Homegrown national champions are a thing of the past
Less than one month after LSU capped off a national championship at home in New Orleans, the Tigers inked a top-five recruiting class. That group had some expected Louisiana flare with six signees hailing from the Pelican State. But it also had more national flavor than ever. LSU inked out-of-region players from California, Colorado, Maryland and even Washington in addition to nabbing multiple players from the non-bordering states of Florida and Georgia.
Thirteen years ago, following the Tigers’ previous most recent national title, LSU signed 14 players from its home state in a 25-player class. Everyone else came from the Southeast or neighboring Texas.
Clearly, the strength of a state’s crop from year to year determines how well a team can fill its needs at home. But traditionally, states like Texas, Florida and yes, Louisiana, can ably feed national champions without having to stray too far from its borders.
There’s been a narrative shift of late, particularly in the era of Alabama’s recruiting dominance: Staying home isn’t enough. National title contenders must recruit nationally.
“These schools now, like LSU and Georgia, know they can get a kid from across the country,” 247Sports Director of Recruiting Steve Wiltfong said. “Notre Dame used to be the only national brand. Now everybody is on national television.”
Statistics bear this theory out.
A Drastic Shift Toward Out-Of-State Recruiting
Texas’ 2005 national championship team is considered one of the most talented teams ever. It’s also, perhaps, the only modern example of what would happen if all of the top talent from a single state stayed home year after year.
That Longhorn team featured just 12 out-of-state players on its official roster, which includes walk-ons. Track scholarship-only signees from the previous four cycles, and just seven of Texas’ 78 roster adds from 2002-05 came from outside of the Lone Star State. For perspective, Clemson’s 2016 national title team featured 76 out-of-state players on its roster. All of Alabama’s and Clemson’s national title teams from 2015-18 had 70-plus out-of-state players on their official rosters.
The Crimson Tide had 76 (2015) and 73 (2017). That number ballooned from Nick Saban’s first title-winning team in Tuscaloosa, which featured only 54 out-of-state players. The percentage jump for those classes is stark. Alabama’s 2006-09 classes saw 47.8 percent of scholarship players sign from within the state. That number dropped to 28.6 percent in its 2014-17 classes.
Generally, the numbers have jumped since the mid-2000s. Florida’s 2006 national title team had just 22 out-of-state players on the roster. Even two years later that number spiked to 35, largely thanks to Urban Meyer’s aggressive national recruiting strategy. The 2011 Crimson Tide had just 53 out-of-state players on their roster. One year later that number popped to 66.
The only real exceptions tend to come in the bountiful talent-producing states. Florida State’s 2013 national title team featured just 26 out-of-state players. But it’s worth noting the year following the Seminoles’ title, they inked 14 out-of-state players; 54 percent of the previous roster’s total.
Success and modern tools of connection – social media, video games, and now, Zoom calls – allows teams to enter recruiting races out-of-region they may not have been able to before.
“It’s so much easier to build a connection now to make an out-of-region guy feel comfortable with you rather than State U down the road if they’re not working as hard and their product is not as good as yours,” Wiltfong said.
The only real exception to this idea is LSU. The 2007 Tigers had just 45 out-of-state players. LSU’s 2019 title team featured just 46. Actually, LSU’s 2004-07 classes featured a higher percentage of out-of-state players (49.4%) than the classes from 2016-19 that led to the Tigers’ championship (49%).
How Out-Of-Region Recruiting Has Changed
Ultimately, the out-of-state numbers are too varied to make any singular conclusion about a national recruiting spike for contenders. It stands to reason Alabama will always have to recruit out of state more often than Florida State.
There’s a way to mitigate that, however. Let’s examine how teams are recruiting in their home states and the states that border them. Alabama may not be as talent-rich as Florida. But it does border Georgia, Florida and Mississippi, three of the most bountiful talent-producing states in the Southeast. Clemson may not benefit from strong in-state talent production. But it sits only a short drive from Virginia and Georgia.
Removing those border states from the equation, and you get a better idea of how these teams are actually recruiting.
Using Texas’ 2005 national title team as a jumping off point, 247Sports examined every national champion from 2005-2019 and the four previous recruiting classes that formed the base of those teams. We only considered scholarship players who did not hail from the program’s home state or its bordering neighbors.
There have been spikes and dips over the last 15 years. Meyer’s teams tend to skew the numbers the most given his recruiting strategy has long had a national bend – his final Ohio State class, a 26-player group, featured just six players from Ohio or any of its bordering states. Overall, however, there’s been a steady climb across the board.
This jump is most noticeable in Alabama’s title-winning teams.
The Tide’s 2009 team was built mostly via players from their region as 18.3 percent of signees from their previous four classes hailed from outside Alabama or a bordering state. That number climbed steadily with each proceeding champion: 2011 (21.4%), 2012 (26.4%), 2015 (30.4%), 2016 (37.2%).
A True Shift Nationally
It’s worth noting just how drastic of a shift we’ve seen since Texas’ title-winning team in 2005. The Longhorns’ 2003 and 2004 classes did not feature a single out-of-state signee. Georgia, which had the No. 1 overall class in 2020 and hails from similarly stacked home state, saw 17 of their 25 signees last cycle come from outside the Peach State.
In fact, nobody from the top five recruiting classes last cycle – Georgia, Alabama, Clemson, LSU, Ohio State – signed double-digit players from their home state. Given that those five schools make up the current elite class of college football to high school recruits, it’s hard to see this trend changing any time soon.
Just 15 years ago Texas won a national title largely thanks to Texans. Could something like that occur again? Maybe. The Longhorns took 19 in-state players last cycle out of 20 signees. But given the way things are trending, a rehash of the Longhorns’ 2005 success seems more unlikely by the year.
