South Carolina was 17th in producing 3-5* recruits over the last 5 years. That ranks them 8th of the 11 SEC home states behind Texas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Ahead of only Missouri, Arkansas, and Kentucky. Yeah, there are lots of other factors involved and schools recruit heavily out of state, but the majority of other SEC schools are starting with a better pool of local talent to build a foundation on.
Which illustrates an interesting thing with New Jersey. 12th overall in producing upper tier college players (ahead of states like Michigan and Tennessee), very few of them stay in state. Rutgers is the only FBS school in the state. Once they qualify for the full share of B1G revenue there's the potential in future years to build a strong football program there just by recruiting locally.