That's exactly what my buddies who coach HS football in GA have told me. Almost verbatim. I shared that same thing in another thread. The ACC and SEC schools who recruit GA kids DO NOT want GT running an offense that will compete for recruits because there's a LOT of kids who want to stay home both for the business and educational opportunities GT represents. To go further, they fear a good coach coming in who can sell GT because GT has so many advantages a lot of the SEC and ACC schools do not because of Atlanta. GT will recruit a different type of kid, but those kids are self driven and won't be scared of the academics...because the reality is, kids that wanted to go to GT will end up picking a similar major somewhere else and still have to do similar coursework. One buddy who coaches at a powerhouse program in Cobb said that GT running a pure option system basically opened up the barn door to let other schools come in and raid the building. His point was that in the South, and this is something Tommy Tubberville said, kids like to stay close to their families...but kids also have professional aspirations. UGA can only recruit so many kids a year, and GT should be able to win a few battles every year with kids UGA doesn't want...and if you look at the history of some of our offensive players, that's exactly the case. GT has gotten quite a few good players in the past because recruits who couldn't get a scholly from UGA ended picking GT because they wanted to stay home. When CPJ came in, GT lost out on a lot of those kids.
To CPJ's credit, he's gotten results with kids a lot of P5 schools were not looking at on offense, but he had to do it the hard way. It will certainly be interesting to see this all play out the next 2-3 seasons once the new coach comes in and gets established.