Armchair AD

Why I built it#

Every fan has an opinion about how an athletic department should be run. Almost nobody has had to sign the budget. I have spent my career inside college athletics, and the gap between "just fire the coach" and the actual decision, with its buyout, its donor politics, and its knock-on effects three years out, is the most interesting thing about the job.

Armchair AD is that gap, turned into a game. You start by choosing the values you want your tenure to be built on. Then the department starts asking you to spend them.

Day one#

The first screen isn't a roster or a stadium. It's a list of values. Integrity, revenue, reputation, trust, patience, vision, transparency, fan satisfaction, academic relations, player development, innovation, tradition. You pick five. That's it. No tutorial, no difficulty selector, no "recommended" defaults. The values you pick are the only thing the game remembers about who you said you were.

Then you walk into the office and the inbox is already full.

The first crisis is always small. A donor wants a meeting. A sport is over budget. But the game is already scoring you. Did you handle it the way someone with your values would? Or did you do the convenient thing and hope nobody noticed? The gap between what you declared and what you did is the first thing the season review measures.

How it plays#

The game opens as an inbox. A donor wants a meeting. A sport is over budget. A headline is about to run. You have limited time each week and more decisions than time, so triage is the first real skill the game teaches.

Decisions get scored against the values you declared, not against a hidden "correct" answer. Doing the popular thing when you said you would do the disciplined thing costs you. That scoring rolls up into a season review, a career timeline, and eventually a legacy you either earned or explained away.

Underneath the narrative there is a working simulation: rosters and recruiting, a transfer portal, a scouting engine, staff development, facilities, debt service, NIL policy, and a schedule you build yourself. School financials are grounded in public NCAA and EADA filings, so a mid-major's constraints actually feel like a mid-major's constraints.

How it was built#

Armchair AD is a Base44 app, built solo, and it is the first product under the VarsityAI brand. Nearly all of it was written AI-native: I design the system, describe the behavior, and iterate on generated code inside a real product loop rather than a prototype.

That has meant building far past the game itself. There is an admin command center for scenario authoring, review, and diagnostics; ingestion pipelines for headlines and financial data; balance and progression tooling so the difficulty curve can be tuned from evidence instead of instinct; A/B testing and retention dashboards; a documented API with keys and an explorer; and an advertiser suite with campaigns, creatives, line items, placement config, and reporting. The game is the part you see. The operating system around it is most of the work.

The operating system#

The admin side of Armchair AD is not a settings page. It is a product in its own right - over 50 pages that exist because the game cannot be tuned, grown, or monetized without them.

Scenario authoring and review. A scenario editor, a review queue, diagnostics, and a headline ingestion pipeline. Community-submitted scenarios flow through a moderation queue before they reach players. A/B testing infrastructure lets two versions of a scenario compete for engagement data.

Data and financials. NCAA and EADA filings are ingested and normalized to seed each school's budget, sport offerings, and financial constraints. A data enrichment pipeline keeps rosters and staff current. Data quality dashboards flag anomalies before they reach production.

The advertiser suite. Campaigns, creatives, line items, placement config, and reporting - a full ad management system so sponsorships can be sold and measured without a third-party ad server.

Retention and gamification. A retention dashboard tracks cohort behavior. Gamification settings control achievement triggers, leaderboard config, and challenge scheduling. Mini-games have their own admin for tuning difficulty and rewards.

Platform and API. A documented REST API with keys, an explorer, analytics, and docs. Webhook logs, integration health monitoring, and a bulk edit tool for mass content updates. A template importer for onboarding new schools and conferences.

Branding and identity. Logo styling, logo variants, and per-school branding controls so each program can look like itself.

The point is not that an admin panel is impressive. The point is that none of this is optional if the game is going to grow past a prototype. Scenarios need a pipeline. Players need retention. Sponsors need measurement. Schools need onboarding. The operating system is what makes the game a product.

Where it stands#

The game is live at armchairad.com and still being built. Scenario depth, the progression curve, and the school and conference landing pages are the current focus. Community scenario submissions are open, which is the fastest path to the thing I actually want: enough situations that no two careers look alike.

What's next on the roadmap:

• Multi-sport seasons - run football, basketball, and baseball simultaneously, with shared budgets and competing priorities for facilities, staffing, and recruiting.
• Coach AI - opposing coaches that adapt to your tendencies. If you always go for it on 4th down, they adjust. If you always pay the buyout, they know.
• Conference realignment - the landscape shifts under you. Schools move, rivalries change, and your scheduling strategy has to adapt mid-career.
• Legacy mode - after 10 seasons, the game writes your legacy: a Wikipedia-style article, a hall-of-fame ballot, and a press conference where you answer for the decisions you made in year one.
• Mobile - the inbox format is already phone-friendly. A native wrapper with push notifications for timed crises is the natural next step.