[FM18] NCAA College Football Database - USA - v2.1 Out Now

[samba23]

EDIT: v2.1 Database is OUT NOW!!!

 

To enable file - save to documents ---> Sports Interactive ---> Football Manager 2018 ---> Editor Data

Download

Logos are out too:

Competitions

Extinct teams

Team icons

Team logos

Trophies

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

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

 

Any issues please let me know as this is the first time I have uploaded any files on this forum.

 

NCAA College Football database

 

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

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 elite-level football clubs. 2. What would the conferences look like if realigned by myself and promotion/relegation was a reality.

 

Hi all. I am a fan of College Football (and to a lesser extent basketball and 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. 

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.

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 12 conferences in total (all 10 FBS conferences plus 2 FCS conferences). All conferences have 10 teams and are regionalised into 4 regions (West, Midwest, East & South) and into three divisions (4 conferences in each division). The top 4 conferences (Pac-12, Big 12, Big Ten & SEC) are in division 1-A, with Divisions 1-AA and II below it. There is promotion and relegation, with teams remaining in their region.

As a 12 game regular season wouldn't be very interesting, teams play an 18 game conference schedule (home & away). As well as the conference games, all teams play 7 non-conference games against randomised opponents, 1 season-opening game vs a regional opponent. There are no conference championship games per-se but all New Years 6 bowl games have been created, with 4 serving as de-facto conference championship games. The college football playoff has also been created but has been expanded to a 24-team FCS style playoff.

As well as the college football competitions I have also created from basketball the NCAA Tournament (March Madness), NIT, CBI and pre-season invitational tournaments. Each post-season tournament has been bracketed properly, i.e March Madness is 1v16, 2v15 etc 1st round and separated into 4 regional brackets before the Final Four.

I have also created from baseball the College World Series. However, this is only the final 8 teams rather than the full 64 team bracket.

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.

I am in the final stages of testing now and should be able to release the database for play in the near future. In the meantime I will be posting more information and pictures in anticipation for release.

In celebration of the March Madness championship game tonight here's some pictures to enjoy.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 14, 2018 by samba23

[omnivore]

Nice work!

[kandersson]

Looks amazing, was wondering how will transfers and signings work in this college scenario? Btw this got me thinking of the old College Hoops game by 2K where you'd recruit players from high school and then lose them to the NBA draft, would be absolutely epic to have an NCAA/FM game like that!

[samba23]

All teams are under transfer embargoes until 2100, meaning that clubs can only play players who come through the youth intake. All USA newgens come through at the college clubs (occasionally you see a player who is signed to a club but moves to another club before they've played for the first club - which was unintended but pretty cool as it's like a kid committing to one team, decommitting and signing with a new team).

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;

There are no draws. All tied games go to extra time (silver goals) and penalties. Teams get 3 points for AET and penalty wins.

The game importance and youth rating for USA has been increased to make football the national sport and to make USA a top-10 caliber 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 has been deleted. I spent forever trying to get the qualifications rules right but could never get it to work so just deleted it instead. I have kept the Club World Cup. A Mexican club is usually randomly chosen to compete but sometimes a USA team is chosen.

[t27]

Nice work one thing I noticed is that the Pitt has a typo in their name there should be a h at the  end of it can't wait to play it

[samba23]

Teams

Division 1-A (FBS) college football has 130 teams in total. My database has 120. This means that not all FBS teams have been included. Those that have missed out are mostly the smaller MAC and Sun Belt teams (sorry Central Michigan and Georgia Southern fans). The teams have been chosen geographically to allow for 30 teams in each region. This means that as well as losing some FBS teams, I have included some FCS teams (hello North Dakota State - welcome to the big time) in the West and Midwest regions. 

I have tried to include teams evenly from most states, and include Named States teams (i,e Ohio over Kent State, Montana over Old Dominion). 

