I've been looking at this all week since it got bumped and wondering:

1. Is the recruit distribution now about the same as it was 10 years ago? (I was away from the game for many years so I don't know if there was any realignment.)

2. My sense is that all of this is a lot less relevant nowadays - at least at the lower levels - because there are so few human coaches, and distance is irrelevant for the sims. Thoughts?

1) Theoretically, yes. Someone'd have to pull new data to be sure.

2) Still relevant. Human coaches still pay fort distance, so more recruits within your 180 means you don't have to spend as much per recruit. Also, it's not hard to check and see how many of the schools close to you have human coaches.