I saw this elsewhere a couple months ago, but a recruiting expert was asked about the most important things for elite recruits. It's one guy's opinion, but the top three (in order) went something like this:
- Recent NFL draft picks. Have you and your coaches gotten guys into the league recently? This is why Collins' media team makes it a point to point out all the DBs he's put into the NFL and you can see the effect it's had on the guys we have committed and who transferred in.
- Relationships with coaches and program stability. This is where you see the same schools recruit well no matter what, because the public perception of their program is that they're very stable and they could be "back" at any time.
- Playing time. Pretty self-explanatory in terms of its appeal.
After those, all the other things (stadium size, cool uniforms, facilities, etc.) help sway opinion, but they're not the reason anybody will choose your school. Then overall brand is there just to get your foot in the door and grab the attention of the players, though academics can be big with certain recruits or their parents. Regarding the first point, FSU has 32 players in the league (6th most) and Tennessee has 24 (17th most). That and the fact that the public perception of them every offseason is that "this year could be the year" keep them afloat at recruiting.
That being said, you cannot just recruit the best players and get top 10 classes and hope for the best. You need class balance to be successful on the field and a lot of time your class can be artificially boosted by certain position groups. As someone else mentioned, that's what plagued UGA under Richt. He recruited certain positions heavily to chase high rankings and support from boosters, but he was largely deficient on recruiting OL. The same thing happened with Jimbo late at FSU and they're still paying for it. Fortunately, what I'm seeing from Collins is we're actively turning away certain 4* players to work on filling our needs at DT. He isn't trying to artificially boost our rankings by taking any and everybody, he's working on class balance. That's encouraging.