College Football 25's Dynasty mode is fairly straightforward, but recruiting players can seem intimidating at first. In College Football 25 Dynasty, you'll need to find talented recruits and convince them that your school is the place to be. However, you'll face plenty of competition, as several teams will also want to pry those recruits from your hands. Furthermore, there are other factors you'll need to keep in mind as you search for future starters. Therefore, we created a College Football 25 Recruiting Guide to help you understand how the process works in Dynasty.

How Do You Recruit Players in College Football 25?

Recruiting players in College Football 25 is a weekly process where you spend time convincing players to join your team. There's a few different phases of the recruiting process you'll need to understand:

Coach Creation & Backstory

Firstly, when creating your Coach in College Football 25, we recommend selecting the Recruiter backstory. Essentially, this backstory will help you scout faster, which may help you secure the players you want. Furthermore, you can also change your Pipeline when editing your coach. However, while a Pipeline can be helpful, it won't be the main reason you lose out on a player.

Depth Chart & Upcoming Needs

Now before you do anything, I recommend you take a brief look at your roster. Identify your strongest and weakest positions. Furthermore, identify which players will be graduating, and positional needs for the future.

For example, if you begin a Dynasty with the Kansas Jayhawks, you'll begin your Dynasty experience with QB Jalon Daniels and HB Devin Neal. Both players are seniors, and it'll be up to you to find a replacement when the season ends.

So if you know you need to find players in certain positions, how can you make it easier to get them? That's where your Coach XP comes in.

Coach Menu – Coach Abilities & XP

In College Football 25 Dynasty, your Coach will receive experience points and level up throughout the season. Every time you level up, you'll earn coins which you can spend in Coach Abilities within the Coach menu. You can see how many coins you have in the top right corner of the screen at all times.

Additionally, Coaches can earn XP by completing various goals. These goals can be fund in the Coach XP Goals section and are labeled:

  • Draft Goals – Receive XP based on where your player was drafted into the Pros
  • Game Goals – Various in-game goals based on multiple factors
  • Recruiting Goals – Signing top prospects or classes in the country
  • Stat Goals – Based on your team's performance in various categories across the season

Once you earn Coins, you can spend them, in the Coach Abilities menu. Essentially, this menu acts as a skill-tree page where you upgrade your coach over time. Now, if you selected a Recruiter background, this is where you can start taking advantage of the system. So, select the Recruiter icon, which is the red one on the left of the skill graph.

In this new menu, you'll see different upgrades you can purchase in the Base Recruiter Set. These are all labeled after all the different positions like QB, LB, DB, and more. Each upgrade has four different tiers, all of which you can purchase with Coins. While you'll need to upgrade your recruiting ability for each position separately, each tier of upgrade does the same thing:

  • Tier 1 – Player takes less time to fully scout
  • Tier 2 – Recruiting actions gives a bonus to players
  • Tier 3 Increase weekly recruiting hour for player
  • Tier 4 – Increased starting interest from player

Say your team desperately needs more Right Tackles. You can spend your Coach coins on the Blocking ability in the base Recruiter set. The more tiers you've reached, the more equipped you'll be to recruit that player in College Football 25. Conversely, if you have a freshman kicker who's somehow dominating, then you won't really need to spend coins on the Specialists ability yet.

There is an Elite Recruiter set with more upgrades, but you won't have access to it right away. By the time you do, you probably won't need this guide anymore.

So, we now know what positions we need, but how exactly do you scout and recruit these players?

The Prospect List

In College Football 25's Dynasty mode, you'll create your own Prospect list of potential recruits. Overall, you'll create a recruiting board of up to 35 players you're interested in bringing to your school. You don't need to add 35 right away, but it never hurts. You can always remove a prospect from your recruiting by holding Triangle/Y.

The Prospect List makes it very easy for you to find the specific talent you want. The search filters (adjustable with the left and right triggers) let's you search players by their:

  • Position
  • State (Any or Individual)
  • Prospect Ranking
  • Pipeline
  • Star ranking (5-star, 4-star, etc.)
  • Recommended

To add a player to your Recruiting Board from the prospect List, just press the A button (Xbox) or X button (PlayStation). However, before you do so, you might want to check a couple of things.

College Football 25 Dynasty School Grades & How To Improve Them

All 134 schools in College Football 25 have their own school grade, which are determined by 14 different factors:

  • Playing Style – Seasonal stats determine this rating.
    • How to improve: Check Playing Style in the My School menu to see what statistical outputs you need to improve on for each position
  • Proximity to Home – Unique to each recruit based on where they live
    • How to improve: N/A
  • Championship Contender – Likeliness of your school winning the natty
    • How to improve – Increase your poll ranking and roster quality
  • Program Tradition – Success of your school based on their history
    • How to improve – Increase appearances and victories in National titles, Playoff Games, Conference Championships, and Bowl Games. Furthermore, Heisman Winners improve this grade
  • Campus Lifestyle – How pleasant student experience is between games and CAN'T be improved.
    • How to improve – N/A
  • Stadium Atmosphere – How much home field advantage your school generates
    • How to improve – Increase home winning percentage, attendance, home winning streak, and Team Prestige
  • Pro Potential – Likeliness of your player going Pro
    • How to improve – Increase your projected draft pick players. More projected first round players means the higher your grade goes.
  • Brand Exposure – How much attention your team receives relative to the country.
    • How to improve – Playing in more Playoff, National Championship, Game of the Week, Streaming, and National TV games.
  • Academic Prestige – Academic success
    • How to improve – N/A
  • Conference Prestige – Strength of the teams in a conference relative to the rest of the country
    • How to improve – Average team prestige in the conference must be high. This is out of your control, unless you force them to win certain games.
  • Coach Stability – Organization's confidence as well as Coach's experience in the league
    • How to improve – Increase job security, accept long contracts and keep coordinators aboard for the long run
  • Coach Prestige – Quality of coaches
    • How to improve – Hire good coaches and surpass stastical expectations
  • Athletic Facilities – Overall quality of Football facilties
    • How to improve – Increase Team Prestige
  • Playing Time – How soon your recruit will hit the field
    • How to improve – Based on depth chart and graduating class. For example, a QB recruit might not want to play for you if you already have two high-rated Sophomores.

