From my observations and what has been written on this blog and in the MSM, I believe that we have changed our recruiting focus from one that was more heavily focused on retaining all of the talent within the State of Michigan and capturing what we can get in the surrounding states (Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Illinois) as well as a few athletes from certain talent hotbeds (Florida, Texas and California) to a greater emphasis being placed on recruiting from the talent hot beds.  What are the ramifications of this philosophical shift?  And how have coaching changes resulted in shifts in intra-region power? 

1. It is likely that MSU is going to recruit better within Michigan than they have in the past.  My reasoning is that as RR draws greater numbers of recruits from outside of Michigan and the Midwest than the prior regime, more quality players will be available to the Spartans.  In addition, Brian had a post some time back describing how the change in the type of players we recruit will lead to certain players that would have been a lock for Michigan, now being a better fit at State.  I am not implying that we will not get the guys we are interested in recruiting.  That will be dependent upon our continued success on the field and fostering relationships between the program and the high schools within the state.
2. MSU will likely become more competitive in the Big Ten and nationally.  The increased talent level will have the potential to move them up into the second tier of the Big Ten currently being fought over by Wisconsin, Penn State, Illinois and Iowa.
3. Assuming that RR is able to land better talent from outside of Michigan than is available inside of Michigan, our overall talent level will rise, making us more competitive nationally.  Hopefully, the relative talent level between us and MSU will remain constant.  This should raise the absolute level of talent in the Big Ten at the expense of the SEC and ACC (assuming our recruiting focus has moved towards Florida and the south east).

The risk is that we chase windmills and fail to land equal or better talent in the southeast and cede talent within the State of Michigan talent to MSU.  The Spartans then gain an ability to win the recruits we want and there is a possible shift in power.  As I stated before, the mitigant to this is our continued success on the field and fostering relationships between the program and the high schools within the state.

Observations and Parallels:

Is RR’s focus on talent outside of the home state due to his time at WVU where there was far less instate talent than in Michigan? I’m not implying that Michigan is OH, PA, FL, TX or CA, but it is clearly better than WV.  One thing that seems clear, is that the tenures of Bobby Williams and John L. Smith (and the Spartans refer to us as slappies??) decimated the in-state recruiting at MSU.  While there were not great numbers of Plaxico’s and Duckett’s at MSU there were some clear examples of players we wanted but State got.  BW and JLS seemed to have killed this very nicely.

There have been some interesting changes in balance of power within different regions during the last 10-15 years that may provide interesting insight.  

1. The fall of Washington and the rise of Oregon.  How much of the rise of Oregon as a national power have to do with the influx of Phil Knight / Nike money versus the missteps and poor coaching hires at UW?  Has there been a re-routing of talent from Seattle to Eugene?  Did the re-emergence of USC shut down UW’s access to southern California recruits?
2. The fall of Notre Dame, Illinois and Michigan State and the rise of Iowa and Wisconsin (and Northwestern and Purdue to a lesser extent?).  Did the inconsistency of ND and Illinois cede some degree of control over greater Chicago recruiting to other Big Ten School?  A close analysis of the recruiting records (in particular recruit hometowns) for each school over the last 15 years would yield some interesting insight.  Did the Spartans losing Nick Saban to LSU and the ensuing coaching chaos provide an opening to NU and Purdue?
3. The fall of Nebraska and the rise of Oklahoma.
4. The fall of Alabama and Tennessee (to a lesser extent) and the rise of LSU and Auburn.

This post is to generate discussion, as many of the ideas I have included have not been researched, rather are observations of mine that seem to fit together with some degree of logic.