Originally Posted by
Mal
??? Better evidence is needed for this, please. You've made a statement counter to conventional wisdom and anecdotal experience, then as proof offered only your perusal of a top 250 recruit list for the current year (which covers a sample of, what, 10% of the D-1 recruits in one season?), setting SAT parameters you know will eliminate a disproportionate number of kids from the South (I think your intent was to set for better Duke targets academically but your blanket statement fails to make a distinction between high academic achiever recruits and others), and then dropped California, Illinois and Ohio into the list of examples bolstering your claim. Perhaps a breakdown of roster members on BCS squads from the Northeast (PA does not count for football - we all know the majority of its recruits come from the western half of the state, and what's now Big Ten territory), as opposed to the Southeast may be more convincing.
Also, number of recruits per capita, which appears to be your measure, is meaningless. Raw number of recruits is more important. Wyoming may have a higher number of rare talents per 1,000 people than California, but scouts aren't going to pour in there anytime soon.
When we see 7 or 8 guys from Jersey and New York on every SEC team and not 7 or 8 guys from Florida and Georgia on every Big East team, the presumption might change. Until then, I'm afraid I'm quite unconvinced.
Regardless, I don't think access to a new recruiting ground in which our new coordinator has been coaching at a non-scholarship institution is worth all that much, so the whole discussion is more academic than anything. Knowles may have set up some connections with high school coaches in the area, but he wasn't even approaching the kinds of talent Duke's now looking for, much less directly competing with Rutgers and UConn. If some stud QB emerges out of Ithaca HS, his time there may help, but that's about it.