Teams have been been rated from a Reputation of 8500 (comparable to Spurs) to 5400 (comparable to Barnsley) and given training, youth coaching, facilities, recruiting etc from 20 (Alabama, Ohio State etc) to 10 (South Dakota, Montana 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) with the exception of Arkansas State who have been moved to Little Rock (which is still a school campus) to allow them to play in the midwest region. General info such as founding year, nickname, club legends, rivalries, derby names etc has been added.

Each team has large and small logos. These have mostly been taken from ESPN but some have come from other sources, CBS, conference pages etc. 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. Teams that have regularly used a third alternative kit (e.g. Oregon, Boise State, Miami etc) have these added, although they are very rarely used.

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 2009. Minimum attendance has usually been set as the average of 2009-2017 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 110 (Dana Dimel). All have their correct year of birth set. Other staff have this too where found.

Teams have large coaching staffs 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 another fitness coach and GK coach (usually lowest paid coaches). No other staff have been added.

All manager and other staff salaries have been set using the USA Today 2016 data (where not available estimates have been given). Managers have 10-year contracts, othere staff have 5-year contracts. Efforts have been made to keep staffs up to date and accurate but some coaching changes may have been missed.

All teams have accurate kit deals where data is available, all others have estimates. Teams that have stadium sponsorship deals also have these added. Ticket prices have been set at a level according to the division of the team and to ensure total income is as accurate to real life as possible. More on finances later.

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 never 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. At the end of their 10 year contracts in 2027 there is a major reshuffling of managers with few staying at the same club past 10 years.

4. Wages are too low. This is not a huge deal as wages increase year-on-year before plateau-ing around 2026-28 at $10m per year overall (which is comparable to actual university spend on scholarships). However, this does make it difficult for clubs to keep their best players past 4-5 years and most leave on free transfers. 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.

 

 

Edited April 3, 2018 by samba23

[samba23]

Nice spot on the Pittsburgh error. Has been corrected.

[samba23]

Conferences

 

I have kept the original college football FBS conferences (plus the Big Sky and Missouri Valley conferences from FCS) 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 loses some others (Wisconsin - Minnesota, Kentucky - the rest of the SEC) and creates a few new potential rivalries (Alabama - Clemson). The conferences have also all been homogenised to make them all equal in terms of number of teams and conference games. 

This database contains three divisions I-A, I-AA and II. Each division is the parent competition for four conferences. Each conference is regionalised and is separate from the others in their respective divisions. Each conference contains 10 teams and teams play 18 conference games, home and away.

There is one promotion and relegation spot between conferences in each division. These are structured as the following;

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

Midwest - Big 12 >>> American Athletic >>> Missouri Valley

East - Big Ten >>> ACC >>> MAC

South - SEC >>> Conference USA >>> Sun Belt

In each DI-A conference the top 3 teams qualify for the New Years Six Bowls and the top 6 teams qualify for the College Football Playoff. The stage name for the playoff is "Bowl Games" so that the season expectations for most teams is "Qualify for Bowl Games".

Each division selects a "team of the year" comprising players from all 4 conferences. In DI-A this is called "All-American 1st XI" In DI-AA it is "All-American 2nd XI" and so on. DI-A also has a player of the year "Heisman Trophy", "Coach of the Year" and positional awards for Goalkeeper and Defender. I want to have awards for all positions but when I create them they are greyed out.

I have not included past winners history for any of the conferences as they have been completely realigned, e.g. Alabama would have won lots of SEC titles (the top conference in their region) but Clemson wouldn't have won any but would have won the ACC (a second tier title in a different region). Therefore I have chosen to have a complete break from the past, competition history-wise.

 

 

 

Edited April 3, 2018 by samba23

[samba23]

Non-Conference games

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.

In this database teams play a total of 8 non-conference games, starting from the last Saturday in August/first Saturday in September. These games are all played before the conference games start in mid-October, which ends at the end of February. In this way the schedule is more similar to College Basketball, where teams play 18 conference games and at least 8 non-conference games.

