Via Nathan, we find the widget that just destroyed any hope you had of getting anything done today. MapGameday has a map displaying each school's prospects on a national scale so you can see exactly how your school is faring both within their state and also on a national level. In addition to being ooh-clicky-neato, the map will undoubtedly have hardcore recruitniks eating their hats at their desks as they wonder important things like "WHY DON'T WE DOMINATE EASTERN UTAH DAMMIT?!?!?!?"
Again: you're welcome. That spreadsheet can wait until tomorrow. A few interesting examples follow, including a few showing that despite an alleged nationwide recruiting focus, few schools actually embrace the "fifty states plan" for drawing talent. Recruiting remains local, even for the silverbacks of the college football world.
Texas keeps it very simple by locking down anyone and anyone in the Houston and DFW areas, all but turning the high schools into a public utility supplying Austin with fresh legs:
Ditto for USC.
Pete Carroll's turned L.A. into a talent trap Snake Pliskin couldn't slip out of, bypassing the need for out-of-state talent by living and dying off the abundant crop just around the corner from campus.
In just his third recruiting season, Urban Meyer's begun to alter Florida recruiting patterns. There's emphasis on local talent, sure; but Meyer will go far from home to tap recruits he likes, as evidenced below. Coast-to-coast:
The ultimate national recruiter is Notre Dame, whose map betrays both a national strategy born from their high media profile (NBC's one of the best recruiters they have, Tom Hammond's scary baby face excepted) and the local brawling going on between tOSU and Michigan. Notre Dame dodges the fracas entirely and goes national for their talent. This is nearly random scatterplot, now that we look at it. Without knowing what you're looking at, it could be a restaurant distributor's map or a trucking supply company schematic.
