The first article in our series took a comparative look at how Virginia Tech stacked up against its recruiting competition head-to-head. Now that we have analyzed the competition, the next step is to breakdown recruiting by location. I will analyze the regional recruiting trends in more detail by breaking down offers from Tech by geographic location.

Virginia Tech's acceptance in the ACC provided the opportunity to compete more easily with the regional schools in football recruiting. While the Hokies' recruiting focus will always be in-state, Tech began to recruit North Carolina more heavily, assigning three assistant coaches to this state. In fact, Tech almost offered as many players from North Carolina (17) as from Virginia (21) last year. Virginia Tech also began to recruit South Carolina and Georgia while leaving a previous recruiting area, Florida. While the initial success in these new recruiting areas was not significant, Tech's presence should lead to more signings in the future.

The following table provides the number of Virginia Tech signees and offers by state for the last four years. Note that players are listed in the state they went to high school, i.e., prep school or junior college players are listed in the state they attended high school. Also, prep school players that committed as seniors and stayed with their original commitment are only listed in their high school senior year, e.g., William Wall would be listed in DC for the 2003-2004 recruiting year.

In the last four years, Tech has signed an astounding 65% of in-state players that have been offered. Anyone still wonder why Tech concentrates so much on in-state recruits? Tech's success out-of-state has been more limited, with only 13% of the players offered signing. In other words, Tech signs approximately 5 out of 8 players in-state that are offered and only 1 out of 8 players offered from out-of-state.

Does Tech have more success in one part of the state than another? To break down Tech's recruiting in Virginia, I have divided the state into four regions: (1) East - east of (and including) Williamsburg; (2) North - north of (and including) Fredericksburg and Culpeper; (3) West - west of (and including) Lynchburg, Staunton, and Harrisonburg; (4) Central - everything in between the other three regions.

Tech has experienced slightly more success in the Richmond (Central) area, but statistically the four regions are fairly even. The Tidewater region has generally been considered the strongest high school football area in the state, and these statistics support that conclusion with 38% of Tech's in-state offers coming from the Eastern region. One interesting piece of information is that the Peninsula District, located in upper Hampton Roads, has as many offers (12) as the Western region of the state for the last four years.

Obviously, in-state loyalty is extremely important for Tech's recruiting, but is location a significant factor overall in Tech's recruiting strategy? In other words, is the likelihood of a player selecting the Hokies inversely related to the distance from Blacksburg? A quick look at the signing probability in states adjacent to Virginia would indicate that a definite relationship exists. The following table looks at the signees and offers from states bordering Virginia:

The percentage of out-of-state players signing with Tech from adjacent states is about twice the rate from non-adjacent states (18.9% compared to 9.6% from non-adjacent states). Geography certainly appears to be a factor in Tech's recruiting strategy. I would expect that the percentage of players signing from adjacent states would continue to increase, particularly in North Carolina where Virginia Tech is placing an increased emphasis.

Looking at the information from the first article on head-to-head recruiting and this article on regional recruiting, the next obvious question is who is Tech's biggest competition in-state and against whom do the Hokies have the most problem competing out-of-state? Obviously, UVA is VT's main competition in-state, but what other schools recruit Virginia heavily and how does Tech fair against those schools? The following table provides the head-to-head recruiting records in-state for the last four years: