70 miles is a forum myth that existed since pull downs became public knowledge. Don't forget that pulldowns were never intended as a part of the game so no special codes addressing the pull downs were written into the game - the ability to pull down is an exploitation of a loop hole that's long existed in the programming from the days when drop downs were the end all be all and if you wanted someone from a higher division the conventional wisdom was to sit back and wait. While some people said that recruits were more likely to be pulled down @ 70 miles, its def NOT guaranteed, and you should always start with a coach call or phone call before potentially wasting efforts until you've done it enough times to have a gague of who is pulldownable (even then you can potentially get burned).

And to answer the a/b prestige question, the a prestige team will always have an advantage so long as the a prestige team is of equal or higher division than the b prestige team - the question was silent about whether both teams were in the same division...

The 70 mile rule means one and only one thing. Some players who will not talk to you outside of 70 miles may talk to you within 70 miles. That's all there is to it. The rule does not grant any bonus bump or special dispensation other than that. You still have to send out a phone call to see if they are interested and if they say they are a backup then you recruit them like you would any pulldown.

Jtt, I respectfully disagree that pulldowns are an exploitation of a loophole. Pulldowns were always intended to be part of the game. The loophole, long since closed, was that in the first couple of seasons of HD any school could pulldown virtually any player if they were willing to spend the money. There were DIII schools pulling down DI players and that was never the intent.

I just pulled down a recruit within 70 miles.  So it's definitely not the case that any recruit within 70 miles who will be recruitable will be immediately recruitable.  OTOH, this guy wouldn't talk to several other schools with much better prestige but further away.  So there was still a significant advantage to the proximity.  I think, at the end of the day, that within 70 miles recruits are just generally more open to your efforts than they would otherwise be.  Doesn't have any impact on the weight of the effort, as others have said.  But they're more likely to talk to you, and more likely to accept HV right away.

This is two years worth of record keeping I have on pull downs availability   and location at a B+ DII school.

Name	Pos	Pos	Rating	Eligible	Miles	Location	Budget	Can be pulled Down
		Rank
James Harrell	SF	168	623	3	20	Riverside, CA	0	no
Dennis Dabbs	PG	159	509	4	20	yes		yes
Larry Frahm	C	145	517	4	20	Rialto, CA	0	yes
Clinton Leake	PF	119	567	4	20	Colton, CA	0	no
Tim Watson	SG	113	548	4	20	Riverside, CA	0	no
Arthur Scott	PF	92	553	4	20	Santa Ana, CA	0	no
Willis Mitchell	PG	198	487	4	30	Redlands, CA	0	Yes
John Langston	PF	187	529	4	30	Corona, CA	0	Yes
Carlton Tamura	C	183	555	4	30	Fountain Valley, CA	0	Yes
Robert Ruck	SG	161	589	2	30	Huntington Beach, CA	0	yes
Donald Jackson	SG	67	564	4	40	Van Nuys, CA	0	no
Joe Hinkle	PF	98	562	4	70	Vista, CA	0	no
Ed Robertson	SG	52	551	4	190	Bullhead City, AZ	0	no
Nicholas Kuster	PG	146	553	4	200	Las Vegas, NV	0	no
Ronald Couch	SF	195	562	3	320	San Jose, CA	0	no
Paul Santillanes	C	191	502	4	340	Jackson, CA	0	no
Thomas Mathis	PG	183	503	4	340	Menlo Park, CA	0	No
Ron Rhoads	SG	123	518	4	360	Sells, AZ	0	no
Joseph Ketchum	SG	83	562	4	360	Oakland, CA	0	Has not met WCAA eligiblity requirements
Tony Jacobson	SG	68	551	4	360	Emeryville, CA	0

I don't think anyone is saying it's a guarantee that anyone inside 70 can be pulled down.  Nor is anyone saying a player inside 70 is immediately recruitable. 

Posted by Weena on 10/17/2012 2:39:00 AM (view original):
The 70 mile rule means one and only one thing. Some players who will not talk to you outside of 70 miles may talk to you within 70 miles. That's all there is to it. The rule does not grant any bonus bump or special dispensation other than that. You still have to send out a phone call to see if they are interested and if they say they are a backup then you recruit them like you would any pulldown.

