After committing to VT, he said, "I've got friends like Tyrod there." (757 is the area code for the Peninsula area of the state, which produces a lot of D1 talent.)

After committing to Virginia Tech, Bobby Massie (who actually de-committed later) said. "It was just how the players liked Virginia Tech and how they are from all over Virginia. They love it there. They seemed to be just like me. They are the same people I'm used to being around. I just felt comfortable."

Here’s a great article about how important it is for the college coaches to build long-term relationships with high school coaches:

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/recruiting/football/columns/story?id=3225454

One telling quote from the article: “The most successful recruiting pipelines seem to develop because of a coach's prior ties there, or simply the length of time he has been coming back to the same schools.” 

During Groh’s tenure, there has been a lot of turnover with the assistant coaches, which VT has experienced comparatively little of.

This is not saying that our coaches aren’t trying hard enough at in-state recruiting.  For all I know, they are working as hard as they can already.  We are off to a fantastic start for the 2009 class. 

In most years since Groh was hired, we have been approximately equal to VT in in-state recruiting, and overall recruiting, which makes it all the harder to swallow the disparity in on-field results. UVA and VT usually split the majority of top-30 VA recruits.  Two years ago was an aberration where neither of us did well in-state. 

With the way the class of 2009 is shaping up, it appears 2008 was an aberration and not, as some have posited, the start of a trend resulting from VT’s dominance over us on the field during Groh’s tenure.

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