Minneapolis, and Minnesota in general, is just too far away geographically from the main Big Ten population centers and hot beds of talent, in the main two college revenue sports. Too much competition, too many schools in between us and the recruits. Only place where we're on equal footing, in theory, with other schools is recruits who happen to grow up in our backyard. There certainly are those, perhaps more in bball than football. But far less overall than when you combine all the population centers closer to the Great Lakes and then the rest of the country east of the Mississippi. And then for local recruits, you have to deal with the fact that some of them want to get away from MN for a while, get away from home.
These factors create a statistical disadvantage relative to the Big Ten teams we have to compete against. And it is something that Minnesota always has, and probably always will, have to struggle to overcome. We're just stuck out in a cold, wild west. Mpls is a big place, but it's 7 hours drive to Chicago, and that's really the western edge of civilization.