The Washburn/Emporia St/Pitt St/Fort Hays round robin is fun as hell, with all of them playing each other & trying to knock off Northwest Missouri St. I'm not sure about the caliber of KS kids this will affect, but I'd think it will only help those schools as well.
Tom, if your kid didn't have the opportunity to go to Highland then FCS, would he have gone D2 out of HS?
My son out of HS:
6'5-300 playing C, G, T in high school
2nd team Sunflower League player on an 0-9 football team
He was qualified academically
He was not any recruiting radars with any star rankings
He had some lite interest from D II's (visited NWMSU, camped and visited Emporia State{my sister is a graduate}), but on signing day his options were the following:
Hutch JuCo
Ft Scott JuCo
Highland JuCo
Emporia State walk on (coach said they could not match JuCo scholarship, but he could compete and pick up scholarship money based on performance in the spring)
Long story short if the JuCo option was not available to him he probably ends up as a walkon at Emporia State giving his aunt a fanningbrag.
The whole in state/out state dynamic became very apparent during recruiting. The in state OL players were a premium commodity because that meant a team could use the out state positions for skill players. The fact he had no academic/discipline issues raised his stock too.
He started two years at Highland (he was a captain and HM All-Conference as a sophomore). He was eligible to transfer at semester (Dec 14), and he had several nice D2 offers. K-State offered him a walk on opportunity after a couple of phone calls and a visit. OT: He got a speeding ticket driving back from his visit to Manhattan (hanging with Collin Klein and BJ Finney will get a guy pumped up I guess).
After spring 15 semester he assessed where he stood, and he had the opportunity to transfer to Western Illinois with a scholarship. He played there two years and graduated in four years. He got some decent playing time in the best FCS league in the country including 2-3 starts his senior year. Probably his only regret is not taking a red shirt year during his career.
The D2 offers, K-State experience, and FCS opportunity don't happen without the JuCo opportunity IMHO.
Sorry to fanningbrag too, but I would say the JuCo option offered him the ability to develop and play at his highest level which might not have happened otherwise.
Tom
