On the go90 series Foul Play: Paid in Mississippi, SB Nation National Recruiting Analyst Bud Elliott said the following: “Typically, if you’re going to be a good recruiting school, you’ve got to own your own backyard, then cherry pick from other areas.”
While programs across the country aspire to be seen and compete on a national scale, the real heart of college football is its fiercely local/regional nature. Balancing those two things can be tricky, and takes work, but as Bud alluded to, the next Recruiting Rule directly addresses this dual nature of the sport:
Recruit Locally first, then Nationally
As I said above, there’s a fiercely local component to college football that doesn’t exist in other sports.