On one side, you have those who say that it doesn’t matter at all where our recruits come from—they could all be out of state if they are good players. 

On the other side, you have people that say we’ll never be a successful program if we don’t do a better job of recruiting in state; that we’ll never surpass VT until we surpass them in in state recruiting; that VA football players are better than surrounding states.

I reject both of these extremes.  When a player commits to come here, I am just as excited about them whether or not they are in state.  And I love our past and current players just the same whether or not they came from in state. 

That said, here are some reasons that I think it’s important to get as many players as possible from in state:

1.  When we get in-state recruits, it can create pipelines from certain high schools.  It’s not impossible that this could occur at an out-of-state school, but much less likely because loyalty from a given high school is much more likely to be to an in-state college. 

     For example, several recruits from Pennsylvania that we were in good shape with at the end of the season suddenly decided to go to Pitt, largely because it was an in-state school.

2.  I am going to be a rabid UVA fan no matter whom we recruit, but that is not the case for everyone.  This is especially true for non-alums that live in VA.  They are more likely to be UVA fans if the local stars go to UVA.  If we get a larger non-alum VA fan base, the benefits are myriad:

a.       More people coming to games and clamoring for media coverage.

b.       More media coverage has a feedback effect that creates more fans

c.       More fans and media coverage makes future recruits more likely to   be UVA fans.

d.       This has an obvious feedback effect for years to come

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