Jtt, I respectfully disagree that pulldowns are an exploitation of a loophole. Pulldowns were always intended to be part of the game. The loophole, long since closed, was that in the first couple of seasons of HD any school could pulldown virtually any player if they were willing to spend the money. There were DIII schools pulling down DI players and that was never the intent.

weena - i'm surprised that you think they were intended to be part of the game. the original intent was that an upper level recruit would not accept recruiting efforts (until the recruit dropped down). someone figured out that since a recruit could not deny scouting trips, the recruit was forced to take the effort, letting the coach circumvent the cross division recruiting boundaries that were in place. even when pulldowns were first discovered, the same recruits that would never drop down could not be pulled down and the scouting trips had no affect. the "loophole" that you are referring to was not limited to pulldowns; in theory, had no one recruited a "pulldown-able" d1 prospect @ the d1 or d2 level, he would have dropped down. the fact that we would have dropped down was the loophole, and that was closed...as a side affect, he could no longer be pulled down either.

and i'm not sure what you mean about a recruit within 70 miles talking to you where he wouldn't otherwise; how could that ever be measured? this is especially true since you concede that you have to generate the back up message first...you still run the risk that your prospect will not take to your efforts. i'm not sure how anyone could say that there is any difference...

Ok, i'm a little foreign to the concept of a pulldown. This is when you recruit someone from a higher division, and they join your school. But, do they have to let themselves on the D3 lists before they'll put you on their teams list? I guess what I'm asking is, if I'm a d3 school, I'll call the coach and the player to gauge if there is any interest whatsoever. Then, I do home visits, or what have you, and keep up those efforts until they decide that they'd drop down to a d3 school?

Posted by Trentonjoe on 10/17/2012 9:20:00 AM (view original):
This is two years worth of record keeping I have on pull downs availability   and location at a B+ DII school.

Name	Pos	Pos	Rating	Eligible	Miles	Location	Budget	Can be pulled Down
		Rank
James Harrell	SF	168	623	3	20	Riverside, CA	0	no
Dennis Dabbs	PG	159	509	4	20	yes		yes
Larry Frahm	C	145	517	4	20	Rialto, CA	0	yes
Clinton Leake	PF	119	567	4	20	Colton, CA	0	no
Tim Watson	SG	113	548	4	20	Riverside, CA	0	no
Arthur Scott	PF	92	553	4	20	Santa Ana, CA	0	no
Willis Mitchell	PG	198	487	4	30	Redlands, CA	0	Yes
John Langston	PF	187	529	4	30	Corona, CA	0	Yes
Carlton Tamura	C	183	555	4	30	Fountain Valley, CA	0	Yes
Robert Ruck	SG	161	589	2	30	Huntington Beach, CA	0	yes
Donald Jackson	SG	67	564	4	40	Van Nuys, CA	0	no
Joe Hinkle	PF	98	562	4	70	Vista, CA	0	no
Ed Robertson	SG	52	551	4	190	Bullhead City, AZ	0	no
Nicholas Kuster	PG	146	553	4	200	Las Vegas, NV	0	no
Ronald Couch	SF	195	562	3	320	San Jose, CA	0	no
Paul Santillanes	C	191	502	4	340	Jackson, CA	0	no
Thomas Mathis	PG	183	503	4	340	Menlo Park, CA	0	No
Ron Rhoads	SG	123	518	4	360	Sells, AZ	0	no
Joseph Ketchum	SG	83	562	4	360	Oakland, CA	0	Has not met WCAA eligiblity requirements
Tony Jacobson	SG	68	551	4	360	Emeryville, CA	0

trenton - after reading other's posts (and without modifying mine, above) i think what's lacking from this chart is whether the targeted recruits that you weren't able to pulldown were ultimately pulled down and signed by other teams with equal or slightly better prestige. if so, we can say that the 70 mile factor doesn't apply. if not, the chart doesn't really get you anywhere (in the 70 mile analysis) but may be useful in gauging what ratings / pos ranks are viable targets.

jtt, as I mentioned above, I just pulled down a player with B- prestige Methodist that wouldn't talk to multiple A and A+ schools from the ODAC and USA South.  I can guarantee you that if he were further away he wouldn't have talked to me if he wouldn't talk to them.  That's the difference.  That's what we mean when we say a recruit within 70 miles may talk to you when he wouldn't otherwise.  You asked how it could be measured.  I'd say this is a pretty cut and dried example.

