Rocketcan

The only way you can have a CBB team that is different from your CFB team is if that CBB team does NOT have a DI football program. Since Minnesota does, I'm afraid you won't be able to select them.

I can't really answer that right now since we are in the middle of reworking how stamina works for everyone. Stay tuned for more updates on that!

They work exactly the same.

It isn't in stone yet, but I believe the draft order will be determined by overall skill of the teams after players are selected from pools.

No, both games will use the same system, and there will be upgrades to that system before next season.

Merry Christmas Coaches! As an early Christmas gift from all of us on the dev team, here are the NFL pools! These are the players you will choose from to seed your roster! Things To Know: There are two ways that players are broken down. Age Group and Skill Level. Age Groups: Young (24-26 years old, or ~1-3 years of NFL experience) Prime (27-29 years old, or ~4-6 years of NFL experience) Veteran (30+ years old, or 7+ years of NFL experience) [*]Skill Levels: Pro Bowler: Some of best players generated at their position for their age group Starter: These players, while not the best, should be able to carry the load assigned to them without liability. Below Average: These players are barely better than rookies (and some rookies will be better than them easily!). [*]These classes were generated and then progressed into the NFL. [*]You will only be able to choose some of these players. The rules for this process will be stated below. [*]Contracts will be generated randomly for these players after pools are complete. (Thank you to @Sarge for coming up with the rules) In an effort to expedite things we have decided on creating rules for roster building from the pool in lieu of creating a complicated point budget for one use so that Owners and SimNFL participants have something to work on during the offseason and engine patching. The rules: All teams will be presented with their own 165 player pool. 165 was chosen predominantly because we need to control the size of the initial FA pool and it's triple the size of a traditional roster. All teams will only be able to sign a maximum of 3 "Pro Bowl" level players, *6 "Starter" level players, and fill out the remaining roster spots with "Below Average". The three Pro Bowl level players ages will determine how many additional Starter players you can sign to your initial 6. (*) For every Veteran Pro Bowl level player you sign, you may sign an additional Starter player (no more than 3). i.e. if you sign 3 Veteran Pro Bowlers initially, you can have 9 Starter level players total. [*]Salaries will be randomly generated based on Overall and Age and will be done in a way to leave all 32 Teams enough cap flexibility to participate in FA but to varying degrees. [*]No Pro Bowl caliber players unsigned will be carried into the FA pool. A percentage of Starter players to be determined later will headline the FA pool and all unsigned Below Average players. [*]Pool submissions will be due on 10 JAN 2022 at 11:59pm Eastern US Time and will require all 55 initial roster spots to be filled before FA begins. Now that you have read the rules (?), here is the link to the full list of players in the pool: 2022 NFL Initial Pool Here is where teams will post their Pool selections: https://www.simfba.com/index.php?forums/pool-selections.401/ Please use the following format in the Poll Selection posts for a player: [Age Group] Skill Level Position First Name Last Name (ID Number) I have provided a sample post in the Pool Selection forum to show you what it should look like with real players. I will be sending out the pools to their respective team owners. These are intended to be private, but obviously, you may do with them as you please.

Correct. We might move to a linear progression later, but for now it is stepped.

Live view from Rocketcan's office:

