clawman said:
I'm by no means a recruiting expert, but generally speaking, I think the coaching staff places a HUGE emphasis on recruiting Washington High Schools in particular, but the PNW in general. Any time you can keep the best talent in-state, it is a huge bonus, because as you mentioned - those scholarships count towards in-state tuition being spent. Eastern is in a huge advantage over a lot of the Big Sky because it resides in a highly under-rated High School football state of 6m people that it can offer in-state scholarships to, whereas schools like Montana and MSU don't have enough in-state Division I level athletes and are forced to spend a lot more money on out of state scholarships. People talk about the disparity in operating budgets between us and the Montana schools and they fail to recognize how much more money those schools are spending on out of state scholarships than Eastern is. The strength of EWU's program will always be Washingrton kids.
That said, I'm not sure we'd be able to compete at the level we are at without heavily recruiting California. In particular, we've had a lot of success with skill position players from the Bay Area, and SoCal to a lesser extent. Most of the really good skill position players we've had in the past 10 or so years have been from California. Think Meyer, Nichols, Jones, Adams, etc.
I think each season there's a set number of out of state scholarships that we're able to offer. The key is balance between having a solid base in Washington and being able to reach out and expand that towards areas that have really good football talent in other States. We wouldn't be winning as much if we were to just recruit the state of Washington.