All regular season matches at played on Saturdays. Kick off times are aligned with UK College Football viewing times (sorry USA based fans) and kick off at 2pm (College gameday start time), 5pm (early games kick-offs) or 8:30pm (SEC game of the week). Having matches kick off at 12am or 1am (primetime games), although possible, would not be very realistic, therefore all matches kick off at those times.

There are no bye weeks and no midweek matches during the regular season. Previous versions of the database did have bye weeks and the occasional midweek game, due to the game having to fit matches around teams playing in different groups and therefore having a variance in the number of matches played each saturday.

The opening game of the season is a single game between DI-A vs DII or DI-AA vs DI-AA. The DI-A vs DII game is regionalised, i.e. South vs South in order for teams to play a local higher or lower level opponent. Ideally this would have been done by "maximum distance between teams" but Hawaii would have messed this up. The DI-AA vs DI-AA ties are regionalised into East and West. Home teams get the gate receipts for the match, away teams get an appearance fee ($1m for DII, $500k for DI-AA).

The main non-conference schedule is done by having all 120 teams randomly put into 15 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.

In real life some matches are played on neutral sites. This can be an annual event (Texas v Oklahoma at the Cotton Bowl) a team playing at a local NFL stadium or a season opening game (Alabama vs Florida state last season). As far as I know there in no way to get specific matches played at a specific neutral stadium so as a work around I have many teams playing one non-conference home match at a specific neutral venue. I have created all NFL stadiums and all local college teams have one match in the NFL stadium. Other neutral site games have been added too (e.g. Arkansas at Little Rock stadium). Attendances can be low for these matches unless it is in the same city but I like it anyway.

The non-conference schedule is completely separate from conference-play. I would like for the non-conference and conference results to be added together (in a separate competition??) and for the playoff teams to be chosen from the combined results but for conference champions and promotion/relegation to be done via conference results only. Sadly I have not been able to achieve this. I can combine all four conferences in each division to make a 40 team table but this messes up the promotion and relegation so is not suitable.

 

[samba23]

Bowl Games

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. At the end of the regular season the top team from each 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 and the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl being founded in 2017.

In this database I have chosen not to have dedicated conference championship games. This is due to all teams being in one division and playing one-another. Instead the team with the best league record is crowned conference champion. I have also decided not to have all bowl-games. Mostly this is due to the desire not to add 39 separate competitions and the history records that would go along with it.

 I have, however, chosen to have the 6 most traditional and important bowl games, known as the New Years Six. These are; Rose Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Peach Bowl, Sugar Bowl and Orange Bowl.

Four of these bowl games place together the top two teams in a conference in a de-facto conference championship game. The remaining two bowl games place togther two third place teams. The bowl tie-ins are;

Rose - Pac-12 1st v 2nd

Cotton - Big 12 1st v 2nd

Peach - Big Ten 1st v 2nd

Sugar - SEC 1st v 2nd

Fiesta - Pac-12 3rd v Big 12 3rd

Orange - Big Ten 3rd v SEC 3rd

Each bowl game is therefore aligned with their respective region, except for the East, which does not have a New Years Six game played in its region. Therefore the closest bowl (Peach, Atlanta GA) is used for the East.

All of the remaining bowl venues are represented elsewhere in the post season (college football playoff, college world series, etc) or in a pre-season invitational tournament (Hawaii invitational, Bahamas invitational etc) more on which later. Therefore, all real life bowl games are represented in-game in one way or another.

 

 

[samba23]

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. Although this is widely considered preferable to the BCS there is still often controversy over teams that miss out on the playoff and many people want the playoff to expand to 8 teams.

 

In this database I have decided to expand the playoff to 24 teams. This brings the playoff into line with the FCS playoff, which is also 24 teams and has the top 8 ranked teams given a bye to the second round.

The 24 teams are chosen solely from conference results. I would like to be able to factor in non-conference results but have never been able to work this satisfactorily. The top 6 teams from each DI-A conference qualify for the playoff. The playoff has a stage name "bowl games" therefore teams "qualify for bowl games". As 24 out of 40 DI-A teams qualify, the idea is that teams that have a winning record all qualify for a bowl game (as in real life) and more than half of the teams qualify (as in real life).

