Re: recruiting
This may be beating a dead horse but, Georgia has one of the top recruiting bases in the country. I played tennis at GT in the mid to late 1980's. In tennis, Georgia is considered to have the 4th best junior players behind California, Flordia, and Texas. And the state of Georgia has only two Division I schools to split these prosepects between. The other states have multiple schools. Other states with decent recruiting bases, such as North Carolina, have the multiple school problem too.
States like Arkansas, South Carolina, Kentucky, Mississippi don't produce nearly the number of good athletes, in any sport, that Georgia does. A good example is the example Butch Davis gives. He said the year he won the national championship at Miami, in football (1998?), Dade County produced 60 Division I football players (and neighboring Broward and Palm Beach Counties probably that many as well)whereas the entire state of Arkansas produced only 8! The Ole Miss', Miss State's, Arkansas', Kentucky's, Maryland's really are at a great disadvantage. Almost an insurmountable disadvantage. If GT was in Mississippi we would be another Vanderbilt. If the University of Miami was in Missouri it wouldn't win five football games a year.
Because of GT's prime location, we should be able to produce winning programs in almost every sport. Georgia is one of the top four or five recruiting bases for tennis, baseball, golf. And I would guess one of the top six or eight for football and basketball. If we were to make hockey a varsity sport we would be at a serious disadvantage due to being in Georgia because our recruiting base is probably in the bottom third in that sport.
To make a long story short, I would hope the GT football recruitng staff would be beating the bushes in Georgia and Florida first and foremost. It's fine to have someone in Texas but that should be down the list of priorities. Hopefully the football recruiting thing is working itself out. I sorry its taken four years to figure out...
