I'll throw this out there for discussion, and some may disagree.

It's happened in the past and it will happen again.  A good looking h.s. prospect will pop up somewhere within 50-75 miles or so, and someone will comment, yeah, sign him, can you imagine all the folks from his hometown who will come to Athens to see him play?

Last year, I went to the Lancaster-Hilliard Davidson game at Hilliard.  HD would go on to become the Division 1 State champs.  Lancaster's Nathan Carpenter had rushed for something like 350 yds a week or two prior.  I was really looking forward to seeing the game.  Anticipating big crowd, I got there early...

I figure there were about 75 Lancaster kids dressed for the game, and another 150 band members, cheerleaders, etc. minimum.

How many people came up from Lancaster to support all these kids?  There were MAYBE 200 or so who made the trip (a trip which would be about the same length as going from Lancaster to Athens).

We all know that Nathan signed to play at Ohio.  I think he'll play plenty of football before all is said and done.  But if only about 200 can make a 40 min trip to support all these kids, we can probably count on one hand the number   who will come to Athens to support just 1, outside of Coach Carpenter and his wife of course.  

It seems pretty obvious to me.  You can recruit all the locals you want, it just won't make any difference in attendance.

well, in the last decade at least, lancaster football fan support has consistently been pretty weak for how much the district has exploded in size.

The example I would bring up is Patrick Angle from Logan (who is headed to YSU in the fall I believe.)
If this kid would have ended up at Ohio I GUARANTEE he would have brought a sizable contingent of Logan fans to Athens. I honestly think logan fans travel better than most any other rural school in the state and there's no way the fans would have missed out on a seeing an exceptional athlete and even better hometown kid play on saturday's.

If you go see the season opening game between lancaster and logan when it's being played in Lancaster you'll notice the road Logan fans either equal or often outnumber the home side year after year.