While every sport is different, recruiting very much existed on a national, and to a more limited degree, international scale before the popularity of internet ranking and recruiting services. While the internet existed before the 2000s, it was really post-2000 that the current recruiting scene emerged. However, programs very much did recruit outside of their own backyard well before the current era, albeit not to the same degree that they do today.

This question in a timely fashion may have been inspired by the current NCAA basketball tournaments and examples from that sport can provide some views on the broader national recruiting that existed. One of the most celebrated past teams was University of Houston's Phi Slama Jamma teams (1982-1984). The teams featuring future NBA stars Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon was largely composed of players from Texas and Louisiana, reflecting the primarily regional nature of recruiting at the time. However, as the primary example of non-regional recruiting is Hakeem Olajuwon who was from Nigeria. His recruitment came via a recommendation from a friend of Houston's head coach, leading to a scholarship offer after Olajuwon visited Houston. This example provides insight into how recruiting functioned prior to the modern era, which is through networking and word of mouth.

Looking at the overall construction of that team Olajuwon was the exception in being not from the Texas area. Moving forward a decade we can look at Michigan's famous Fab Five teams of the early 1990s. On those teams only Jalen Rose and Chris Webber were from Michigan. Juwan Howard was from Chicago, while Jimmy King and Ray Jackson were both from Texas. The contrast between these two programs comes more from the size and financial wherewithal of the athletic departments than from overall philosophical differences with regard to casting a wide recruiting net. Houston pre-Phi Slama Jamma was not a basketball power, and recruited locally because those are the players they had the most access to and had the best chance of recruiting. Michigan, albeit 10 years later, and still in a pre-internet era recruited 40% of its starting five from thousands of miles away, and even plucked a dominant player from Chicago.

To switch sports and travel further back in time one can look to the football teams credited with sparking the end of segregation in college football. The 1965 Michigan State team was named the national champions, and the 1966 Michigan State team, earned some national champion selections, and tied the AP and Coaches Poll [the two primary national champion selectors at the time] national champion Notre Dame team 10-10 in a game dubbed at the time the "game of the century". These two Mochigan State teams were racially integrated at a time when other dominant programs (notably Alabama and the University of Texas) were racially segregated. Duffy Daugherty Michigan State's head coach used this as a recruiting opportunity by recruiting African American players from the South. He recruited future NFL players like Bubba Washington from Texas and Jimmy Raye from North Carolina. His openness to recruiting African American players helped him set up a network with coaches at schools in the South who would help put him on touch with players to recruit.

To conclude one can see that recruiting was of a national and international nature before the internet. However, the internet very much has changed the nature of recruiting, and broadened it, but a more in depth discussion of that would necessitate delving into the past 20 years and violate the sub's 20 year rule. And while the teams that I highlighted are only a few examples, they do provide insight into the national nature of recruiting. Rather than being limited to recruiting regionally, teams were more regionally constructed, but did seek non-regional players when possible. So it would be more accurate to frame recruiting as being primarily regional in the pre-internet era, rather than recruiting as being limited to regional before the internet.