I agree with much of your post. The quickest & easiest avenue of success for any P-5 football program is their location relative to a recruiting hotbed. LSU has one within their state they thoroughly mine and they have the huge hotbed of Houston nearby. The states of Texas & Florida are both huge recruiting hotbeds and of course Alabama recruits large nationwide with their brand.

Arkansas is no recruiting hotbed. This state usually produces about 1/2 dozen SEC caliber athletes yearly. It has a year of 9 or 10 maybe once a decade. That is definite obstacle for a program as Arkansas. The Hogs must have a coach that recruits well along with developing the program. The Hogs had those coaches with Broyles, Holtz, Hatfield and even Ford & Nutt did much better over comparable coaching spans than Bielema is doing. Petrino did big time but brought scandal.

I am nearly sure Virginia Tech has better recruiting accessibility than the Hogs. The SEC would immensely help VT in recruiting. Recruiting avenues for VT would open up throughout the southeastern US. Arkansas never recruited Florida or any state to the east as they often do now back in SWC days. Arkansas just recruited Texas extremely heavily back then. That was all.