This isn't an industry secret, but many of the beat guys (at least for recruiting-- the team itself is a different story) don't live very close to the school they cover. One reason is schools recruit from all over, so you can't actually have boots on the ground meeting kids in every corner of a state or country. Another reason is the industry is pretty lazy. They all mostly know each other and "steal" from each other. It takes a matter of minutes for news to spread, regardless of who actually "breaks" the story. This reason is probably a big part of why many say the premium sites are a dying industry.
I'm friends with a guy, here in Nashville, who covers recruiting at Rivals for a P5 school, hundreds of miles away. Most of the kids like at least a little bit of attention (huge ego stroke), so he just calls them up and introduces himself, and they'll almost always talk. Coincidently, he works about 15 hours...a week. Rivals only requires him to Tweet and write so many times a week and month. This type of work style and hours are the norm in the industry, not the exception. Multiple beat guys for ND (from all the different premium services), and every school, are guilty of this as well. Guys in the industry busting their asses and putting in 50 or more hours a week are definitely the exception.
. College staffs don't go up and down the 247 rankings and offer them because they're a 4 or 5 
