Hlas column: Recruiting road at Iowa, ISU far longer than it is in the SEC

(Note to Hlog readers: This is an extension of the post I put up Sunday about recruiting and distance. I used raw data from that to help flesh out a full column for The Gazette. So some of this is repeititious to some of you. Different audiences, different specifications. You who come here will almost always get stuff first, and more of it.)

We can catch our breath now, because the unofficial national holiday that millions of football fans observe has passed. I'm talking about NSD, of course, known more formally as National Signing Day. What, you thought I meant that little shindig the NFL threw on Sunday?

NSD was last Wednesday, and what a glorious day it was. Why ... OK, I won't pretend. I'm not a recruitnik. Many love it. I lack the patience to sift through all the dot-com player rankings, all the all-conference this and all-county that's.

I do remember hearing about Tony Moeaki and Bryan Bulaga when they were Iowa signees. Those were widely considered “good gets,” as they say. I don't recall hearing much about Pat Angerer when he hooked on with the Hawkeyes. But all finished this season in the same fashion, as rookie starters for NFL playoff teams.

Actually, Bulaga ended the season in a really nice place, under a shower of Texas confetti feting the Super Bowl champs. He will ride in a parade today in Green Bay.

Which brings me to another overrated activity, which is charting the NFL draft months before it occurs, or even the day after it's over. Bulaga was the No. 23 pick in the 2010 draft. He was chosen after three other offensive tackles, Trent Williams (4th), Russell Okung (6th) and Anthony Davis (11th). They did not start for the Super Bowl champion.

Recruiting and the draft, though, are as serious as it gets to college and pro teams, and with reason. Because great coaching is, uh, great. But without sufficient talent, it's like Martin Scorsese directing a middle school play. It can still only be so good.

So I'm not downplaying either. It's just that both are so murky in the beginning. I'm content to wait for their real results to surface as time passes rather than to guess at them through the haze now.

For all we know, Williams, Okung and Davis may become better blockers and pass-protectors than Bulaga. Given what we saw in this year's playoffs from Bulaga, though, it's hard to fathom.

Back to recruiting. It can still be interesting even for non-recruitniks. It's telling to see where teams go to get their players. Iowa's reach has gotten longer, it appears. The program has added a foothold in Maryland (three signees for the second-straight year), a state where Kirk Ferentz worked for the Baltimore Ravens in the late 1990s.

Seventeen of the Hawkeyes' 24 recruits are from the Eastern time zone or Texas. Only three are from Iowa.

Can you imagine the traveling it took to get that class assembled, the repeated visits to players' faraway schools? And those are just the players the Hawkeyes won over. You lose more recruiting battles than you win.

Out of a quest for a column angle, I went to Yahoo Maps and calculated the distance Iowa's 24 recruits live from Iowa City. The answer: 16,605 miles.

That's an average of 692 miles per player. Or, a 10-hour, one-way drive if the speed limit is 70 mph.

Ohio State, meanwhile, signed 23 players who live a combined 7,579 miles from Columbus in football-rich, population-rich Ohio. That's a mere 330 miles per player, and 15 of the 23 players live within 200 miles of the Horseshoe.

More teams are in Iowa's boat than Ohio State's. Iowa State's recruits live an average of 933 miles from Ames. Of the 22 players ISU Coach Paul Rhoads got, 14 are either from Florida and Texas high schools or California junior colleges.

Nebraska can't build a Big Ten contender, let alone a Little Caesars Pizza Bowl team, on Nebraska kids alone. Just four of its 20 signees last week were Nebraskans, and the 20 live a total of 16,366 miles from downtown Lincoln.

Why are SEC teams so dominant? One of many reasons: Nineteen of Georgia's highly ranked recruiting class of 26 players are Georgians. Fourteen of Florida's 19 signees are Floridians. Sixteen of LSU's 22 recruits are from Louisiana.

The NFL has a level playing field with its draft. You have the same draft territory as everyone else. Namely, the whole country.

There is no such balance in college football, even among the big boys. Your chances of winning increase dramatically when your school is located near a lot of people.

That doesn't explain Boise State's success or Michigan's downturn, but there are always exceptions.