Nothing gets a recruiting bump like a helmet school making a splash hire.
Much was made about the hope vs. results quote a couple years ago, but I think it makes a lot of sense.
If you have been at a place, you have to sell results. Problem is, your results are what your results are. If you want to recruit like Alabama, you have to sell recruits that you are going to win like Alabama. If you've been there, you can't do that, because you haven't been winning like.
New hire at a helmet school isn't tied to a track record. As long as the prestige of the coach and the school is high, selling that hope that Notre Dame/Michigan/Nebraska/Texas, etc.. is BACK is time after time a foolproof recruiting pitch. You can sell, "yeah, we haven't been winning like Alabama, but we used to, and now that I'm here, we will again." You've got a couple years to translate that to results, or it wanes.