In the effort of making recruiting more realistic, i havent been a big fan of the nationalized-recruiting suggestions. meanwhile, i do agree the system in place could use work to be more realistic.
one example of this; St. Mary's has, what, 5 australians on their roster? in HD, to do this, you'd have to pay a ridiculous amount of money for each trip or visit. obviously, in real life, getting the 2nd-5th australians are cheaper than getting the 1st australian. you don't have to fly down there for every single visit.
my idea: have "trip planning" for each two-hour cycle. you plan where you fly or drive to, who you visit when you're there, who you scout, etc. you can only visit a recuit once per cycle (maybe scout them a few times). obviously, the player won't accept your home visit if you haven't scouted him on *previous* cycles, and he won't come back to campus with you. for campus visits, you offer to pay for them on a home visit or phone call, then the next cycle they come by to visit campus.
each thing you do during a trip takes a certain amount of time, thus limiting what you can actually do during a cycle. having enough cash to fly instead of ride a bus obviously saves time, but costs more. perhaps you can offer to fly someone in for a campus visit, or bus them in, with flying them in being more likely to be accepted and give a higher boost.
this system would probably require less cryptic player responses and scouting reports, but that could make it more fun in some ways. when you scout a recruit, perhaps the system could let you know which schools' scouts were at the game.
i honestly just had this idea a few minutes ago, these are just the things popping into my head.