Football Recruiting Neighborhoods

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I was just looking at the geographical area of every school in the conference in terms of recruiting. South Carolina is probably the hardest job to build in the SEC. I originally was going to say Mississippi State because of Mississippi’s population and having to deal with LSU and Bama in close proximity. South Carolina has to beat out Clemson, Auburn, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, and Florida State. That is actually insane.

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Why does USC have to beat out Florida and Florida State but MSU doesn't? MSU has to beat out Bama, but not Auburn?

You can add Auburn in as well for Mississippi State. I wouldn’t say Florida and Florida State for them. Florida has never been a strong point for them. It has for South Carolina.

TN has an extremely difficult geographical recruiting situation. Our in-state talent is all in West TN, about 6 hours from Knoxville. That means it's closer to Ole Miss, Bama, State, Arkansas, and LSU. That is why Tennessee has historically had to recruit so much in North Carolina. You can also look at the historical patterns of UGA and Bama to see that Tennessee is at its best when those schools are "down" and vice versa. When TN is recruiting strongly, Bama and UGA feel it.

South Carolina is also very difficult because TN and UGA have historically gone into SC and taken what we wanted. That then left Clemson and SC fighting for the scraps.

Have you looked at the demographics of Mississippi? Yes there are several good programs to compete against in recruiting, but the MS schools will never be starved of high school talent. Same for South Carolina. Its just a matter of $ and the right coach. I would say UK is the hardest spot to build a program when you factor in demographics. What talent they do produce in-state probably all gets hoovered up by OSU.

Who?