1st and 2nd place in each conference receives a bye to the second round. In the first round 3rd/4th placed teams play 5th/6th placed teams, with conference protection (i.e SEC cannot play vs SEC). The teams receiving byes all play vs a first round winning team and there is no conference protection from the second round onwards.

All playoff games are played in neutral venues. All are played at real-life bowl game venues. First round games are at smaller college venues (e.g. Arizona stadium, Sun Bowl, etc). Second round games are played at larger NFL venues (e.g. Ford Field, NRG Stadium). Third round and semi final games are played at the NY6 bowl venues. The final is played at a neutral venue chosen at random out of 30 stadiums from 71,000 (Mercedes Benz Stadium) to 100,000 (Rose Bowl).

[ifogey]

This database looks amazing too play through, any estimate on when it may be release ready? or atleast ready for public testing,

Thank you

[samba23]

Thanks for the interest. Just adding the final bits of data and a couple of bits need more testing but should be ready sometime this weekend.

[ifogey]

51 minutes ago, samba23 said:

Thanks for the interest. Just adding the final bits of data and a couple of bits need more testing but should be ready sometime this weekend.

Great news, hopefully start of the weekend haha but thank you for the work, this database looks fun long term due too the transfer restrictions

[samba23]

That's the plan!! Been at 99% done for a while but keep finding extra things to add in.

[ifogey]

42 minutes ago, samba23 said:

That's the plan!! Been at 99% done for a while but keep finding extra things to add in.

Im just really eager too see how the transfer embargo works as a long term save where a club for teh most part can only rely on regens and some free transfers maybe sounds great long term

[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 DI Basketball conferences 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. 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. All DI-A teams qualify automatically, the top 6 teams in each DI-AA conference qualify, plus the winner of each DII conference. 5th and 6th place in DI-AA play in the First Four, with the DII champions getting automatic entry into the main draw. 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 1-10, 1st-4th in DI-AA are 11-14, 5th-6th in DI-AA are 15th (in the First Four so only one team makes the main draw) and 1st in DII is 16th. The draw is fixed exactly the same as in real-life. Therefore, a DI-A champion always plays a DII champion, 2nd in DI-A always plays a First Four winner and so on. Also, the higher seeded team for each match is the designated home team.

Matches in the NCAA tournament are spread out over several days. West bracket games are played on Thursdays, Midwest on Fridays, East on Saturdays and South on Sundays. The First Four are played on Tuesday and Wednesday the week before the first round. The first four matches in real life are all played in Dayton, Ohio so in-game they are played in the Cincinnati and Cleveland NFL stadiums.

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. These are the top 5 NFL stadiums in each region and always host tournament matches. The Final Four and Final are played at one neutral venue, chosen at random from 30 stadiums between 60,000 and 70,000 (i.e. smaller than the College Football Playoff Final venue). In real life teams will play at the same venue in rounds 1 & 2 (i.e. in four regional pods). It is possible to ensure this in-game by splitting each bracket into five stages (four for each venue in rounds 1 &2, and one for the Sweet 16 and Elite 8). However, this appears to mess up the ranking levels, and therefore the season's expectations, so this has been removed and teams will not be guaranteed to play at the same venue in round 2 as in round 1.

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 120 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 5, 2018 by samba23

[gmilitao_scr]

This database will be fantastic.. i can't wait to start with The Texas Longhorns

[Boyle.se]

Do you have Minnesota as a Big 12 team? 

[samba23]

I do. Texas (except El Paso), Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Louisiana (west of Baton Rouge), Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska South Dakota, North Dakota and Minnesota are all the states that make up the Midwest region. It was a shame to move Minnesota as I would have liked to have kept them with Wisconsin but it would have meant moving Iowa, Missouri, LA tech, LA-Monroe, LA-Lafayette and Arkansas St too and this would have left the conferences too unbalanced.

[samba23]

NIT and CIT

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, a tradition that continues to this day. 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). The biggest teams that miss out on the NCAA tournament are invited to compete (although teams do sometimes refuse). 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.

