But there are a lot of other factors, including:

1) State pride (like you said, may not be an important factor to kids these days)
2) Familiarity with HS coaches and other area kids: In general, VT should have better/longer relationships with VA HS coaches & kids than OOS programs. But, each time we let PSU (or Clemson, FSU, etc) establish a footprint in a certain area...it can start snowballing for them. We need to be cognizant of that and factor it in when we "let a kid go" somewhere else.
3) Coverage in local papers/news: This is more for the family than the kid, but when a kid stays in state...he's going to get a lot more coverage by the family's local media outlets than if he goes OOS. Advent of social media has minimized this discrepancy though.

But in general, yeah I agree, the out-of-state vs in-state thing isn't as big as it used to be.