Hello Coaches! Welcome to another Dev Diary for NewSim on SimFBA! Last time we talked about how Potential and Progression worked in the sim. This time, we are going to discuss how Overall and Attribute grades work in the college sim. You know, those pesky letters! Overall Grade The Overall letter grade of a player is calculated from a weighted average of Attributes that player has, depending on their position. You can tell which Attributes matter for a particular position based on which ones are listed for that player's position when you look at the player's card on the interface (except for stamina and potential, those do NOT go towards Overall calculations). The letter grade hides an integer value (between 0-99) underneath. The scale for Overall grades are as follows: 45+: A 35-44: B 25-34: C 15-24: D Below 15: F Attribute Grades Each attribute has a letter grade that hides an integer value (between 0-99) underneath. Unlike Overall, however, the attributes for a player are no longer graded on a flat scale (like anything above a 45 is an A, for example). We recently switched up the system to now grade a player against other players at their position across the entire NCAA. So, for example, a QB's Throw Power will be compared against all other QB's Throw Power in the NCAA. Why did we make this change? A couple of reasons. First we realized that some skills like Speed were always an A for players at skill positions, and usually D or F for players at non-skill positions. While this reflected the reality of football that most non-skill players would lose in a race against a skill player, it did not actually provide any new information to the user. This leads us to the second reason. Within a position group like WR or RBs, there was no way to tell that a one player was faster than another, which is quite critical information. Thus, we needed a way to distinguish between players *within* position groups. Finally, not every Attribute is distributed among the same values. Thus, we would need to have different scales for each attribute anyway, so we needed to find one that takes care of the previous two problems. To do that, we decided to calculate the average and standard deviation of each Attribute grade for each position. Then we use the following to determine which letter grade to assign for that Attribute (Number in parentheses is the rough percentage of players with that grade) Attribute is more than 2 standard deviations above the mean: A (2.28%) Attribute is more than 1 standard deviations above the mean: B (13.59%) Attribute is above the mean: C (34.13%) Attribute is within 1 standard deviation below the mean: D (34.13%) Attribute is more than 1 standard deviation below the mean: F (15.87%) As you can see, having an "A" in an Attribute is VERY good. "B" is also quite good, as they are better than almost 85% of players at their position. Having a "C" is not bad at all, and actually signifies "average to above average", being better than at least half of all players at their position in that Attribute. D is not good, as it is below average, but not terrible. Remember, a player can be better than 49% of all other players at his position and still get a "D"! So don't fret if your freshmen have few Ds. That's probably fine. Finally, a definitely not good rating is F, at least compared to their peers at that position. Given these statistics, most players will have a C or D rating at several Attributes, and that isn't necessarily bad. What this *does* do is signify who the truly good players are at a position, which is what we want. Sports are the result of a Pareto distribution: There are exponentially fewer good players than average ones. One of the few things this system is not necessarily good at is determining whether a player is ripe for a position change or not. Because all of the Attributes are relative, just because a WR has a Throw Power of A, doesn't mean he'll have very good Throw Power once moved to QB (in fact he could very well have D or so Throw Power). While this is true, it does still give you *some* idea of whether or not a player might be good at another position (like a FB with A catching might be a decent TE). Position changes are inherently VERY risky, and this system models that well, I think. One last thing: Stamina. This attribute is strange in that the distribution for it is a bit wider than most. It also is one that need to be applied to the sim differently than all others. So expect there to be a bit of a rework on Stamina in the future. That will most likely (as long as nothing blows up *figuratively*) make it into the NewSim engine changes for 2022. Why no + or -? In high school and college, the user can only see a letter grade without + or -. This is for a couple of reasons. First, on a team of nearly 100 players, it is pretty difficult to tell EXACTLY which players are better than others. Many players, especially at this level are fairly close to one another in talent, and the different between a 46 and a 47 is probably not noticeable when this player has been on everyone's radar for a few years. Second, this is a big picture decision. The NFL is around the corner, and that is where the numbers hidden underneath the letters (except for potential) will be revealed. However, that will not occur until after the draft, and probably not even for a couple of weeks into the season. However, one of the things about the draft process (which is still WIP) will be scouting players to get a + or - attached to all of their grades (Attributes AND Overall). Thus giving NFL teams more information on a player in order to make better drafting decisions. I won't go any further into that, though, as that is a topic for another day! That's all there is for this Dev Diary. Please ask questions below, and I will get to them as soon as I can. Until next time, Rocketcan