The next most important tournament is the College Basketball Invitational (CBI). This is typically for smaller teams from lesser conferences. 16 teams compete in this tournament, also bracketed into four groups, seeded 1-4 and played 1v4 & 2v3 in the first round. Matches are all played the home site of the higher seed except for the final which is played as a best-of-three (all at home sites).

 

In my database I have created the NIT and CBI (renamed as the College Invitation Tournament). Both tournaments run parallel to the NCAA tournament so that all teams (except last placed DII teams) have a post-season tournament to play in. I did want to have the NCAA Tournaments First Four losing teams to play in the NIT and therefore have all 120 teams play but haven't been able to get it to work. Unlike the NCAA tournament, I have only created one stage for the NIT and CIT, therefore the teams are not properly split into four brackets, although the seedings and draws for each round is correct.

In the NIT I have 7th-10th placed DI-AA teams and 2nd-5th placed DII teams. They are seeded 1-8 by their final league position, therefore 7th placed in DI-AA will always play a 5th placed 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 the Buffalo NFL stadium and Yankee Stadium and the final is played at Metlife Stadium. Therefore the semi finals and final are all played in New York.

In the CIT I have 6th-9th placed DII teams. They are seeded 1-4 by their final league position, therefore 6th placed with always play a 9th placed team. Matches up until the final are played at the home stadium of the higher seeded team. The final is a best of three, all played at neutral stadiums. These are the Cramton Bowl, Ladd-Peebles Stadium and (if needed) Navy-Marine Corps Stadium. Therefore, all real-life bowl stadiums have a post season match. The best of three in-game is worked as a two-legged tie with a replay if needed. The two legs are determined by points (3 for a win, 1 for a draw) rather than the normal goals scored method. Therefore the first two ties are the only games in the entire season that can end in a draw rather than penalties. This is needed because the game gets confused and does not give out the points correctly for penalty winners. Also in-game the two legs are not displayed visually properly but the correct winner is always chosen. There is a "match series" setting "best two of three games" but this does not appear to work at all in-game.

CIT matches are all played on Mondays, the Final replay (if needed will be on the same Monday as the NCAA Tournament final). NIT matches are all played on Mondays and Tuesdays up until the final which is played on the same Saturday as the NCAA Tournament Final Four.

[ifogey]

12 hours ago, gmilitao_scr said:

This database will be fantastic.. i can't wait to start with The Texas Longhorns

Also cant wait too get started with this database save

[samba23]

College World Series

The final post-season tournament I have included in the database is the College World Series. This is the final tournament of the season, played after the College Football Payoff in May-June.

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 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.

 

Thankfully this databases version of the College World Series is not quite as complicated. Firstly, the tournament is only the final 8-team version. I had considered having a 64 team tournament but couldn't work out how to work the regional brackets and then the final 8-team brackets, to get the seedings right and to do it without multiple stages, which would ruin the ranking levels and competion expectations. 

Each of the DI-A and DI-AA teams qualify for the tournament. The brackets are then regionalised into East and West. In the first round each DI-A team plays against a DI-AA team, the higher division team gets home advantage. However, all matches in this tournament are played at neutral venues, at Baseball stadiums that also have hosted College football or NFL matches. The semi finals and final are all played at real-life Bowl Game baseball stadiums - Chase Field, Tropicana Field and Yankee Stadium.

The winners of the first round receive byes to the second round. The losers play-off in the first elimination match. The winner of the first elimination match progresses to the second elimination match. The two first round winners meet in the second round. The winner progresses to the semi final. The loser plays vs the first elimination game winner in the second elimination game. The winner of the second elimination game progresses to the semi final. Unlike the real-life CWS, this tournament only has one-off semi final and final matches.

The tournament works perfectly, with winning teams in each tie progressing to the correct round, receiving byes if necessary. Sadly, the "Stages ---> tree" page in-game is not able to understand the competition, and therefore that page is a nonsensical mess.