From my CC:

10/06 1:23 PM	narcotico		Yah, Richter will be a beast...wouldn't talk to me either but lucky for Dahs he was a local boy and talked to his mom!
10/06 6:34 AM	udm_mike	Virginia Wesleyan (ODAC)	Who'd you sleep with to get Richter, dahs? He wouldn't even return my calls.

narcotico coaches A Greensboro (yes, Greensboro actually dropped to an A!) and Virginia Wesleyan is an A+.

Posted by dahsdebater on 10/17/2012 4:27:00 PM (view original):
jtt, as I mentioned above, I just pulled down a player with B- prestige Methodist that wouldn't talk to multiple A and A+ schools from the ODAC and USA South.  I can guarantee you that if he were further away he wouldn't have talked to me if he wouldn't talk to them.  That's the difference.  That's what we mean when we say a recruit within 70 miles may talk to you when he wouldn't otherwise.  You asked how it could be measured.  I'd say this is a pretty cut and dried example.

You can also measure it in DII by comparing the rating of players who will talk to you. I've had instances where the #180 PG who was 150 miles would give the "chasing something you can't catch" message, but the #165 PG who was 30 miles away was receptive to being pulled down.

dahs - you were the person i was talking about in the latter post when i said: "after reading other's posts (and without modifying mine, above)"

there is absolutely no question that within 70 miles, you can talk to some players you otherwise couldn't, and also, that some players may be available for immediate recruiting who otherwise wouldn't. of course, its not ALL players. im pretty certain its 70 miles although lately the rules of recruiting have broken down. you can no longer assume a player who shows a division above who is not within 70 miles will not be open to your efforts, initially. you can no longer assume a player in your division will take your efforts. you can no longer assume if the 150 rated SG will talk to you and the 149 will not, that the 148 will not, nor that the 151 will (70 miles exempted).

i mean, you can usually make those assumptions and it won't burn you. but its not guaranteed. there is something wrong in recruiting that causes all kinds of ****** up **** now. i thought for a while it might be a home/away preference, but its not. i wonder if it might be a personality thing, but as you cannot find out in detail all the personality attributes, i don't know (i honestly WOULD be using those 1500 psych evals in an effort to find a deterministic pattern to the craziness we call recruiting, if we still had them). at this point, im virtually positive that outside of hidden personality attributes, recruiting is no longer deterministic - i.e. you can't infer who might talk to you based on what someone says or the division they show in - which is really messed up. its either personality driven, or more likely, a bug, or possibly (and this is just quibbling over terminology really), the denied but nonetheless introduced RNG by seble in an area no RNG previously existed.

anyway, long story short, within 70 miles you can generally get guys to talk to you that will talk to an a+ school, no matter what your prestige is. apparently girt claims this is a gradient between 10 and 70 miles (based on the thread someone linked, i never saw his response to me the first time he said that, although i generally would not think that is the case - but now i have to look at it). actually, now that i read his post, i wonder if distance is playing into all the bat **** crazy stuff going on in recruiting? seems like a stretch, but ill have to look for it next season.

"apparently girt claims this is a gradient between 10 and 70 miles"

I think this is true.   I normally pick schools near big cities and have found the 10 mile away guys are easier to talk to than the 70 mile guys.  

On  a side note, I am still trying to pull down a DI player at NYU (DIII), I haven't been able to do it yet but now that I am an A+ I am hopeful.   I have seen people say it's been done but I would like to prove it.

"On  a side note, I am still trying to pull down a DI player at NYU (DIII)."

I've done it on more than one occasion.