and its actually very simple. In the Editor, under each nation you cant set suggested wages for each CA bracket for players. I had increased this for USA to be comparable to England, which seemed very logical to me. However, the players in the USA have lower CA's than most Premier League players so this had the effect of suppressing starting wages for players in this database. As stated previously, player wages and club overall wage totals do increase drastically year-on-year until starting to level off in about 2028 and plateauing for most teams around 2033.

What I have done to fix this is to increase the suggested wages for USA players drastically. For example in England the suggested wage for a player with a CA of 131-140 is $40k p/w, in the USA I have increased this to $100k p/w. 

This does seem counter-intuitive in that it would make the wages far too high but my early tests are very promising.

Edited May 2, 2023 by samba23

[Wolf_pd]

25 minutes ago, samba23 said:

I think I have actually discovered a fix for this problem, and its actually very simple. In the Editor, under each nation you cant set suggested wages for each CA bracket for players. I had increased this for USA to be comparable to England, which seemed very logical to me. However, the players in the USA have lower CA's than most Premier League players so this had the effect of suppressing starting wages for players in this database. As stated previously, player wages and club overall wage totals do increase drastically year-on-year until starting to level off in about 2028 and plateauing for most teams around 2033.

What I have done to fix this is to increase the suggested wages for USA players drastically. For example in England the suggested wage for a player with a CA of 131-140 is $40k p/w, in the USA I have increased this to $100k p/w. 

This does seem counter-intuitive in that it would make the wages far too high but my early tests are very promising.

Interesting, I see what you are doing here and I am thinking if this can be applied on my Iron Curtain database as well.

[samba23]

On 01/05/2023 at 14:38, Daniel Evensen said:

I suspect that these transfer restrictions will likely make it extremely difficult for teams that don't have high reputation ratings at the start of the save to improve.  You're basically dependent on your youth intake.  It's not entirely a forced youth intake challenge, but it's really close, and it applies for all teams in the country.  It's interesting because you are forced to play with players that you'd probably skip over otherwise, but it also becomes pretty frustrating when you're looking at a two-match-per-week schedule with no realistic chance at expanding the size of your squad.

That's an interesting view and it's actually the opposite of what I was expecting this database to be like.

I really enjoyed the challenge of playing previous versions of my database with a full transfer embargo. It was a unique challenge to not be able to rely on transfers to improve the team and instead forced me to focus on developing my own players. However, I must concede that for lower level teams the challenges brough from these embargoes was extreme and made a lower level save excessively challenging.

My expectation from allowing transfers (and a large reason why I resisted allowing transfers until recently) was this it would tip the difficulty level too far in the opposite direction. That is to say that managing teams with transfers enabled would be too easy because a human manager could always improve the squad and clubs were generally so profitable that they would always have a large transfer budget and a lot of wage budget space, whereas an AI manager would not fully utilise their budgets, thus making managing with transfers enabled much easier.

I haven't tested too much with long terms saves at lower levels to see how accurate my expectations were, so it would be very interesting to get any feedback from players about how hard or easy they are finding managing at different levels.

 

I also agree about the schedule being extreme at times. This can be a problem if teams are still alive in every competition, because as you say teams can end up playing two games a week for a lot of the time. The schedule is fine for the College Football portion of the season (Oct-Nov) where there is only one league game a week and the only midweek games are 3-4 College Cup games. However, later in the season there are the same number of league games compressed into a shorter time period. For example, between end of March Madness and the start of the College World Series regionals there is only 6 weeks but there is still the necessity to fit 9 league games in this window, meaning a lot of midweek games.

I am actually considering changing the league formats to hopefully alleviate this problem. The plan is to have the first two round robins of the conference schedules to be played as they currently are, but then after March Madness, instead of playing another conference round robin the conferences would split into top and bottom mini-leagues (aka a promotion/championship group and a relegation group). This would mean that teams would play 4 league games in that 6 week window, rather than the currently scheduled 9 games.

