Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Do you guys think it'd be a good idea to flip the skill-position numbers, considering how run-oriented college football was pre-1990?  
Instead of having a team's top 4 rushers and top 6 pass-catchers, changing it to 6 rushers and 4 receivers/TE?  Or just for option teams maybe?  

The only thing it changes is the percentages of how often a particular player is involved in that play type.  I'm leaning towards keeping it how it is, because if you ask yourself:  even in the most personally memorable season of your school's team, could you even name its 5th-leading rusher?  

The RBs get more touches, but you could probably name more WRs than RBs of that particular roster, no?  Again, unless your team ran the bone or something.

Yeah, I found one that didn't have 6 pass-catchers (including RBs), in the late 70s.  But then, I'd simply find the % of reception cards by dividing by 4 instead of 6.

The thing is, if I increase the RBs from 4 to 6, then your big-carry guys' number of running play cards will decrease (only by 1 or 2), but still.  Their % of the team's carries will decrease, and I'm not sure I want that.  Taking a carry away from a guy with 250 carries to give it to some guy with 17 carries that season.

I'm not sure what to do.  Not sure it matters, lol.  Just thinking out loud (by quietly typing).

OU
season - number of pass-catchers (including RB)
1973 - 5
1974 - 4
1975 - 6
1976 - 8
1977 - 4
1978 - 7 (3 of which had 1 catch for the season)
1979 - 10 (Switzer's turning into Mike Leach ovah here!)
1980 to 1985 all have 8 or 9
1986 - 6
after that it goes up

So yeah, while it's not a problem, it will just give those 20 pass play cards to a very few pass catchers.  Will end up with guys with 1 catch having like 12% of OU's receptions for that year, something like that.  

1974 - so RB Joe Washington, who had the most carries for OU, was 4th (and last) in receptions, with 2.  But they only completed 33 passes for the season.  So JW's 2 receptions are also 6% of OU's receptions overall.  That's only 1 reception card, but still, it's pretty silly.  And here's the craziest part - his 2 catches went for 71 yards!  So his only reception card will be a 36 yard completion, lol.

Taking this into account - why only complete 33 passes in a season?  Well, there's actually a great answer to that.  OU completed only 40% of its passes.  But wait, it gets worse.  33 completions, right?  AND 9 INTERCEPTIONS THROWN!!!

11% of OU's passes in 1974 went for interceptions.....WTF?  So that's why you run the ball 91% of the time, lol.
RB Joe Washington's passing line:  0-3, 0 yds, 0 TD, 2 INT.  Run the ball, Joe.

One other thing I forgot - the more way-down-the-depth chart guys you have carrying the ball, the less realistic it is.  You end up with guys you KNOW only got garbage-time carries in blowouts getting the ball in the 2nd quarter, which is a big turn-off, imo.

Even with 4 ball-carriers, playing with the '96 Gators, I end up with the 4th-string RB getting a carry here and there all throughout the game.  Doesn't work.  I'm definitely not smart enough to relegate those guys to only getting carries late in blowout games, so it's just best to limit their existence in the game to begin with, ya know?

why does it have to be a hard rule of 4rd/6wr or vice versa? why can't it vary based on each team and how they used their players?
why cant rb's that are in top 4-5 of catches for a team have a second receiving card or have those stats available on his rb card?

also, do you include 2nd string qb? if we aren't worried about a 2nd string qb who got 35 passes on the season, why are we worried about a 4th rb who got 20 touches or 6th wr with 12 catches?

why does it have to be a hard rule of 4rd/6wr or vice versa? why can't it vary based on each team and how they used their players?
why cant rb's that are in top 4-5 of catches for a team have a second receiving card or have those stats available on his rb card?

also, do you include 2nd string qb? if we aren't worried about a 2nd string qb who got 35 passes on the season, why are we worried about a 4th rb who got 20 touches or 6th wr with 12 catches?

It doesn't have to be 4 ball carriers/6 pass catchers, that's just what I came up with.  As in my last post, I just want that feeling of realism.
It would be fun to only have the top RB and maybe his backup run the ball, but something I learned in creating this is starting RB's carries are much less of a % of overall carries than one would think.  Most starting RB barely tote the rock for 60% of a team's overall carries in a season.  That was news to me, for sure, but since it's true, I made it the top 4 ball carriers to get the percentages closer to reality.
RBs do have receiving cards.  Their rushing play cards have their rushing stats on them and their receiving cards have their receiving stats on them.  Does that not make sense?  How else would you do it?  
Note - most starting RB have 10 or 11 rushing cards and 3-4 receiving cards for any given team.  Some more, some less, but that's about the average.  
I'm still contemplating backup QBs.  I've made several teams where QBs split time pretty evenly, and it feels dishonest only making a card for the guy with more pass attempts.  However, imagine playing the game - when are you going to purposely put in the QB with worse stats?  You have the same RBs and WRs - you're only hurting your team by playing the guy with a worse completion %.  I'm not sure how you'd "fix" that.

Thank you very much for your 'why' questions - I wish I got more of them.  If this is going to appeal to people, I need to...well....make it appealing to people, lol.  Keep 'em coming.

i'm glad you took they questions well. looking back on them, they seem rather abrasive or sardonic. it's wasn't intended that way.

i guess i misunderstood how the game flows. i was under the impression each player had 1 card, that's why i asked if you could add a rec card for rb. having multiple cards for each one makes sense, though.

i think, even for qb's, you need to tailor to each team. even with bama in last few years you'd need a mix of setups. for this year, there were 4 legit rb with important gametime carries and catches. but go back to 2015, only 2 (henry and drake).

if i had 2 qb system, and for any random game the "worse passing" qb suddenly, by chance/luck of dice, had a monster passing game, i'm fine with that. if it became a regular occurrence due to flaw in card setup, that's an issue. but in reality, the reason there is a 2-qb system is because they're both about the same, so i'm not sure how to screw with that.

without playing the game, it's hard to know what questions to ask and suggestions to make. i think you nailed it earlier in this thread, though, play-ability and enjoyment from the game is paramount. no point in making a statistically superior card game if no one wants to play it.