 

[samba23]

Sadly, I have found a problem with the College World Series. After the first round teams are not always paired up into the correct regional tie, meaning that the brackets are not working as intended. I will try and fix it tomorrow but I still intend to release the database tomorrow even if I can't as it is only a minor error.

[gmilitao_scr]

2 hours ago, samba23 said:

Sadly, I have found a problem with the College World Series. After the first round teams are not always paired up into the correct regional tie, meaning that the brackets are not working as intended. I will try and fix it tomorrow but I still intend to release the database tomorrow even if I can't as it is only a minor error.

Bad bug, but let's hope you can find a fix to that...

[ifogey]

6 hours ago, samba23 said:

Sadly, I have found a problem with the College World Series. After the first round teams are not always paired up into the correct regional tie, meaning that the brackets are not working as intended. I will try and fix it tomorrow but I still intend to release the database tomorrow even if I can't as it is only a minor error.

Excited too start playing with or without this minor error

[gmilitao_scr]

A question: Will be a national signing day, like in the college football?

[samba23]

Teams all get their youth intake the same way as is normal in FM. This happens on July 1st, the start of the new season. The majority of players commit directly to their club but you do see some players who have previously committed for another (usually local) club but never played a match for them.

I did want to have some mechanism akin to graduate transfers, where teams would be able to sign a limited number of players each year, but only from other College teams, and only under certain conditions. However, I have not been able to find a way to make this workable.

[samba23]

Pre-Season Invitational Competitions

 

In College Basketball the majority of teams play in a start-of-season invitational competition, the results of which can count towards NCAA Tournament eligibility. I have included a similar structure in my database.

As previously mentioned, out of the 40 real-life Bowl Games I have only properly included the New Year's Six as separate bowl games. The majority of bowl venues have a post-season game, either in the College Football Playoff, NCAA tournament, College World Series or College Invitation Tournament. The remaining bowl venues in this database host their own pre-season tournament (Bahamas & Hawaii). 

Real-life bowl games are usually hosted in warm weather climates and the majority are played in Texas and Florida. Therefore, these regions (plus California) host their own tournament, all using current or past bowl venues.

College Football also occasionally plays some matches abroad. In recent years matches have been played in Ireland and Australia, Canada previously hosted a bowl game and several matches have been played in Japan. Therefore, these places host invitational tournaments in the venues that have hosted real-life matches, plus a few other venues.  I have also included London and Mexico, which host annual NFL matches.

 College Football also has in Week 1 a number of marquee match-ups in neutral venues. I have included the most famous of these, the Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Game as an invitational tournament in Atlanta, Georgia.

All invitational tournaments are 4-8 team tournaments with a straight knock-out format. The Texas, California and Florida invitationals have a "team pool" of all the teams based in the respective states, of which typically 2-4 are chosen out of the 8 teams, with the remaining teams chosen from DI-A, DI-AA or DII. A similar mechanism exists for the Canada invitational, where all teams from states bordering Canada are in the team pool.

Tournaments depending on prestige will include a set number of teams from DI-A, DI-AA or DII, chosen at random. For example the London Invitational selects 3 DI-A teams and 1 DI-AA team and the Bahamas Invitational selects 1 DI-AA team and 3 DII teams.

Also of note; the Hawaii Invitational always picks Hawaii, the Las Vegas Invitational selects some teams from a team pool of teams based in Nevada, Utah and Arizona and the Atlanta Invitational selects some teams from a team pool of "south based" top reputation teams.

Finally I have created a stand-alone competition for Notre Dame. Notre Dame is almost unique in College Football in not being attached to a conference. Therefore, they are free to play whatever teams they like (although they do have an agreement with the ACC to play a set number of games against ACC teams). Notre Dame also has a number of Historic rivalries, some of which are played every year (USC & Stanford) and some are played less frequently (Michigan State, Boston College etc). To try and ensure that some of these rivalries are played more often I have created a 3-team competition. Notre Dame are always selected, plus two from a pool of Notre Dame's rivals. Matches are all played at Notre Dame's stadium and the tournament takes a league format, where all teams play each other once.

