I don't think so

by Greg, seemingly ranch, Tuesday, July 27, 2010, 11:53 (5798 days ago) @ MadisonDomer

Texas is the king of Texas unless it is down; same with SC in southern California, LSU in Louisiana, Ohio St. in Ohio. You anticipate that there will be individual kids who choose not to go to those schools, but on the whole they lock up the kids they want from their states as a baseline for recruiting. There is something to being a real flagship program in an area that emphasizes football and more importantly football at that flagship program.

For UF/FSU/UM, the dual problem for UF is that so much of the talent is down the state a ways and for many in the Miami/Dade area UM is as big "historically" (in terms of the lives of these kids and of their parents) as UF is. So while we tend to think that UF is king of its state, it really has more challenges than we admit -- though with the wealth of talent in that state, the challenges are not that great.

Contrast that to SC, LSU, OSU and Texas -- whenever the teams are rolling, it is incredibly tough to take substantial numbers of top kids out of their recruiting region. Look today at SC, even the spectre of serious penalties does not deter some kids. So it is with Texas, I think. While some individuals will leak out of the state, there is such a bred-in desire to play for the Horns that they will always get big numbers of top in-state kids, just like USC and the rest.