However, this is potentially a massive undertaking so I will most likely not even attempt to do this until FM24 and even then there is no guarantee that this is even possible. My advanced rules are so complicated that any attempt to change promotion/relegation rules could be impossible to properly implement.

[samba23]

Testing of the fix for wages is still ongoing but the early signs are very promising. The only real issue I'm noticing is that in the first season the wages of the very biggest clubs are significantly higher than the budget that is allowed by the board. However, for every other club this doesn't seem to be an issue.

As you can see Alabama's wage budget is $6.9m but the actual wages is $27m. However, the team is still making a good profit despite being well over budget for the wages.

By the second season this seems to have corrected itself.

As you can see, Alabama made a 1st year profit of $17m, the wage budget has now increased to $33.2m and the wage total has only slightly increased to $29.8m. This suggests to me that the player wages at the start of the game are nearly correct in terms of being closer to where they would be 5-10 years into the future (as opposed to before where the starting wages were far too low and took 5+ years to reach a balance). My impression is that the slight increase in wages is probably mostly down to squad sizes increasing, rather than individual wages going up significantly.

 

Edited May 4, 2023 by samba23

[samba23]

I also thought I should probably post screenshots of some of the leading USA players in 2032.

[samba23]

Version 1.1 is out now. Updated download link in OP

The biggest update is a fix that means that player wages are now much more realistic in the first few seasons (previously starting player wages were extremely low and took years to increase to a more realistic level).

The only competition rules update is that the real-life College Football Playoff now has confirmed dates for the 2024 & 2025 seasons, these have been reflected in the database, with the exception that the Quarter Finals are on Friday-Saturday rather than the real life Thursday-Friday. Having it the same dates as in real life caused an issue with the 2029 season First Round and Quarter Final dates being too close together so they have been moved a day later to mitigate for this.

Data updates include:

Head Coaches accurate to the 2022 College Football Season

FBS Strength and Conditioning coaches updated.

Athletic Directors (Director of Football) updated.

University Presidents (Chairperson) updated.

 

Data updates still to be completed;

All other coaches still to be updated (is a big data update so will take some time)

 

Competition Rules updates to be completed (most likely for FM24);

Total number of teams increased to 240

Five new conferences added, including DII-AAA

NCAA Tournament teams from one-bid leagues to be conference tournament winners

Conference leading teams from one-bid leagues who didn't win conference tournament to be placed in NIT

NIT, CIT & CBI teams to be reorganised following NCAA Tournament qualifying rules update

DII College World Series to be added

Potential Change to 3rd round robin for conferences - would now be double round robin and 3rd part of season to be conferences split into promotion/relegation groups, meaning 4 games rather than 9 in this portion of the season.

Depending on the above - change to round robin for MAC and CUSA - would be split into two regional groups (East-West or North/South) for first 2/3rds of season before splitting into promotion/relegation groups as per above, also Conference Championship Games added for these conferences.

 

Edited May 19, 2023 by samba23

[samba23]

On a personal note - I am going on holiday for a week from tomorrow so won't be available to answer any questions you may have, or reply to any feedback.

[samba23]

To illustrate the fix that this new database version has for the starting wages I have made the following graphs. These show the average annual wage for the teams in each DI division level, over the first 12 years of a save.

This shows the average wage of the league winner of each DI-A conference every year. You can see that in the old database the 1st year champions average about a £2-3 million total wage bill but the new database has an average wage bill of over £20 million. Both the old and new databases have year-on-year wage bill increases but the increase is much less dramatic in the new database and is mostly explained by increasing squad numbers rather than individual wages increasing dramatically. The top club wages in the new database are generally higher but each club is still profitable so this not an issue.

I have also added graphs below for the mid-table teams of DI-A, DI-AA and DI-AAA, which all show the same improvement in starting wages in the new database and the wages closely matching the old database wages in later years.

[Daniel Evensen]

FYI - I've discovered that the difficulty I had in using the NewGans Facepack was due to the skin I was using, not due to this editor data file.

Apologies for the confusion and for how long it took me to figure this out!