In-game all of these invitationals are due to start on the same date. Ideally teams would be selected for a maximum of one invitational per-year but in reality the game is not clever enough to ensure this. Therefore, a small number of teams each year are selected for two tournaments (meaning that the start date for one is offset) and very infrequently a team may be selected for three invitationals. However, this is better than a previous version of the database where teams would sometimes be chosen for five!!! invitationals.

[ifogey]

Still planning on a release today or this weekend or still attempting too work out that bug or other little things your unhappy with

[kandersson]

It's looking more amazing every day, can't wait to start a game with BYU (Jimmer fan!)

What's the maximum number of games for a team in a season if you win every competition?

Hopefully you can find a way to make teams keep their best players as that would be a key in a youth only save. Tremendous job so far!

[samba23]

I thought I had the College World Series draw fixed, but although it works as planned most years, occasionally the second round does not draw properly which messes up the entire bracket. Not sure if it can be fixed so will leave it as is.

Just currently adding logos for extinct clubs, then one final test to check they all work and then I can release. Definitely some time this evening.

[samba23]

15 minutes ago, kandersson said:

It's looking more amazing every day, can't wait to start a game with BYU (Jimmer fan!)

What's the maximum number of games for a team in a season if you win every competition?

Hopefully you can find a way to make teams keep their best players as that would be a key in a youth only save. Tremendous job so far!

The problem for AI clubs is that the wages for their players is too low. I think the settings in the editor for player wages are broken because they don't appear to have any effect. For a player controlled club it should be easier to keep your best players, although if you are a small club with an exceptional player they "don't think the club can match their ambition". Not a lot you can do about that to be honest other than activate an auto-renew for 1 year clause on their contract.

16 conference games, 7+1 non-conference games, 1 NY6 bowl game, maximum of 6 NCAA Tournament games, maximum of 5 College World Series games, maximum of 5 College Football Playoff games (though in reality, only 4 if playing in CWS due to winning conference and receiving 1st round bye), maximum of 6 invitational games (assuming invited to two 8-team tournaments). 

Therefore 46 games maximum, 24 minimum (assuming finishing bottom of DII conference and thus missing out on CIT and not playing in an invitational). 

Calendar is as follows;

August - invitationals

Sept - Oct - Non-conference games

Oct - Feb - Conference games

Late Feb/Early March - Bowl Game

March - April - NCAA tournament, NIT, CIT

April - May - College Football Playoff

May - June - College World Series

 

 

Edited April 7, 2018 by samba23

[ifogey]

2 hours ago, kandersson said:

It's looking more amazing every day,

Tremendous job so far!

Agree with these points

[ifogey]

Great too see the release, forgot too ask is it for the winter transfer update database or the base database for setup?

Thanks for the great work again

[samba23]

All files should be available to download. See the top of the page for the download links.

I started the database on the basic database but it should work fine with the winter transfer update database. Certainly I've had no issues with either

[samba23]

Forgot to mention that in season 1 teams start with around 16 players so I would recommend holidaying 2-3 seasons before playing to help build up the squad numbers.

Hope you like it.

[ifogey]

26 minutes ago, samba23 said:

Forgot to mention that in season 1 teams start with around 16 players so I would recommend holidaying 2-3 seasons before playing to help build up the squad numbers.

Hope you like it.

Just holidaying through the 1st 2-3 seasons now before turning Pittsburgh into an unstoppable force

[kandersson]

Everything seems to work fine and those logos are fantastic! Thanks for this, as a college basketball fan I absolutely love this DB 

[samba23]

Good luck. I should also mention that teams that in real life are reportedly planning to build new stadiums are set to do so in game. Therefore Pittsburgh will move into the 50,000 capacity Pitt Stadium in 2022.

Other teams with stadium moves are; South Florida, San Diego State, UNLV, Temple, UAB and possibly 1-2 others I've forgotten about. Louisville and Utah also have stadium expansions pre-set to happen in-game.

