I checked Charlotte's recruiting class the other day and found some of their commits had MAC West offers. The new schools in the South will limit the amount of FBS level players a MAC school can successfully land from Florida and Georgia. That is why winning the in-state MAC recruiting battles is more important than ever and that is what we are doing with Solich. Marshall is going to be the school the most impacted because of their reliance on GA, NC, VA and FL for players. Old Dominion is moving so fast they are getting kids over Virginia and Wake Forest to stay home at Virginia Beach. MAC schools do play the Big Ten a lot which should help recruiting NJ and MD now those are Big Ten states. It may be recruiting suicide for Ohio to leave the MAC for the AAC and give up the strong in-state presence. Ouellette's family in Western Ohio can watch him play almost everywhere on the road in the MAC within a few hour drive.

Really Wes suicidal for OHIO to leave the MAC for the AAC? OHIO leaving for any other conference is "duh"lose-tional. We ain't going anywhere!

It's not like this is new information. There's a reason that the national championship has been won by a southern school every single year since 2005. If we want to get real technical, cold weather schools have won only two national titles since the turn of the century (if you count Oklahoma as a cold weather school in 2000 and Ohio State in 2002). But it isn't until recently that an impact has been made at the smaller schools.

Personally I think UTSA is on the brink of becoming the next great college football team. There's a lot to like about that program right now. I don't know why people are so shocked about Mississippi State and Ole Miss being this good. Literally every other team in the SEC was replacing their starting QB except Auburn. The two Mississippi schools have stockpiled talent over the past 2-3 years and are now experienced.

http://www.charlotte49ers.com/PhotoAlbum.dbml?ATCLID=2054...

Charlotte has nice facilities and the base to expand their stadium as needed.

And it helps to have big money on hand:

Richardson Field and every third building is named after a Belk

The reasons for the ascendancy of Southern football:

* The end of segregation around 1970. Black players who used to come up to Michigan State, Ohio State, Syracuse, etc., are now staying in their own footprint.
* Population trends. Growth of population in the South due to climate and economics. Larger pool of talent to choose from.
* Climate.
* Money available for development. Hard for the Rust Belt to compete with growing, progressive areas of the South. Corporate presence has exploded in the South since the 1960s.
* Local recruiting base is the best in the nation. Some interesting data was put out recently regarding percentage of HS seniors going on to play different levels of college football. At the top of this list for HS seniors going on to play Div. I football were states like Florida, Georgia, Texas, Mississippi. Up north, Ohio and Pennsylvania are still pretty competitive with these southern states, but the figures for states like Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, etc. are demoralizing. The Upper Midwest excels in I-AA, Div. II and Div. III football. Among the reasons is that the local talent base there fits in these divisions rather than Div. I.
* The culture of the South reveres football. In Ohio and Pennsylvania, football is very big but it's not on the level of a quasi-religion like in the South.

Do you notice that schools in the South can build a competitive Div. I program--from scratch--in about three or four years? That's astonishing. Would NOT happen up north. And you don't see it happening.

I don't see any chance that these trends will be reversed in the future. If anything, the disparity between North and South will grow larger.

My goal is to find a collegiate track in North Carolina not named after Irwin Belk. I've been pretty unsuccessful.