LSU became a power by controlling its home state and stopping the cherry picking. Alabama, Texas, Texas A&M and FSU used to come in a raid that state of all the top recruits. Saban put a stop to that but we'll have to see if holds.
I've always wondered why Illinois hasn't been able to field a powerhouse team. Football might not be as big there as in other state, but the state is huge in population.
well it was more ND and Michigan getting the best Ohio people when Cooper was here, but this was also during a downtime in Notre Dame's history as well, so that's really how FSU and Florida got into the state (Kiewan Ratliff being a prime example who I actually played against in high school).
Anyway, how do you think Mack Brown returned Texas to glory? He was able to keep the biggest blue chippers in the state, instead of losing them to Nebraska and Colorado and A&M and the SEC.
There are states like Nebraska and Washington and Oregon who have to rely on getting 3 or 4 big recruits from out of state every couple years to keep their programs going, but even that is evening out a bit and they are able to homegrow a bit more than they used to....