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they are hosted by a player on the team,  get to hang out with the players, go out on the town or whatever the player hosting does.   sometimes sleep in a dorm room if an overnight visit

Probably a nice meal at a restaurant with his parents and coaches

Yeah, I assume they show the athletic facilities, which can take two plus hours.  Chat with the coaches, maybe put on a uniform.  That could take an hour.  See the athletic dorm.  Probably lunch at the athletic cafeteria.  Walk about campus some.  The day fills up pretty fast, and maybe they drive him about town some, but that might not be a highlight of the trip really.

If I'm a five star, it wouldn't be.  Weather would be a factor for me.

and their heads are / can be very different

Meyer was, Saban wasn't. 

Meyer took a 2-9 Bowling Green team to 8-3 his first year. 
Then he took 5-6 Utah to 10-2, then 12-0.  The Utes had finished a season ranked ONCE EVER before Meyer.  They were an anonymous WAC program*.  He took them to the top 5. 
He's exactly who I wanted and we got him.

Saban was different because he didn't immediately improve MSU.  It took him 4-5 years to get them to peak in the top 10.  Idk what MSU was thinking, hiring a guy who was HC at Toledo for 1 season, but there, he took the 5-6 Rockets to 9-2 right away.





*Yes, they were in the MWC in 2003-4, but you wouldn't have been able to correct me back then.

So I slightly disagree with this. Meyer was a very good coaching candidate, but he had two areas where he was a bit of a gamble.

1. At that point, no team close to that level had deployed that sort of offense. Yes, Oklahoma had done some early Air Raid stuff and FSU's basketball on grass had existed, but the Meyer spread option was considered still maybe a mid-major gimmick. 

It had a bit of that "this might not work against the big boys" vibe. We know now that was silly and usually is, but it was out there. 

2. He'd never actually had a semi-full recruiting cycle with a kid and coached that kid as a sophomore. He'd never coached a kid he signed as a junior. Yes, he'd turned around jobs, and Jim Harbaugh and Brady Hoke were .750 coaches in Year 1 and 2. We didn't really know what a long-term Meyer program even looked like. Shoot, Darrell Hazell's turnaround at Kent was WORLDS more impressive than the boost Urban gave BG (and debatably Utah), and he was so bad.

So there were some worries, but beyond those stints, the coaching world knew Urban's soft skills were off the charts. And it worked out. Saban was amazing because he created a structural change for LSU as a program, and his MSU tenure couldn't have predicted that. 

(As for the anonymous WAC/MWC program thing, all but 2-3 are anonymous when you distain mid-major football, which as been your approach. Urbs, replaced a coach that got Utah a top-10 finish in the AP poll. He inherited a mid-major with a rare level of stability and solid success and a future NFL QB and put it into overdrive, which is a valuable skill, but he didn’t just discover some outpost. His BG tenure was interesting and slightly overrated in a way, but that’s another story I can share if you’d like.)

I'm surprised that none of the big fish have ever gone after Kyle Whittingham.

He's kept Utah humming for the most part since Urban left.

There have been a few hiccups along the way, most notably the growing pains that resulted from the move up to P5.

He was by far the most successful of UM's hand-picked successors. He didn't just flame out quickly like Greg Brandon or Will Muscamp. (Jury is still out on Day)

I do recall when Urban took the Utah job, a lot of jabber jocks in Ohio were surprised, as they viewed it as a fairly lateral move from Bowling Green. Utah was BYU's "little brother" back then. Now they are a level up from BYU, and it is because of UM and KW.

And yes, anyone that couldn't differentiate between the MWC and the WAC in those days simply weren't paying attention. They'd've also been unable to identify who was in the MAC vs CUSA.

Urban def didn't pick Muschamp. And he left a tire fire culture-wise. 

Whittingham is good. I think he ran into a few issues. He was 49 and a defensive guy off that 13-0 season, when folks were going young and offensive (and Utah recruiting is weird). He's had a weird run of up and down OCs since. I think those things, and the fact that Utah became a mid-tier Pac-12 job meant there wasn't so much higher to go, kinda capped him. 

He's 61 now, was one game away from just being left out of the playoff last year. I hope he keeps things going (this year has been a mess for that program). 

Would KW go to say South Carolina or Tennessee if they wrote a check?

He makes more than both their coaches, and he'd not be able to bring much of his expertise. 

And he'd be going from a job that's content being just good to ones where it's harder and there's less patience. I think unless USC, maybe Washington or Oregon wants him, why leave? (Or like Michigan or something?)

Vanderbilt has fired coach Derek Mason, athletic director Candice Storey Lee announced on Sunday. Mason posted a record of 27-54 in six-plus seasons as Vanderbilt's head coach after arriving from Stanford in 2014. Offensive coordinator Todd Fitch will serve as the interim head coach.