We had Melvin Gordon committed, but he reneged and went to his home state school...and is probably one of the two best rbs in the country....he would have made a huge diff at Iowa, and we had him...but lost him. Still, that shows me that we do recruit decently. We do not cheat, tho, and that hampers any efforts to get the SEC footprint recruits. Big Ten gets 50% of their recruits from outside the Big Ten footprint, while the SEC only needs to get 13 % from outside their footprint. Iowa probably gets almost 75% from outside the state.
Iowa, the state, has a poor reputation outside of Iowa....generally, even in the Big Ten, the word is that it is a boring state. Cannot help recruiting.
Up until last year, Iowa had just as many NFL players as Bama....even with all their 5 stars....how can that be? Development...college football is a development sport. Sorry, but in the end, we are never going to satisfy your desire for SEC type recruiting classes....those recruits live in SEC country. If they lived in Iowa, Iowa would dominate and get those commits.