Not a single coach on our staff has proven that they can succeed at their current Job Title. Despite that, we have what is shaping up to be our best recruiting class in over a decade. Social media is HUGE. Facilities certainly play a role. The move to the ACC does as well, since kids from Florida can play close to home (although we have a bunch of guys who are not from the South in the class already).
I never said twitter was kids make a choice. But at a school like SU, who will ALWAYS be recruiting against warmer climate schools and well established schools, we are rarely going to be a top recruits' runaway choice. So anyone that we do get will have chosen us due to a small factor here or there that other schools did not have. That is twitter army.
As was mentioned by another poster, your habit of speaking in absolutes really undermines your writing. You are trafficking in areas that don't warrant absolutes, as speculating as to percentages of each factors that leads a recruit to choose Syracuse is inexact, to put it mildly.
Still, we can reason and speculate. Your reasoning is long on "trust me" (and a shot at bnoro's age) and short on, well, reason. You attempt to account for all these other factors and then conclude it's got to be the twitter army. Nowhere do you account for opportunity. A big factor in getting some of these good but not elite kids to Syracuse is opportunity (lets face it, Syracuse isn't, and has never really, gone after and landed truly elite recruits) is the ability to tell them they can be a small fish in a big pond, get recruited over every year, and potentially never see the field or they can come to Syracuse and be the man. That will resonate with some and not others, of course, but it is a major factor in decision making. Zaire Franklin said, upon committing, that he just felt Syracuse really needed him.
But forget about opportunity for a second. There's also the simple fact that scholarship limits force kids in talent rich states like Florida north. Syracuse isn't winning very many recruiting battles against Miami/FSU/UF for Florida kids (or any other kids for that matter). But these schools can only take so many, and Florida produces more talent than local schools can keep. So, as you mention, Syracuse's conference affiliation plays a big role in getting their foot in the door with these recruits, as well as coach relationships. It is no accident that Syracuse very quickly pulled some quality kids from Florida very quickly in the aftermath of Marrone's exit, when MacDonald hit the scene. He is well known with established relationships with the high school coaches and was able to sell a fast paced explosive offense indoors. The Twitter army had nothing to do with these recruits.
To frame it another way, during Syracuse's run of success in the late 80's through the 90's, they managed to effectively recruit Florida. To use your framing, Syracuse needed to have an edge to get these kids who did not immediately think Syracuse to commit there. Twitter did not yet exist, yet Syracuse found success. Occam's Razor says that those factors that led to success are the same factors that lead to success now (emphasis on recruiting there/coaching relationships, exciting offense, team presence in Florida (in those BE days of the 90's Syracuse would play @Miami every other year), opportunity, track record of putting players in the NFL, etc). Unless you can show any of those things to be obsolete or not a factor, it is simply unreasonable to think that the recent advent of the twitter army has supplanted those historical factors and rocketed to a position on the list where it is heavily responsible for reeling in recruits.
One final thought - if the supposed effectiveness of the twitter army is to show a recruit how passionate and involved a fan base is, then isn't this easily undone by simply showing what the Dome looks like on any given Saturday the past several seasons? Like it or not, the Dome isn't selling out 55k (or so) seats where many of these other schools are selling out up to double that. If I'm recruiting against Syracuse and the kid seems impressed with the twitter love, I just point to a picture of a half filled Dome and say it is smoke and mirrors. For the sake of Syracuse, I really really really hope the twitter love isn't a big piece of the recruiting pie, because if it is we're doomed.
