On the perception that high school football players hold about specific schools. They then correlated perception to recruiting rankings and concluded that perception is exclusive of recruiting and that recruiting talent does not result in highly ranked classes rather perception results in highly ranked classes.
http://picksixpreviews.com/how_to_win_in_recruiting.html
They found that high school players who had never been recruited by the blue bloods still perceived the blue bloods more favorably (much more favorably it turns out) than the schools that had been recruiting them. So you can’t say the blue bloods have the best recruiters and that’s why a player perceived them favorably - because these surveyed players never experienced the recruiting prowess (or lack of prowess) of the blue bloods.
A school’s national perception - or brand - comes first.