Hello Coaches! Welcome to another Dev Diary for NewSim on SimFBA! So there was a bit of confusion about what potential actually meant and how progressions worked. That confusion appears to stem from a combination of people assuming how potential worked, no Dev Diary that thoroughly explained it, and when a few people did ask what everything was, the responses weren't compiled into a Dev Diary or some public post that is easily accessible to everyone. This Dev Diary is an attempt to remedy that situation to get everyone up to speed. I apologize for the technical nature of this entry, but it is necessary to fully explain the process. With that, let's get nerdy! ? Introduction First, I want to define some terms so we are all talking the same language here: Progression: This is the hidden attribute that determines how players progress in the sim. Under the hood, this is a number between 0 and 99. This value (for now) does NOT change. EDIT: This is NOT a measure of "What overall they should be in years". This is a measure of how much they should get better each year. Potential: This is the public attribute that is an imperfect representation of Progression. It is represented as a letter grade with the ability to add + or - (unlike all other attributes in college right now). This value CAN CHANGE. EDIT: This is NOT a measure of "What overall they should be in years". This is a measure of how much they should get better each year. Also, the change in Potential is RANDOM. It is not informed by how good the player already is, previous snaps, or whether they are hitting a "ceiling". EDIT: Overall: This is how good the player is RIGHT NOW on average based on their relevant attributes (Throw Power for QBs, Run Blocking for OL, etc.). Each position has a different weighting formula for the attributes. Now, why would we want to make Progression a hidden value? The answer is in how progression works. Given that most of the progression system (by necessity) is deterministic (meaning the same numbers in will produce the same numbers out), then anyone could take the progression value and determine the progression for every player every year before it actually happens. Now there *IS* some randomness, but it is only introduced in one spot in the calculation so it's still good to keep this value under wraps. Potential Now let's talk about Potential. Like stated before, it is a letter grade that can have a + or - (i.e. A-, D, or C+). This is based directly on the Progression value, but how exactly? To answer that question, let's walk through how the code generates the Potential for a player: The code generates a random number between -10 and 10. This number is summed with the player's Progression (which is somewhere between 0-99). This new number (the underlying, hidden Progression value along with the random number) is compared with a table to see what letter grade it could be (See the table below). The corresponding letter grade is assigned as the potential. The Potential letter grade is something that can change every single year. If you want to know why from a technical perspective, please check out the spoiler below: [spoiler=Why Do Potential Grades Change Every Year?] This is because the Potential grade is calculated in the Player data type constructor. This is the code that "builds" a player in the simulation. When data is read into the sim, the sim has to take that data and build it into a player. That constructor tells it how to do it. So each time a player is "built", the potential is *technically* recalculated. However, since these Player data types are destroyed once the simulation ends, whatever the potential was is destroyed along with it. So when players are progressed, the files that contain the player data is read into the simulation. This data is then used to "build" each player as a data object in the code. A new Potential is assigned when this happens. Then, the player is progressed, and when they are written out to the output file, the new potential is copied over as well. This is also why things like snap count can't be used to influence the Potential calculation, because then every time a player is read into the sim, it would need how many snaps the player has on the year (and a season snap total in week 4 doesn't even make sense). There are a few takeaways from all of this: This means that there is a possibility that you recruit an A+ Potental player, but they really are an A Potential player. Or you could recruit a player that was C Potential because he was the only thing left, but he actually has a B Potential. This introduces a bit of "Gem" or "Bust" flavor to the sim. While the change won't ever be too drastic (About a letter grade and a half at most), it still can mean you end up with a diamond in the rough, or things don't go exactly as planned (as in real life). If you notice, the maximum possible ranges for the random adjustment is 20. That means that given a certain Potential letter grade, the actual potential could either be 10 points lower than that letter grade (meaning the current letter grade is at the top of the possible letter grade values for that Progression), or 10 points higher than that letter grade (the currently letter grade was at the bottom of the possible letter grade values for that Progression). The problem is, we don't know if the current letter grade for a player is at the top or bottom of the possible list of letter grades for the Progression value of that player. So if we have no other data to go off of other than just one Potential grade, let's say for example B, then the actual Progression of the player might be anywhere from C to A (given the table above). However, there is light at the end of the tunnel! If you REALLY want to begin to hone in on what a player's Progression is under the hood, you just need to pay attention to their Potential over the course of a few seasons. If you take an "average" of the Potential (for example you could assign 0 points to an F, 1 to a D-, etc.) each year, the more data points you have, the closer that average will be to the "true" letter grade of the Progression underneath. Even without this metric however, one Potential data point still gives you a decent idea on if the player will at least progress at a normal pace or if they are a liability to barely progress at all. TO BE 100% CLEAR: There is currently no way to do this tracking without a little bit of leg work of your own. This is unfortunately due to the nature of storing this kind of data (even with the interface). However, all of the data will exist for you to do these types of trackings. Currently, all of the 2021 rosters are still available and all future "historical" rosters for all teams will always be available for everyone to use for this, media, or other purposes. Progression Now for Progression, the actual value that does all of the legwork under the hood. Each offseason, this value is used to calculate the increase in player attributes year on year. This formula produces the total amount that the attribute will increase by and is done only on the attributes that matter to a particular position (i.e. Run Blocking for OL). While I won't disclose the EXACT formula, I will give you what things are taken into account and how they matter. The following is for regular players that are NOT redshirting. The current attribute (strength, throw power, etc.) value. This is used to make sure that as you approach 99 (the maximum value) it gets harder and harder (but not impossible!)to add another point to the attribute. This effect is basically non-existant at lower values, but as you get into the 80s, it becomes noticeable. Snap Count. This is used to determine how much playing time a player has had. The more time they play on the field, the more they will grow. Snap counts are translated into a status modifier given to the player using a random number within a range. These modifiers might seem like a lot, but each level is only about a point of potential difference, if that. These modifiers are: Starter (45+ snaps per game): 0-25% bonus Role Player (31-44 snaps per game): 10% malus to 10% bonus Backup (21-30 snaps per game): 0-25% malus Special Teams (11-20 snaps per game): 10-30% malus Bench (10 or fewer snaps per game): 25-50% malus [*]Other modifiers (currently none, but would include things like injuries and potentially random events) [*]Progression. The almighty Progression returns. This number is normalized (meaning it is changed to a number around 1) using 70 as a base. So a player with 70 Progression will have a modifier of 1. This is the most powerful of all of the factors in the formula. Redshirts use a very similar formula, but do not use the snap modifiers. Instead, they use a modifier that is somewhere in the range of "Bench" players. Thus: redshirting a player will provide about as much progression as having that player ride the bench that year. Secondary skills (i.e. Kick Power for QBs) are a weighted coin flip if they will increase by 1. The weighting factor is, again, Progression. So the player rolls a number between 0 and 99. If that number is BELOW their Progression, the attribute increases by 1, otherwise the attribute stays the same. EDIT: Progression/Potential and Overall There have been a few questions about how Overall and Progression/Potential work together. I have added some more to the definitions above to help clarify, but I will add more here as well. In short, Overall is how good the player is RIGHT NOW. Progression/Potential is NOT how good a player will be eventually, but rather how much they should get better year on year. For example, a player with B Overall and C+ Potential is NOT an "overachiever", rather it is saying that this player is a B overall and should progress at an average to slightly above average rate, all other things being equal. That's all there is for this Dev Diary. Please ask questions below, and I will get to them as soon as I can. I hope this clears up the confusion we were having on how the system works. Until next time, Rocketcan

