<table> </table> National signing day quickly becomes national singing day as every Division I-A coach croons over his latest bounty.</p><p>But the idea here is to examine the dotted lines of four programs to see if the college football landscape will be shifting anytime soon.</p><p>Florida, Southern California, Oklahoma and Texas haven&#8217;t won all of the national championships over the past few seasons. Some seasons even ended in disappointment for them, although the power programs measure letdown differently than the rest. The Longhorns were bummed they didn&#8217;t play in the Big 12 and BCS title games despite a 11-1 regular-season record.</p><p>The importance of recruiting success in those programs is this: They are the best positioned teams in the nation to secure talent. That is, they are the most dominant teams closest to America&#8217;s deepest sources of prospects.</p><p>It&#8217;s long been the case. Texas, Florida and California are by far the most fertile grounds for prospects. <em>Sports Illustrated </em>recently broke down the numbers and found that over the previous four years those states combined for 2,781 signees for the BCS conference schools.</p><p>The next 11 states added up didn&#8217;t reach that number.</p><p>So, the warm-weather states yield the most players. It&#8217;s true in other outdoor sports. What else is new?</p><p>Here it is. Head coaches Urban Meyer, Pete Carroll, Bob Stoops and Mack Brown are some of the great Xs and Os coaches in the game. They and their staffs also happen to be some of the greatest pitchmen in college football, and their gifts of persuasion combined with the access to the product has allowed them to corner the markets on prospects and success.</p><p>As long as these coaches are happy in their offices, get used to their programs&#8217; high wire acts. They&#8217;re not dropping anytime soon.</p><p>Oklahoma gets added to the list because of its success recruiting across the Red River. Eleven players in this year&#8217;s Sooners&#8217; class hail from Texas, five from Oklahoma.</p><p>At Texas, 19 of the 20 signees were home grown, and Californians made up 11 in Southern California&#8217;s class of 17.</p><p>The schools combined to sign 10 five-star prospects rated by Rivals.com. Eight were players who stayed home.</p><p>Meyer&#8217;s recruiting class did not crack the top five of several Web site analysts, but he knew the Gators did something right when opponents swooped in on his recruits.</p><p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want say it is all negative, it&#8217;s just that teams are trying to steal our guys and I&#8217;m convinced a couple of guys were recruited by some schools just because they said yes to Florida,&#8221; Meyer said. &#8220;I take that as a compliment.&#8221;</p><p>And a challenge.</p><p>&#8220;The thing we can&#8217;t let happen is to let them go out there and catch us,&#8221; Meyer said.</p><p>This Southern shift of the college game has left some of the temperature-challenged programs out in the cold. Notre Dame, Nebraska and Michigan are the best examples of historically dominant programs that are playing catch-up these days.</p><p>It seems more obvious now than it did after the 2004 season why Meyer, coming off a perfect season at Utah and a choice to move on to Florida or Notre Dame, selected the Gators.</p><p>I asked Missouri coach Gary Pinkel about this on signing day. The Tigers have gone 22-5 over the past two seasons, won their bowl games and had players make the All-America teams.</p><p>He said there&#8217;s nothing the Tigers or anybody else can do except continue to build their programs and try to made inroads. &#8220;Things change, and some of those programs have had their troubles over the years, too,&#8221; Pinkel said. &#8220;But you have to do the right things every day and stick with your plan.&#8221;</p><p>The problem for nearly everybody else in college football is that&#8217;s precisely what Florida, USC, Oklahoma and Texas are doing. They&#8217;re hoarding talent, coaching it up and dominating the game.