WVU and the Big XII: West Virginia Stands to Win Big in Recruiting

If you've ever been to the top of a mountain then you know that the view is 360 degrees.  On a clear day in West Virginia, it's not hard to imagine clear into Ohio, or down south all the way to the Capital.  If you're Dana Holgorsen, you would probably gazing off to the North, hoping to scope out offensive schemes in Pittsburgh or maybe South to catch B.J. Daniels running two-minute drills.  

Up until last week, at least, Dana Holgorsen had no need to look anywhere else—then the Big XII came knocking.  After a little game of red light/green light with West Virginia, the Big XII offered up the vacancy that Missouri left as it declared it would join up with the SEC.  Now, it seems Dana Holgorsen's gaze has shifted back West to familiar territory.  

Speculation, as is to be expected, has been at an all-time high since West Virginia made its move official.  Will we be a contender?  If so, how soon?  Will our fanbase maintain its reputation of traveling well?  Will the distance to away venues wear and tear too much on the team? You get the idea.  

All that is certain at this point is that the Big East and its atrophied landscape are all but in West Virginia's rear view mirror and no one can blame them for not looking back.  True, there is still a buyout fee to the tune of $10 million and a 27 month rule which may prove to be a speed bump, and, of course, there is still a conference schedule that needs to be played this year.  

You can be certain, though, that Mountaineer nation is already reading up on where to get the best brisket in Austin.  

In the short term though, Dana Holgorsen will no doubt be relishing the fact that he can head back to his old stomping grounds for recruiting purposes.  One of the few lingering question marks regarding Dana Holgorsen was how effective he would be in recruiting kids out of the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, and the Northeast.

While no one doubted that he would be able to pull in quality talent, Dana Holgorsen would be starting at square one on the recruiting trail without the relationships and connections he left behind in the Southwest.  The entrance into the Big XII, however, has made any of that concern moot.  Holgorsen has the blueprint for recruiting the Midwest, and more importantly the talent factory that is Texas.  

Of course West Virginia also stands to profit from being so far removed from the rest of its new conference brethren.  No current Big XII team has a pipeline to states like Pennsylvania and New York in the North or Florida in the Southeast.

 It will obviously be an uphill battle to stand out in a conference where Texas and Oklahoma are king, but West Virginia just happens to be the new team on the block with offensive firepower, a young, star head coach, and a reputation as a winning program.  

West Virginia may well become a melting pot of sorts for recruits coming out of different areas across the country.  One thing that will help in the interim is West Virginia winning out the rest of the way this year and showing up for a BCS date in early January.  

The bigger picture here, though, is that recruiting is more paramount now than it has ever been for West Virginia.  It's one thing to be the marquee program in the Big East.  It is quite a different thing altogether to arrive as the greenhorn in a conference with multiple national powerhouse programs and be a player.  

Oliver Luck will no doubt be pulling out all the stops to trumpet WVU's arrival into the Big XII in the grandest fashion.  He and Holgorsen will have to do any and everything to draw elite talent to a program that, for the second year in a row, will try and reinvent itself as something new and singular in its conference.

Morgantown could be a bridging point for talent from East and West, North and South.  It won't happen overnight, but West Virginia has the chance to truly become a national power as it waves goodbye to a withering Big East.  As it stands, West Virginia seems to be steering the ship in the right direction and, with any luck, it'll manage to pick up some blue chip talent along the way.  

The whirlwind of conference expansion (or implosion if you're in the Big East) has been interesting to say the least.  A year ago, today, Dana Holgorsen was only just commencing with the celebratory handshakes for being named as head coach-in-waiting.  We all know how that story went.  

The idea that he would be leading his new team back to old territory would've seemed like an unbelievable scenario.  It is reality now, though, and fortunately for us, this chapter of the Dana Holgorsen saga seems to be panning out on a much brighter note.  

And with what we've seen Dana Holgorsen and his staff do with a mixed bag of new players vs. Stewart-era holdovers, one can only imagine what we will see once Holgorsen gets his chance to go after the best talent from Virginia to Iowa.  2012 will be an exciting year.