Forgot if I have asked this in the past or not. When initially making the jump to DI and picking out a mid major or lower level school, what states tend to be best for recruiting. Take into consideration locations, proximity to others. recruit generation, etc. Obviously it depends what other human coaches are nearby geographically but discuss...

Bump

California and Texas have a ton of recruits overall, meaning unless the local mid-major to smaller conferences have multiple advanced programs, you should have good access to what I’d call B to C level recruits in those areas - the 550-600 OVR guys with good potential. The northeast has a lot too, but tends to be more crowded. So as you note, the major consideration is how full and how competitive the local power conferences are.

I'm curious if CA and TX are considered the best states for DII/DIII as well (with caveat that it all really depends on how full the conferences are)

At D3, I think you’ll see the biggest geographical advantage is remoteness, being far apart from rivals, having a part of the pool to yourself, so to speak. That’s the conventional wisdom, anyway. This is why you almost never see Palm Beach Atlantic or Colorado (D3) sim controlled. At D2 and especially D1, remoteness is not much of a positive. Fewer schools usually means fewer division-appropriate recruits generated in the region.

So yeah, CA and TX are theoretically also among the “best” locations for D2/3 schools under normal circumstances, in terms of access to large, high quality pools of recruits. The flip side is, of course, the more people trying to exploit this advantage, the less of an advantage it actually is. Personally, at D2, I think the most important thing to pay attention to is how many humans there are in the mid-low D1 conferences in your region. There are always weak spots, look for those wherever you are.