Gerry posted that he felt allowing official visits in the summer would help out an Iowa and also that Iowa should invest more in recruiting personnel. He was also talking about Big Ten programs needing to keep up...I am speaking mostly generalities here as I can't get on and post the actual tweet this ten seconds.
I don't care how much the Big Ten spends, it won't matter. Population trends are not in their favor...football can be close to year round in the south. The culture that worships football in the south does not exist in the north...athletic departments offer fewer opportunities for scholarships in other sports in the south than they do in the Big Ten...do we want those to go away so those funds can divert to football? Even then, its still not about money.
Schools like Iowa (and everyone not named Michigan or Ohio State in the B1G) are not going to go into Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Texas, etc and pull four and five star kids..they are going to get the kids who are either undersized with motors, or kids who are academic risks...the haves get to cherry pick...those who aren't, they get the leftovers.
For most programs up north (and most everywhere not in the SEC) it's about having to identify and then develop talent...South Carolina doesn't have the history that Iowa has over the past 30 years but it recruits at a higher level and gets athletes Iowa doesn't get. It's geography and demographics.
to just wish something is gonna change, or 'demand change', is a fruitless pursuit. There is a deck, and it's stacked against most of the schools north of the Mason-Dixon line right now.
Thankfully, there are still a lot of eyeballs in Big Ten country, they will still get good bowl game dance partners, the BTN will still fund the athletic departments and nine conference games might actually be better than eight, so they can keep playing one another and not schools outside the league as often. Basically the Big Ten goes Amish
