RALEIGH, N.C. -- In August they become college football coaches, and football coaches they will stay until December or possibly early January. But the rest of the year they are salesmen, peddling their product, er, program, to a very select clientele: the top high school football players in the country.

It is fierce competition, this business of recruiting, and right now one-third of the Atlantic Coast Conference is engaged in a family feud. According to some analysts, Florida State, Clemson and North Carolina State are on pace to have the top three recruiting classes in the ACC.

The Bowden name is the common thread, and the original ball of yarn remains in Tallahassee, Fla., knowing just how important recruiting is to his program, which recently played in its third consecutive national championship game.

"Recruiting is everything," FSU coach Bobby Bowden says. "You can't win if you don't have the athletes."

And you can't get the athletes without some serious salesmanship (please, this is not a reference about the current recruiting marketplace in Memphis).

What they sell depends on where they are, what has happened in the recent past, and what will happen in the near future.

At Florida State, the Seminoles sell (duh) tradition. Florida State recently finished its 14th consecutive season ranked in the top five, and won two national championships in the 1990s.

	Clemson's Tommy Bowden sells a program that is "a proven product now."

"Our big thing we sell recruits is, No. 1, the tradition we've established," says FSU receivers coach Jeff Bowden, Bobby's son. "We have been labeled in the midst of a dynasty. Our big thing is maintaining that, and talking to these kids about helping us maintain that."

Tradition also is part of the package offered by Clemson coach Tommy Bowden (another of Bobby's sons). The Tigers haven't strung together 10-win seasons like the Seminoles, or played for the last three national titles, but Clemson still represents big-time football. The Tigers won a national title in the 1980s. They have Howard's Rock, orange paw prints all over town and a rabid fan base.

"There are similarities and differences between what (Florida State) can sell and what we can sell," Tommy Bowden says. "You've got to sell your strengths. Their strength and our strengths are different, but at our level -- at a Tennessee or Florida State or Michigan, places like that -- there are similarities: The importance of football. The tradition. The commitment."

At N.C. State there is no tradition, at least not of the magnitude of Florida State or Clemson. And while basketball is more of the featured sport elsewhere on Tobacco Road (see: North Carolina, Duke, Wake Forest), hoops still competes with football for media and fan attention at N.C. State more than it does at Florida State or Clemson.

So why, then, is second-year Wolfpack coach Chuck Amato -- Bobby Bowden's first lieutenant for years at Florida State -- competing with father and son Bowden for recruits, and sometimes even winning?

"You sell what you have," says Amato, whose team has received commitments from a handful of players targeted by Clemson, Florida State, or both, including South Florida targets Sterling Hicks (receiver) and Tramain Hall (tailback). "We talk about the opportunity for immediate playing time, the chance to play for a great staff in a great part of the country for a program that's shooting for the stars."

Ah, yes, playing time. Florida State recruiters know how important playing time -- right now -- is for most recruits. And they also know about the anti-selling of the Seminoles being employed by competing schools (though not necessarily Clemson or N.C. State):

Come to our school and play as a freshman, or go to Florida State and play as a junior -- maybe.

"Most of the doubt about whether a kid can play for us doesn't come from the kid, but it comes from opposing recruiters," Jeff Bowden says. "We recruit kids with the firm belief they are good enough to come in right now and play. No matter what we've got here, you're always trying to sign better.

"But I hear about other coaches telling recruits, 'They don't need you.' Look, you don't recruit because you don't need people. You maintain your level by getting that fierce competition in practice, which is another selling point for us. Recruit a top-flight receiver and tell him he's going to be competing against Mickey Andrews' defensive backs in practice every day. That's pretty good."

Come to Florida State and compete against the best every day in practice. That's a sales pitch that has stayed the same over the years. Other pitches change. When he first got to Clemson, Tommy Bowden had to sell a fantasy. Now, he sells reality.

	N.C. State's Chuck Amato sells playing time and the chance to play for a program on the rise to recruits.

"We've gone from three wins (the year before he arrived) to six wins to nine wins," Tommy Bowden says. "So what we were presenting a few years ago has changed to, 'Hey, now it's working. We've broken 70 school records in two years.' We're selling a proven product now."

That product had better include facility upgrades. Another deck on the stadium, another wing on the weight room.

At N.C. State, Amato can gloss over the frailties of Carter-Finley Stadium by showing recruits blueprints of the more than $100 million in renovations planned, including additions to the stadium and a state-of-the-art football building next door.

At Clemson, Tommy Bowden can tell recruits about the new football facility in the works there, a building being designed by the same architect who did North Carolina's $50 million monument to college football.

"We can tell a recruit about the architect, the soil samples we've done on where the building might go," Tommy Bowden says. "They want to know."

Says Amato: "I can't wait until we can show (a recruit) a shovel in the sand and say, 'That's where you're going to dress and lift and play football the next four years.'"

And what those recruits say could change the way N.C. State, Clemson and FSU recruits the following year. Playing time, tradition, success, facilities ... everything changes season by season. After all, that's the ever changing face of sales, er, recruiting.

Gregg Doyel covers the ACC for the Charlotte Observer.