HJS {l Wrote}:As for recruiting territories, it would certainly help if someone has North Jersey recruiting ties. That said, Jersey is going to get harder and harder to recruit. Rutgers will continue to be relevant though I don't expect that they will land any more kids than they have in recent years. The Big Ten move solidifies the future of their program, but it likely will significantly cut their success (which was born exclusively from terrible scheduling). However, the Big Ten move will make all the Big Ten schools much more attractive an alternative than BC. BC should, however, still be able to land a few kids who are looking for academics. But, I don't believe we will ever see years where we land any more than 5 from the Garden State.
I am disappointed that we don't have anyone assigned to Cali. BC has a very good reputation out there. Cali sends a ton of regular students to BC every year. It has robust Catholic schools. And, BC FB and BB has proven that they can land top talent from the State. I'm not suggestion we have a guy who visits every school. But, I certainly would like one of these last two hires to have a connection or two out there and is willing to reach out to the Catholic schools (in a somewhat targetted attempt). I think the same could be said about Texas.
Why is Jersey going to be harder? I agree that Rutgers will not return to a non-entity. I think the combination of a bad hire in Flood and real competition will probably result in a lot of 5-6 win bottom of conference records in the short term, but they will not be pre-Schiano rutgers again. I think the question turns to whether Spaz has caused enough reputational damage that our own unattractiveness carry significantly beyond his tenure. This seems possible. It no longer seems as likely that Syracuse will be the threat they were on a trajectory to be. The factories have always or at least for the last decade plus come in to NJ and taken their pick of top guys, so I don't see that as changing. I guess Golden is making Miami more of a player than they have been. I see NJ recruiting remaining more difficult than it was 5 years ago but I don't understand why it would be harder? Also as something of an aside, in the last 10 recruiting classes we have signed 5 NJ recruits two times, once in Jags' 2008 class and once in Spaz's 2011 class, TOB did 4 once in the Toal class. TOB's 1999 class did have 7, but is an outlier in terms of numbers.