Please reply here with what open team you'd like to take control of. First come, first serve. NFL AFC East Buffalo Bills - Minnow Miami Dolphins - Kirby New England Patriots - Migi New York Jets - Joopear North Baltimore Ravens - SyndaKyt Cincinnati Bengals - Swipet Cleveland Browns - Piercewise1 Pittsburgh Steelers - Smackems West Denver Broncos - Alexfall Kansas City Chiefs - Anonemuss Las Vegas Raiders - culture3 Los Angeles Chargers - Pumph South Houston Texans - MasonAsher Indianapolis Colts - npklemm Jacksonville Jaguars - Ricky Tennessee Titans - Kwheele NFC East Dallas Cowboys - Rocketcan New York Giants - thatfunk Philadelphia Eagles - SageBow Washington Football Team - DarthJarJar North Chicago Bears - PoopyRhinoPickle Detroit Lions - jmjacobs Green Bay Packers - Jamzz Minnesota Vikings - Bundy West Arizona Cardinals - Rapidsnowman Los Angeles Rams - Vivid San Fransisco - Bellwood Seattle Seahawks - Tuscan South Atlanta Falcons - Subsequent Carolina Panthers - Sarge New Orleans Saints - Bingo Tampa Bay Buccaneers - ChizDippler

Likely soon. I would say this weekend.

