"The Coaching Market" — A Full Rebuild of the Coaching Carousel

The Problem

The coaching carousel is currently the most complained-about system in Dynasty mode. Common threads from the community:

• Offers don't match resumes. Players with elite records, top-25 recruiting classes, and #1 national rankings report getting offered only bottom-tier programs, while schools with losing records land offers from top programs. There's no visible logic connecting performance to job quality.
• No player agency. The system only lets you accept jobs that are offered to you — there's no way to apply to or pursue a job you actually want. Some players resort to manually creating/retiring coaches to force job openings, which corrupts saves and can soft-lock a dynasty.
• Not enough offers, and they feel random. Long-time players point back to NCAA 14, where any job below your current tier was open to you and you'd receive a real volume of offers. Now it's often capped at a handful of offers with no clear pattern.
• CPU coaching movement is just as broken. Fired coaches sometimes land new head coaching jobs immediately with no apparent vetting, undermining any sense that prestige or performance matters — for the player or the CPU.

The system needs more than a tuning pass. It needs an actual two-sided job market with visible logic.

The Feature: "The Coaching Market"

1. Open Job Board

A dedicated screen listing every open coaching job in FBS — program prestige tier, recent record, roster talent level, and program needs (e.g., "rebuilding," "win-now," "scheme change"). Players can browse the entire market at any time during the hiring window, not just wait for a popup.

2. Two Ways In: Approached or Apply

• Approached: Schools that like your profile (record, recruiting rank, scheme fit, staff pedigree) reach out to you directly with a job offer.
• Apply: You can apply to any open job, regardless of whether they contacted you first — including reach jobs above your current tier.

3. Merit-Based Ranking, Not Random Selection

Every applicant (human and CPU) for a job is ranked by resume: win record, recruiting class strength, scheme fit, prestige jump size, coaching tree/staff history, and red flags like early departures or discipline issues. This directly targets the "no logic" complaint — a 25-2 record with top-25 recruiting classes should objectively outrank a coach with a losing record for any comparable job.

• Any job at or below your current program's prestige tier is automatically open to you (bringing back the NCAA 14 feel).
• Reach jobs above your tier require ranking in the top 3 applicants to get an interview at all — so you can shoot for a stretch job, but you're not guaranteed a shot just for applying.

4. Real Interviews

Landing in the top 3 triggers an actual interview: a short set of dialogue-style questions tied to your coaching profile (scheme philosophy, recruiting approach, roster fit). Your answers combine with your resume to determine who the AD picks among the finalists.

5. The Four-Week Decision Clock

Once you're extended an offer — whether you were approached directly or won an interview — you get a 4-week window to decide. During that window:

• You can continue applying to or interviewing for other jobs.
• Your current school gets a retention window to counter with a raise, budget increase, or facilities upgrade before your clock runs out.
• If two offers overlap, you have to gamble — commit to a sure thing now, or risk it expiring while you wait to hear back on a bigger job.

6. Post-Decision Transparency

After every hire, applicants who didn't get the job see a brief reason why (e.g., "lost out due to recruiting class rank" or "program prioritized head coaching experience"). This directly addresses the trust problem — players currently have no idea why a decision was made, which is a huge driver of the "no logic" complaints.

7. CPU Coaches Follow the Same Rules

CPU-to-CPU hires use the identical ranking and interview logic. A coach fired mid-season shouldn't be able to walk into another head coaching job with zero vetting — the same prestige/performance/red-flag weighting applies across the board, so the whole carousel feels consistent, not just the player's slice of it.

Why This Is Buildable

Almost everything here is UI and a weighting formula layered on data the game already tracks — win/loss record, recruiting class rankings, staff history, program prestige. It doesn't require new simulation systems, just:

1. A job board UI
2. An applicant-ranking formula
3. A short interview dialogue system
4. A 4-week offer/decision timer with a counter-offer branch
5. Extending the same ranking formula to CPU-only hires

The Core Loop

Get approached OR apply → ranked against the field → top 3 get an interview → 4-week decision clock → school gets a counter-offer chance → accept or decline.

This turns the carousel from a passive, unexplained popup into an actual market — one where your resume visibly matters, you have agency to pursue the job you want, and losing out comes with a reason instead of a shrug.