I'm not a recruiting nerd. So with Terps fans constantly worrying about the whims of seventeen year olds I decided to see if anyone has attempted to explain why certain players go to certain schools. I found 2 interesting sites.

The first is from a bunch of FSU econ grads that are also big football fans who came up with a model that's 70+% accurate in predicting where HS football players will end up. http://ssbea.mercer.edu/recruiting.htm. From this analysis it appears Fridge's problem wasn't "locking up" top players, but the fact that top players were not interested in UMD.

The second is from Rivals. They did a two-part series on which schools recruit well, how their recruiting translates to wins, and whether you need to win before getting top talent, or get top talent to win. UMD (Fridge) did well on the first measure, but was awesome on the second (VT was/is the best at winning with their talent). Part 1: http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1179868. Part 2: http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1183796