Hello Coaches! Welcome to another Dev Diary for NewSim on SimFBA! This Dev Diary is a bit special. It is our first one to comment on how a completed season has gone! Well sort of (Good luck to Florida State (@Kirby) and Tulsa (@acewulf) this week in the National Championship!). We have a lot to cover in this one, so buckle up! Thank You: First off, I have to thank several people. I want to specifically thank Subsequent, Tuscan, Alex and Kirby for being the ones to really help develop things behind the scenes, administrate the website, and provide financially for the overhead of such an endeavor. I also want to thank people like Bellwood, Sarge, tsweezy, Wahoo, Darth, the Greene brothers and PoopyRhinoPickle for contributing to things like the Wiki, testing, icons, betting, graphics and overall site media engagement. Next on the list is the Selection Committee. You guys really did a great job in sifting through the top teams and producing a great bowl slate and playoff bracket. Lastly, I want to thank all of you that participated in the sim and hopefully had a good time. At the end of the day, we all do this so we can all have some fun, and having a great community is what makes that possible. There are so many people to thank it is impossible to name you all here. Please know that if you use this site, you are contributing to this community, and are greatly appreciated for it. We still have things like All-conference teams and awards to handle, but that will be taken care of shortly. Moving Forward: Now that the first season is (almost) in the history books, what will happen now? Will this experiment die off? (SPOILER: It won't) How different will next season look? When will next season be? Hopefully the rest of this diary will answer those questions. Things That Will Look Different: Rosters/Progressions The first thing that will look different are the rosters. Players will progress and advance a year and their attributes will be updated. While that system has not entirely been finished, it will be shortly. Also, recruits will be added to the rosters to give you an idea on how to field your team in 2022. Interface The next thing that will be different is how you interact with your teams. For college football, it will be entirely on the interface! That's right, all gameplans, depth charts, and recruiting will be handled on the interface as opposed to crazy, #REF-riddled Google Sheets! This should (hopefully) make interacting with the game a lot easier, efficient and enjoyable. NewSim Engine Hopefully, the days of strange penalties and negative yardlines will be a thing of the past. While I can't guarantee I will be able to fix everything (especially in one offseason), I can say that it will be much more stable and less buggy. I will also be looking to add in a couple of new features to make things interesting, but the priority will be fixing what is broken first. The list of new features to add has not been finalized. Expect Dev Diaries on how bug fixes and new features are going in the future. Also, there will be some structural improvements to the engine that make us nerds on the dev team very excited, like having the engine get it's data directly from the interface (EXICTING!!!). NFL That's right! The NFL is coming to SimFBA! There will be a beta season (just like the CFB beta season) that will probably mostly still run on Google Sheets (because we need to test this season to see how to integrate it into the interface). I would like if we could get all 32 teams filled with at least one user, and likely will not accept multiple people on a team until that condition is fulfilled. Most players will be generated randomly and we will then also have our first NFL draft and pre-draft process using the draft eligible seniors from this past college football offseason. Keep your eyes peeled for Dev Diaries on how the NFL will work. When Will All Of This Happen? Short Answer: TBD. Long Answer: Whenever all of the previously mentioned things are taken care of. The Dev Team has a to-do list full of stuff that we need to check off in order to be ready for the 2022 season, and it is involves getting quite a bit done. As a result, we estimate that sometime around the real-life Superbowl is a likely time to get in gear for the 2022 season. Longer Answer: The more help we can get with ANY of these tasks, the faster things can go. We are always looking for anyone who is willing to spend some time and energy helping to build/code/test/brainstorm/whatever. Even if you don't think you have a particular skill, please reach out if you have time and are willing to assist. Every little bit helps us get closer to our goal. I hope you all enjoy the National Championship Game, and let us know if you'd like to lend a hand this offseason! Until next time, Rocketcan

Unfortunately this is our first season, and given the nature of our current recruiting system, we won't be able to get you to recruit for your team this season. I will check on the interface part of things though so you can plan out your future.

@TuscanSota

What kind of engineering, if you don't mind me asking? We are winding the season down, but we are glad you found us! Please be sure to check out the discord!

If Sub doesn't mind, I'd like to add a quick addendum: I'm here to play sports. That's it. Drama is dumb.

BK1 = RB1, BK2 = FB1, BK3 = RB2.

FB

Essentially, yes.