Now back to the Prospect List. Some players will have a Dealbreaker icon on the bottom right of their profile. This doesn't mean you can't go after the player, but you might need to improve a couple of your grades before he'll really give you a shot.

Now that we know both about our school and the prospects, it's time to begin the recruiting phase.

The Recruiting Board

In the College Football 25 Recruiting Board, you'll be able to take the necessary steps to scouting and acquiring the players you want. Firstly, take note of a few things.

Firstly, you can only offer 35 total scholarships to recruits every season. While you might be tempted to offer scholarships right away and get a head start, you'll want to save them for players you actually want.

Secondly, you only have a limited amount of hours to scout and actively recruit players every week. Furthermore, you can only spend a limited amount of hours on an individual prospect. For example, if there's a CB you really want, you should spend the maximum amount of time (50 hours) per week on him to show you're interested.

Lastly, it's important to stay within a player's Top schools. Over the course of the year, a player will lower the list of schools they're willing to play for. Staying within their top schools opens up opportunities for more recruiting tactics.

Keep all of this in mind during the Recruiting Process. Once you're ready, enter the recruiting Board to see three different menus:

Overview – In this page, you'll see general information about your prospect and their recruiting journey so far. The information here includes their Top Schools and how much influence they have on him, and whether or not they received a scholarship offer yet. Furthermore, you'll learn if/when they visited the school.

Scouting – Overall, the Scouting menu lets you spend hours learning about a player's attributes, abilities, development traits. Depending on what abilities you purchased, you may be able to scout certain player positions faster.

Recruiting – In the biggest and most important menu, you'll dedicate time to researching your player and influencing them to join your team. Overall, the recruiting phase is broken up into different phases:

  • Influence – you must spend hours influencing the player to join your team. The different influencing actions include:
    • Searching Social Media (5 hours per week)
    • DM the Player (10 hours per week)
    • Contact the player's Friends and Family (25 hours per week)
    • Send the House (50 hours per week)
    • Offer a Scholarship (5 hours per week, Limited!)
    • Schedule a Visit (40 hours for visit)

During the Influence phase, you'll learn more about your player's wants and needs. Say you're school offers both good Brand Exposure and is a Championship contender. Now, let's say you find a player who wants to play for a school that grades well in both of those categories. That'll be useful to know later on during the Pitch phase.

In the Influence Phase, you can already offer a Scholarship if you want. However, we recommend waiting just a bit to see who you really want on your team. The more you influence a player, the higher you'll end up on their list. When a player narrows the list down to their top 5 schools, you'll enter the Pitch Phase.

  • Pitch – Show your candidate why you're school is worth it by showing off one of your school grades. Overall, there are two types of Pitches you can make:
    • Soft Sell – 20 hours
    • Hard Sell – 40 hours
    • Sway – 30 Hours

Essentially, a Soft Sell is a low-risk recruiting tactic which still influences a player's decision. If you don't have time to find out a player's interests, just use a Soft Sell. Even if you're wrong, your chances of getting locked out are much less than if you do a Hard Sell.

However, if you know you want someone on your team, and you know where their interests lie, then do a Hard Sell. This high-risk, high-reward pitch method will help you land the players you want. It shows you not only have what they want, but that you're 100% committed to having them on your team.

Of course you can also Sway players. If successful, this adds your Chosen Ideal Pitch as the recruit's ideal pitch for your school only. So you can sell a player entirely on Playing time, and you'll still benefit from it. Personally, I recommend doing this when you know a bit more about the player's interests.

Scheduling Visits

Another unique thing about going into the Top 5 schools list is the ability to schedule a visit. In College Football 25 Dynasty, you'll need to host recruits on visits to see your school. You can either invite them to watch a game, or during the bye week. Both visits will increase your influence, but there's a better risk/reward to the former.

Say you're inviting a recruit on a week where you play against a highly-ranked TCU. If you win, your recruit might be impressed and want to play for you. However, if you lose, it'll look bad. So make sure to schedule a visit for when you're confident in your ability to win.

Furthermore, you can schedule multiple players to visit on a week. We recommend letting compatible position group recruits attend the same visits. For example, I scheduled a 3-star FS to visit my school on a bye week. But I also invited another recruit, a SS, which complemented their visits.

Scheduling a visit costs 40 total week hours. However, those hours aren't spent on influencing the player. So you can spend 40 hours on a visit, and then allocate up to 50 more on recruiting a player.

Verbal Commitments & Signing Day – College Football 25 Recruiting

As the season progresses, more players will either verbally commit to a school or continue to narrow down their options. Players who don't want to join your school will lock you out. But no worries, you can always remove them and add another prospect to your list.

If a player has verbally committed to you, you're more than likely to land that player come Signing Day. In fact, College Football 25's Dynasty Mode has two different signing days for Recruits:

Early Signing Day begins during Bowl Season. National Signing Day takes place after the National Championship. The former is for players who know where they want to be. National Signing day is for those who still need time to decide.

Overall, that wraps up all the fundamental gameplay aspects of Recruiting in College Football 25's Dynasty Mode. We wish you the best of luck in signing that future 1st round draft pick. If you're looking for more, check out our guides on Passing, Mental Abilities, and more.

For more gaming and NCAAF news, visit ClutchPoints. Furthermore, subscribe to our gaming newsletter for more weekly info.