Kansas State doesn't recruit well either, but they're also in a hotbed of jucos.
The recruiting cycle has changed so much, it's killing the remote-from-talent programs, of which you guys are unfortunately one. But it hits any school with not much talent close by. The days are gone when kids took their official visits as seniors, and after taking all five, chose their school.
It's all about unofficial visits now. Look at all the kids who are committed as juniors or younger. You're not even allowed to take an official that soon, but kids are committing. In many cases, when a school is close by, before a kid is even a senior, he's been on unofficial visits, game days, camps etc a dozen times.
How is Syracuse, BC, Nebraska, etc going to compete for true national level kids from the south or west in that scenario anymore? That's why when anything less than an Ohio State level program pulls a kid out of the south, he might be a nice player, but he's rarely one the local school have made a priority.
Of course, the thing with unofficial visits is that the school can't pay for them. The kid or his family "has" to pay for them. Now, if an assistant coach or a parent from a school four hours away drives up 4-5 hours away drives up five kids from one team for a weekend, maybe some gas money somehow finds it's way into their pocket and some generous soul finds them a place to stay.
When you're a plane ride away, you can't play that game. You'll have a handful of well-off white quarterbacks and linemen whose parents might have the dough and inclination to fly to different campuses on unofficials, but that's few and far between.
Even the kids that are a reasonable and affordable drive away, it's not nearly as easy to get them in early much because of how lightly concentrated they are. Kids frequently come together and share the expense, or a high school or 7 on 7 coach drives a group. While there might be desirable kids drivable to Syracuse, there's unlikely to be a bunch that know each other that are Syracuse quality that can share the expense to come together over an over.
That's the biggest reason why Syracuse is one of the toughest places to recruit to, and there's almost nothing you can do about it. Has nothing to do with how nice the school is or the history of the program.
The only semi solution for those schools is to get an early signing day in place, along with the ability to pay for official visits junior year. That would give schools like Syracuse a fighting chance. I'm against it, because I think it's a very bad deal for the kid, and also frankly because the current arrangement gives FSU a huge advantage. Not over it's regional peers, but at least against schools from outside the region trying to come in and get kids.
But you should be very strongly for it.
