One day in late December, dry-erase boards stood staggered a few yards apart on the track surrounding the field at the University of North Florida. A Nebraska assistant coach was posted in front of each board, and around each coach huddled a clutch of Jacksonville-area high school coaches. The Cornhuskers had come to the Sunshine State to face Clemson in the Gator Bowl, but first-year coach and his staff figured that while they were there, they should lay the foundation for a recruiting pipeline into the state that, from 2004-08, produced more BCS-conference football players (981) than any other.
The Nebraska coaches have little choice but to hit the road. Their state produced only 43 BCS-conference players in the past five years, and the annual output isn't likely to grow. If they don't get their players from Florida, then they must go to California, Texas, New Jersey or some other state rich in high school football talent. To land those players, Pelini will have to work harder now than former coachTom Osborne did when the Cornhuskers dominated the sport for the better part of two decades. Back then, a winning program was enough to lure recruits, in part because only powerhouses such as Nebraska, Michigan and Notre Dame appeared on television regularly. Now, every BCS conference team plays most of its games on television, and 15 years of the 85-scholarship limit has slammed shut the gap between football's ruling class and the former pigskin proletariat.
In the process, the three most important factors in college football recruiting have become location, location and location. Now, the best players are more likely to stay close to home. That, combined with the U.S. population's shift to the south, has fundamentally changed the sport. Notre Dame and Nebraska have given way to programs such as LSU, the only BCS-conference team in a talent-rich state that borders equally talent-rich Texas and Mississippi.
An SI study of 2004-08 recruiting data for the 65 BCS-conference schools and Notre Dame revealed that programs which draw at least 50 percent of their players from within 200 miles or from within their home state stand a far better chance of winning consistently than those that did not.
