2025 | SimCFB Toughest Jobs in the Sim

[TuscanSota]

Hi everyone,

 

We've had the sim for almost five years now(!) and a question I've been pondering on was which team was arguably the toughest job in the sim? By toughest, I mean not only to recruit and build a team, but to also garner a conference championship and playoff berth.

To solve this question, I did some research on each team regarding their recruiting, their home field advantage, coupled with how strong each team arguably is heading into the 2025 season. I grabbed each team's affinities, their stadium capacity, and came up with a formula that generated a letter grade for each team, something similar to what EA's College Football 25 does for their teams.

With this data, I put together a formula that weighed each category and returned a number which indicated how difficult a job was in SimCFB. The lower the number, the more difficult the job.

With that said, there are a few discrepancies with the data:

• The portal is still ongoing, so the letter grades generated are not exactly up-to-date. However, this should still give us a good picture regarding how competitive each team will look heading into next season.
• The affinities used in evaluation are those tangible to the school. Affinities related to frontrunner, rising stars, close to home, and media spotlight were not evaluated because these affinities were either earnable or dynamic based on the player (especially with Close to Home).
• The weights used to summarize each team's difficulty value are the following: HFA accounts for 30%, Affinity Count accounts for 35%, and the overall grade accounts for 35%.
• The difficulty value does not indicate how successful a team will be in 2025; it is a value curating how tough a job is supposed to be heading into 2025.

Some assumptions I had going into the research were regarding conferences and affinities. I did have an assumption that certain jobs within certain conferences were going to be tougher than others. This can be weighed from both a recruiting and a competitive standpoint.

• I assumed that jobs in Conference USA were going to be arguably tougher from a recruiting standpoint due to lower affinities, but also lower homefield advantage
• The easier jobs at the top would be larger schools with more affinities.

 

After curating the data, the results I find did affirm my assumptions; however, there was one thing I did not indicate with my hypothesis:

• While some jobs are going to be easier to recruit in and are easier to compete with, it was not a good indicator on whether a team would win their respective conference; as I noticed that some schools near the top were often grouped within the same conferences.
• Because a large number of teams with the same difficulty rating were grouped into similar conferences; it does offer another question that one should keep into account:
  • If a user does take a tougher job within a smaller conference and succeeds in building a team, does the road to a conference championship actually become easier?

 

With the above questions, hypotheses, and observations made, I'm going to present the data; staring with a few fun lists that I put together:

 

Toughest Jobs in the Country:

Rank	Team	Value	Affinity Count
1	Delaware	6.98	0
2	Kennesaw State	17.03	0
3	UMass	20.75	0
4	Western Kentucky	22.94	0
5	Sam Houston State	23.86	1
6	Charlotte	25.02	1
7	Middle Tennessee	26.75	0
8	Coastal Carolina	27.03	1
9	FIU	28.53	1
10	Miami (OH)	28.87	1

 

This list was fascinating to me. A lot of the newer teams, especially Delaware, are on this list simply because these are also the teams that had the worst rosters generated for them. Western Kentucky was a surprise, considering WKU's rise to fame after beating Alabama in a shutout at the start of the 2022 season. While WKU did have the frontrunner affinity historically, it cannot take away the fact that WKU is one of the toughest jobs in the sim.

 

Lowest Rated P4 Teams

Rank	Team	Value	Affinity Count
1	Oregon State	33.04	0
2	Cincinnati	35.60	1
3	Rutgers	35.94	0
4	UCF	37.41	1
5	Virginia Tech	41.85	0
6	Arizona State	42.56	1
7	Kansas	43	0
8	Oklahoma	55.37	1
9	Mississippi State	55.90	0

Okay, this list is actually not a true ranking from top to bottom. But I did try to gather at least the bottom valued teams from their respective conference. Any teams that I noticed were close together I also did include into this list.