[samba23]

2 minutes ago, kandersson said:

Everything seems to work fine and those logos are fantastic! Thanks for this, as a college basketball fan I absolutely love this DB 

Glad you like it. Most of the logos were easy to do once I learnt how to. Some like Temple and Texas A&M went through several different versions before I settled on the current ones.

[samba23]

I've also only got competition trophies for the College Football Playoff and NCAA Tournament. I would have liked to have got some for all of the conferences and bowl games but most were impossible to make properly transparent logos so I decided not to include any of them.

[ifogey]

My only very slight issue is due too having no reserve team options you can often be left with a very cluttered squad page sometimes filled with a ton of bad players you dont need too see but thats only a very small issue but i think the DB is great too play thus far, hope too have a few seasons done through tonight and tomorrow

 

Edit: This is even a lesser issue than 1st thought as you can just terminate there contract early and the cost isnt pretty insignificant especially considering the transfer budget cannot really be used anyway so the not having a youth/reserve team too store below average players isnt an issue at all

Edited April 8, 2018 by ifogey

[samba23]

 

Some interesting results here. UCF beating Alabama (national champions ), Georgia beating Memphis 8-0, Eastern Washington beating Colorado 6-2 and a 7-6 result (the highest scoring game I've ever seen)

[kandersson]

Took over BYU after just one year of holiday, having a blast trying to win promotion from MWC. First choice eleven is actually pretty decent though back-up players are garbage at this point (as expected as of 2018). I have a very good group of strikers for this level, this guy has been on fire in non-conference games hopefully he can lead us to Pac 12!

Aaron 'Jimmer' Figueroa!

 

Edited April 8, 2018 by kandersson

[podunkboy]

O...M...G... This looks INCREDIBLE (I always love US-based 'fantasy' databases). This might cause me to set my main save aside for the year, even though my alma mater (Wichita State) doesn't have a football team since 1986. I might just have to "settle" for KU or Kansas State. #WeAreNotWorthy #CollegeProSoccer

[samba23]

I was actually considering adding Wichita State and Gonzaga but went for North Dakota and Eastern Washington (sorry) because they actually have college football teams, stadiums and coaches.

[samba23]

Good news. I think I may have a fix for my College World Series bracketing issue. It's not to hard of a fix but I think the NIT and CIT would need the same fix too and the NIT will be a right pain to get seeded right.

[samba23]

21 hours ago, ifogey said:

My only very slight issue is due too having no reserve team options you can often be left with a very cluttered squad page sometimes filled with a ton of bad players you dont need too see but thats only a very small issue but i think the DB is great too play thus far, hope too have a few seasons done through tonight and tomorrow

 

Edit: This is even a lesser issue than 1st thought as you can just terminate there contract early and the cost isnt pretty insignificant especially considering the transfer budget cannot really be used anyway so the not having a youth/reserve team too store below average players isnt an issue at all

Glad you're finding it ok. The large squads is actually deliberate on my part as College Football teams have 85 scholarship players (and plus walk-ons regularly exceeds 100 player rosters) so I have my chairman and DoF's tendencies to "have large squad = 20" though I'm not exactly sure how much impact this actually has in practice. 

I think it's particularly overwhelming when you first start because you don't know any of the names but it gets easier as you get more familiar with the squad and who your good players are.

I can look into adding a reserve team to all clubs as a "practice squad/scout team" but I have no plans to add a reserve league as real-life College Football does not have a reserve league, so the reserve team would just be a dumping ground for the worst players.

Edited April 8, 2018 by samba23

[podunkboy]

40 minutes ago, samba23 said:

I was actually considering adding Wichita State and Gonzaga but went for North Dakota and Eastern Washington (sorry) because they actually have college football teams, stadiums and coaches.

Well, before WSU moved to the AAC, they had got as far as a mock-up football uniform and a band uniform for a revived program, but it cost so much to switch conferences that they put the football team on the back burner. After 32 years without football (they shut down the program my junior year at WSU), I've made peace with the decision.