I can't speak for others, for me, it seems much easier to keep track of the basketball recruiting. Less spots, less recruits, easier to get info or even see recruits. They play each other, to get some semblance of who is better than who. Football, I have no clue. I just feed off of the board reaction.
I follow football recruiting daily and it's a challenge. Take last year for instance. A lot of the top targets were gone by the Spring and it was frustrating watching them commit to other schools one by one. At this time last year, we had 0 commits.
How many people had heard of Julian Pearl, Jakari Norwood, Daniel Barker, Carlos Sandy, Ron Hardge, Antwaine Walker, etc. when they had committed? Who had heard of guys like Nick Walker and Sydney Brown when they signed their NLIs? There's just too many players out there and we don't know who has a committable offer or not since the staff isn't allowed to talk about recruits. Maybe it's different for people who pay for premium information.
I had certainly heard of Coran Taylor when he committed since he was offered back in December of 2016 and I follow Peoria High football pretty closely. Even he didn't commit until April 3rd. Then the camp offers (Walker and Slaughter) committed along with a number of 3 star kids from Florida. The only one out of that group I had heard of before they were offered was Slaughter and I had only heard of him since I remembered seeing him on EdgyTim's watch list for the Class of 2018 and I thought he had the perfect name for a football player.
I don't follow basketball recruiting at all and even I know who the top targets are for the Spring. I'm actually kind of puzzled as to why there is so much discussion about such a small number of players.
Thankfully this year is quite different for football recruiting. Two top 60 recruits who we've been recruiting for 1+ year are committed. I had even heard of Griffin Moore before he was offered by Illinois last fall since I remember he took over at QB for Bloomington when Colton Sandage tore his ACL.
With this being a smaller class and us getting attention from higher ranked players it's a lot more fun to follow. There's a lot going on even if we only have three commits.