Cincinnati being at the bottom of the Big 12 did not surprise me considering how competitive the conference was outright with teams like Baylor, TCU, Houston, and West Virginia. They did not have the best roster generated; but it also does not help that they only have one affinity. Oregon State also has their fall from grace after having one of the top teams generated at the start of the sim.

Oklahoma and Mississippi State being the bottom two SEC teams was expected; but what wasn't expected was how long it took to finally find an SEC team on the list. Vanderbilt NOT being at the bottom I think is the big surprise, though that's also weighed by how competitive they are expected to be in 2025.

 

Top G5 Teams

Rank	Team	Value	Affinity Count
1	Temple	63.99	1
2	South Florida	62.84	1
3	Air Force	54.78	3
4	New Mexico State	52.76	0
5	South Alabama	51.76	1
6	Northern Illinois	49.73	2

As we got higher on the list in value, teams with more affinities tended to make the top. Temple takes the top spot not necessarily for their team's recruiting or their affinities but because they compete in the Philadelphia Eagle's stadium. This does give them an edge when facing opponents because it almost puts them in the large crowds list.

South Florida takes a huge jump thanks to @iToxicKiddy's recruiting and the current state of their roster. Air Force I think is arguably the easiest G5 program to recruit for due to access to more affinities. Their stadium size also has Air Force's HFA competing with programs that are in the middle of the Big 12 as well. Northern Illinois as the top MAC was a surprise; though I think NIU takes the edge while not being the top Mac team in all three categories; they are very close to the top in nearly all, especially with overall grade.

 

Top 10 Programs in the Sim

Rank	Team	Value	Affinity Count
10	Florida	77.56	2
9	Michigan	77.65	2
8	USC	77.83	3
7	Alabama	78.25	1
6	Tennessee	78.52	1
5	Texas A&M	78.64	1
4	Wisconsin	79.04	3
3	Notre Dame	82.88	4
2	Ohio State	84.59	2
1	Texas	87.52	3

This list didn't surprise me to say the least. The teams on this list do all have at least one affinity; but what does come to mind is that all teams on this list have the large crowds affinity. Hence, every team on this list has a stadium size larger than 75000. This gives them the best home field advantage in the sim, which is the best base modifier for a team to win at home.

Not every team on this list did well last season; heck, Texas only won a single game last season. What puts them at #1 is not necessarily the state of the Longhorns roster (they got a solid B overall); but moreso the potential with the team. They have one of the largest stadiums of any college football team coupled along with three affinities. This would be the best spot for any coach to coach within the sim both for a newcomer and a veteran user.

Are these teams the easiest teams to win with? Yes, but also no? The teams on this list, save for Notre Dame, all come from the same conference. So, it can be argued while it is easier to win home games while coaching one of these teams, it can be argued that it makes these jobs more competitive because of conference affilitiation.

With that said, this is an obligatory fuck you to the Big Ten and SEC for conference realignment.

 

Takeaways

I think the current formula I have is good; but it is also biased heavily towards home field advantage and affinity. Incorporating an overall grade does help indicate what the toughest jobs are now, but it doesn't tell what the toughest jobs are long term. I think it does give us a snapshot into the 2025 season in terms of which programs will be most likely to succeed. If more time was invested into the formula, I would probably look into adding a value based on the school's location by state/region and calculate a value based on recruit generation. This addition to the formula could give us a way to tell how likely a team can recruit local talent/how to incorporate close to home in this formula.

 

Either way, here is a link to the spreadsheet with all the data used.

What are your thoughts on this data?

[Sarge]

How the absolute fuck is Florida a top program? Where's Baylor? I'm shook. Great article Tuscan!

[TuscanSota]

1 hour ago, Sarge said:

How the absolute fuck is Florida a top program? Where's Baylor? I'm shook. Great article Tuscan!

This list doesn't incorporate wins and losses; just the intangibles such as recruiting affinities, stadium size, and the current talent on the roster. I think a future iteration will incorporate geographic location and local recruiting.