I don't think anyone will disagree with you that once we win a national title like Ohio State we can start recruiting everywhere and kids will travel. The problem that everyone neglects is that in the 500 mile radius for the Buckeyes, the amount of 4 and 5 stars isn't anywhere close to comparable for what we have. So while Meyer was trying to build that program while kids "weren't willing to travel", he had so much talent around him it didn't really matter, and didn't have to sell being away from home to kids while he built a winner. He had plenty of kids to do it with from his very own backyard. While I get what you are saying with "Ohio State's commit list is from all over the country", it actually wasn't always that way for Meyer. Take a look at what it was before their 2014 national title, here's amount of recruits from inside the 500 mile radius (I saw a distinct difference from 2012-2016 and then 2017 forward that's why the split is. Only reason I can think of is kids commit so early anymore that maybe the 2014 national title didn't really have a great help until the 2017 class?):
2012 - 23/25 92%
2013 - 14/24 58%
2014 - 19/23 83%
2015 - 18/27 67%
2016 - 21/25 84%
Average of 76.8% within the 500 mile radius that were coming to Columbus. Then all of a sudden they win the 2014 national championship and have been to the playoffs a couple times and your argument is starting to hold true:
2017 - 9/21 43%
2018 - 2/7 29%
They finally had less than 50% of their team from outside the 500 mile radius. Before that however, they weren't asking people to go that far to fill out their class. But we can even go one step further and talk about what Urban was getting from his own state during that time period to build a national title team. Here's who signed from Ohio to the Buckeyes:
2012 - 15/25 60%
2013 - 10/24 42%
2014 - 9/23 39%
2015 - 12/27 44%
2016 - 9/25 36%
His first five years he was getting 44.2% of his class from in his own state. People weren't traveling. He had the talent in his backyard. The scary thing is, now he's got the national title like you talk about, so he's able to not go after the "lower rated 4 star in Ohio" and he can go after the five star from IMG instead:
2017 - 6/21 29%
2018 - 1/7 14%
So I agree that they will come from all over if we win a national title, the problem is that our immediate radius and our own state does not have the talent anywhere close to what Ohio State does to help us build without asking kids to travel to get those "big wins". There probably isn't a huge difference between Columbus and Lincoln until you start talking mileage to get there. It always comes back to that.