Hello Coaches! The season is well underway as we work into week 2. As such, we have been doing some logistical work in the background to make sure we do things right for the post season. This post is the result of that work, the NCAA Football Selection Committee and the playoff/bowl format! Selection Committee The Selection Committee will be made up of users that are representatives of different conferences, polls and administration. For now, these roles are just for representation, however, the conference representatives will become the conference commissioners by next season. The structure of the committee will be 12 members as follows: Conference Representatives/Commissioners: AAC ACC Big Ten Big XII C-USA MAC MWC PAC-12 SEC Sun Belt [*]Poll Representatives Coach's Poll Computer Poll Following the 2022 season (so starting season 3), a yearly election will be held within each conference for conference commissioner and, by extension, Selection Committee representative. The members for the 2021 season are (Only 11 for this season): AAC: @SyndaKyt (Navy) ACC: @Kirby (Florida State) Big Ten: @subsequent (Michigan) Big XII: @Vivid (Baylor) C-USA: @anonemuss (North Texas) MAC: @PoopyRhinoPickle (Bowling Green) MWC: @Bellwood (Colorado State) PAC-12: @TuscanSota (Washington State) SEC: @tsweezy (Tennessee) Sun Belt: None Coach's Poll: [uSER=49]@J'aimebo[/uSER] (Boise State) Computer Poll: @Rocketcan (Penn State) I will set up a discord channel and create a role that I will assign to these members. Once week 6 is complete, I will take the results of the computer poll and merge them with the results of the coach's poll. This will be the basis of the first top 25 presented to the committee. The committee will deliberate and vote on that list, making adjustments as agreed upon by the committee. The committee will make a firm decision weekly and publish their rankings on a weekly basis from there on out. The Committee will also, after Conference Championships, publish their final top 25 rankings as well as the list of assigned bowl berths (See Bowl Games below). Playoffs The format for the National Championship Playoff will be as follows: 12 team playoff bracket Top 4 seeds with first week BYEs Highest seed will face the lowest seed, second highest vs. second lowest, etc. Lowest seeded winner with face the highest seeded team with a BYE, etc. [*]6 Automatic Berths Top 6 Conference Champions This guarantees at least 1 G5 team in the playoffs, although there will likely be more. [*]6 At-Large Berths Remaining Top 6 teams Any conference [*]All games will be considered "Bowl" games. The bowls that will be used are as follows: First Round Sun Bowl Gator Bowl Citrus Bowl Liberty Bowl [*]Quarterfinal Round Peach Bowl Cotton Bowl Orange Bowl Fiesta Bowl [*]Semifinal Round Rose Bowl Sugar Bowl [*]National Championship NCAA Football National Championship Game [*]Teams will be seeded based on the final Selection Committee Rankings. Conference Championships do NOT guarantee higher seeds. Bowl Games Teams that do not get selected for the National Championship Playoff may still be eligible for a post season game in the form of a bowl game. In order to participate in a bowl game, the following criteria must be met: Must have at least as many regular season wins as regular season losses (for example, a 6-6 team that loses a conference championship game to fall to 6-7 still meets this requirement) All teams that meet that criteria will be given a bowl game. Unlike in real life, there are no contracts to worry about, so we will not have teams with losing records playing in bowl games in order to fill slots. We will only have enough bowl games based on the number of teams eligible. A sample of the list of bowls that will be used are as follows (will be added to and subtracted from as necessary): Independence Bowl Holiday Bowl Outback Bowl Cactus Bowl Las Vegas Bowl Alamo Bowl Idaho Potato Bowl Music City Bowl New Orleans Bowl Hawaii Bowl Texas Bowl Armed Forces Bowl Etc. I imagine we will end up with around 30ish bowls per year. I am not too fond of the "Corporate Sponsor" names, but if you guys like them, I can added them back in. Also, depending on how desperate we are for games, I might offer to have some nominations and votes on new bowl game names. As stated previously, the Selection Committee will also assign bowl berths. In the event that there are an odd number of bowl-eligible teams, the lowest ranked team based on the final Selection Committee rankings will NOT play a bowl game. Well, there you have it! Some of the things we are all striving for laid out for you. If there are any questions, suggestions or ideas, please let us know below! Until next time, Rocketcan

I think we shouldn't have a ton of incentives. If anything it should be recognition. Idk about in-game benefits.

Unfortunately, no. But don't let that stop you.

These are all excellent ideas for media.

At least 12, weekly-ish media posts THIS SEASON will give you +5 recruiting points for NEXT SEASON.