Some sort of NCAA type mode

[22tbrads22]

Idk if there is a way to get all the D1 teams and force the players to retire after 4 years and then get some sort of recruiting system or some system of gaining a certain number of players each year. Maybe each conference or team gets a certain amount of money to spend in "free agency" which is really recruiting highschool and Juco kids. Maybe the amount of money your school gets is based off of your success or the prestige of your conference? Just spit balling here and I'm sure others have thought of this too. Not sure if there's anyway to do any of this but t sure would be a fun quick start mode!

[azepeda]

I think they would have to get a license from the NCAA to use their Divisions and team names. I remember a football software having a similar issue

[homerj]

You can set up a feeder league that works like college. Issue is the number of teams and number of players that become draft eligible is huge. Also the fact it takes forever to sim all those games. There's a couple NCAA templates that do a pretty nice job at it. But the general consensus is that it's too much trouble than what it's worth.

Bypassing the idea of NCAA, and don't know if there's templates to do it, is just set up default feeder leagues, and instead of naming the college leagues "NCAA", they are more like the Cape Cod, Northwoods, American Legion leagues.

[ry1220]

Originally Posted by 22tbrads22

Idk if there is a way to get all the D1 teams and force the players to retire after 4 years and then get some sort of recruiting system or some system of gaining a certain number of players each year. Maybe each conference or team gets a certain amount of money to spend in "free agency" which is really recruiting highschool and Juco kids. Maybe the amount of money your school gets is based off of your success or the prestige of your conference? Just spit balling here and I'm sure others have thought of this too. Not sure if there's anyway to do any of this but t sure would be a fun quick start mode!

If you're only planning on having a college league as the "main league" in your universe, it is doable in OOTP now. I once built a NCAA league for OOTP 2007, where players played for 4 to 5 years, based on their birthdays. Those with late birthdays got to play an extra year (I narrated this as a redshirt season).

The additional options that have been added in the versions since have only made this easier to do. Here's what I would do to create an isolated NCAA universe to play in the latest version:

1. Create all the teams
a. Either in 1 league - the NCAA - with many divisions, each being a conference,
b. Or each conference a separate league, with a league association of "NCAA." When you create teams, you will have to manually adjust the financials and market sizes of "big" teams to match real-life.
2. Create a tournament, associating tournament teams with their regular teams. (I haven't figured out the best way to do this -- the best I've found means you're essentially creating a duplicate dummy team of however many teams are in the tournament. For example, you have to recreate the Texas Longhorns instead of the Scottsdale Scorpions as the tournament affiliate of the Texas Longhorns.)
3. Set the minimum age of 22 and maximum age of 26. (Yes, this is older than college age, but it's better to take a window where players will develop if this is the only league in your universe. If you are running this as a true collegiate league, you can play with 18 to 23 year olds, but note that seniors probably won't be better developed than freshies. And yes, this is a window of 5 years, but there are other measures you can take to limit it at 4 seasons of play.)
4. In contract rules, set the maximum contract length to 4 years, and the inability to renew contracts. I also put arbitration at 4 years, and 4 years minimum for Free Agency. This way, unless a player is cut, he's on the team he signed with initially for 4 years: no more, no less. (You might be able to the same with Reserve Clause turned on, but I haven't tested it.)
5. Choose how you want to populate your league(s). I recommend turning the draft off, as FA seems more like recruiting, whereby the larger schools (with more money and prestige) will "spend more" (sometimes literally) to sign players to their school. The economic principles just work with financials and contracts on, so I narrate that the players aren't getting paid directly.

I had a lot of fun trying to build a competitive team when I knew that players would be leaving after 4 seasons. This places a premium on the financials being accurate, since money is the driving factor in recruitment. I recommend doing calculations and a few test runs before actually sitting down and playing a collegiate league.

[nutt]

Andreas or Markus addressed this previously (maybe Lukas did as well), but OOTP cannot properly simulate collegiate baseball. Although, the coding could change, as we did get Round-Robin playoffs and tournament options.