College Football 26 ultimate recruiting guide

Recruitment is your backbone of success in College Football 26‘s Dynasty mode, and mastering the basics (along with the advanced concepts) will help you to build up a championship-winning side in quick time.

The importance of acing recruitment is even greater if you haven’t picked a school with an elite program. College Football 26‘s recruitment procedures are different from what we experience in Madden. This guide will help you to ace all the important concepts and land you the top prospects from your recruitment board.

The job begins under the Recruiting section, which has different tabs. The process of recruitment starts with the Prospect List, which includes all available freshmen. Every freshman has several attributes, and here are the key ones.

• Rank: Prospective Rank in the recruiting class (relative to that class).
• Need: Highlights team needs, allowing you to fill important positions first.
• Rating: A system of star ratings that ranges between one and five stars.
• INT: An athlete’s potential interest and how likely they are to join your team. (extremely important)
• Stage: Shows where the athlete is in terms of deciding which school he wants to join.

Let’s now take a look at how scouting works.

You’ll have a weekly quota of scouting hours, which allows you to deep dive and find out more about a potential recruit. These include Attributes, Abilities, Mentals, and Development Trait.

• First, add a prospect from the Prospect List to the Recruiting Board.
• Next, select a prospect to start the scouting process.
• At first, your Scouting % will show as 0. You’ll have to invest hours from your weekly quota to increase the percentage.
• The more hours you invest, the more accurate you’ll be regarding information about the prospect.
• Once you’re sure about recruiting a talent, you can offer them a scholarship.

There are some important points to remember. Development Traits are usually hidden if your coach doesn’t have the required badges. Athletes can also have hidden traits that might lead to better development (even if they have sub-par starting attributes).

Completing scouting on a prospect allows you to spend your Scouting Hours on different actions to bring him on board. You’ll have to be smart, as the same strategy won’t work successfully for all athletes. You also have a limited number of scholarships to hand out, so it’s better not to waste them in the first place.

This is where understanding prospect interest and Dealbreakers comes in.

Dealbreakers this year have a dynamic nature, but they function in the same way. Go to the My School tab, and you’ll find the relevant grades for your program. The higher the grade, the better it is. The grades also determine your school’s prestige, and they can change based on how you’re performing on your save.

Every recruit will have minimum requirements for certain grades, which your school will have to satisfy. This becomes far more important when it’s a Dealbreaker. If your school fails to satisfy that, it’s almost certain that the recruit won’t be joining your program. This automatically dictates the interest of the athlete in joining your roster.

Dealbreakers are like any other grades, but they carry more weight. Failing them will automatically end all negotiations (even if the athlete had an interest in your program).

The aim is to have the athlete commit verbally to join your school. This will take time as they finally confirm their choices. Don’t forget to use the Scouting hours to attract their interests to quicken up the decision-making.