Eleven states produced 76.4% of all the top recruits the last ten years

Some football tidbits by ESPN to mull over while waiting for the Dead Period.

According to ESPN's "United States Of Recruiting":

1>Eleven states produced 76.4% of all the ESPN Top 100 recruits over the last 10 years.
01. Florida 206
02. Texas 141
03. Georgia 113
04. California 103
05. Alabama 42 (Tie)
06. Louisiana 42 (Tie)
07. North Carolina 33
08. Virginia 30
09. Ohio 28
10. South Carolina 22 (Tie)
11. Tennessee 22 (Tie)

2> Ten schools with most ESPN Top 100 Recruits in the last 10 years:
01. Alabama 77
02. Florida State 58
03. Georgia 54
04. Southern Cal 53
05. Texas 50
06. Florida 50
07. LSU 49
08. Ohio State 43
09. Auburn 36
10. Clemson 32

3> Of all the No. 1 rated ESPN 100 players in the past 10 years,half of them left their home state (FIFY):
2009 - Matt Barkley (QB, CA) USC
2010 - Ronald Powell (ATH, GA) Florida
2011 - Jadevon Clowney (DE, SC) South Carolina
2012 - Mario Edwards (DE, TX) Florida State
2013 - Robert Nkemdiche (DE, GA) Mississippi
2014 - Leonard Fournette (RB, LA) LSU
2015 - Byron Cowart (DE, FLA) Auburn (Transferred to Maryland)
2016 - Rashan Gary (DT, NJ) Michigan
2017 - Trey Smith (OT, TEN) Tennessee
2018 - Justin Fields (QG, GA) Georgia

How did the top players do in the NFL Draft? (Four are still in college):
2009 - Matt Barkley. Projected to be a 1st rounder in the 2012 NFL Draft, but decided to return to school. His stock went down and was selected in Round 4 (98th overall) by the Eagles in the 2013 NFL Draft.

2010 - Ronald Powell. The Saints picked him in Round 5 (196th overall).

2011 - Jadevon Clowney. Opted to enter the 2014 NFL Draft. It was a good decision as he was selected 1st overall Round 1 by the Texans.

2012 - Mario Edwards. The Raiders picked him in Round 2 (35th overall).

2013 - Robert Nkemdiche. In the 2016 NFL Draft, the Cardinals selected him in Round 1 (29th overall).

2014 - Leonard Fournette. He entered the 2016 NFL Draft where the Jaguars picked him in Round 1 (4th overall).

I think more and more players are going to enter the NFL Draft while their iron is hot. It is a risk/reward decision for most. Maxx Williams opted for early draft entry while his marketable potential was high. They looked at what happened to Matt Barkley, plus they don't want to risk being injured in college. When they can enter the NFL Draft early, they can start earning money.

http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/22312871/college-football-recruiting-true-battlegrounds

There has been some recent interesting data related to why the agencies tend to overrate recruits from down south. From Football Study Hall:


The other day our own RedmondLonghorn posted one of the most fascinating pieces of 2018, examining “where blue-chippers come from” and contrasting that to “where NFL players come from.”

The major and somewhat shocking revelation was how overrated everyone’s favorite recruiting regions (Texas, Florida, and the South) are and how underrated the traditional recruiting turf of Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania has become. There’s a lot going on in all of that data and a dozen variables of causation to sift through in determining how to interpret everything.

Here’s a few stabs at explaining what we see in these numbers:

The recruiting services are incentivized to invest more time and scouting into the south
There are a solid number of reasons why this would be the case. The first is that the south, Texas, and Florida legitimately produce a higher number of players per capita than do the Midwestern states so it makes sense to allocate most of your focus on those regions.

Another is that interest is higher there and it’s easier to sell #content on the top players to SEC fans then to try and figure out which Pennsylvania kids might be better than anyone currently guesses.

But even beyond that, if you’re spending most of your time scouting the well known blue-chippers in Georgia then you’re going to be more aware of different gems that show up and explode onto the scene from other parts of Georgia than you’ll be of players from less heavily scouted areas.

There are more opportunities to scout and evaluate kids in the South
Nike currently has eight SPARQ events scheduled for 2018. They’ll be taking place in:

-Miami, FL

-Dallas, TX

-Houston, TX

-San Francisco, CA

-Los Angeles, CA

-Atlanta, GA

-New York/New Jersey (the Jets facility)

-Canton, OH

That’s where you can get laser timed 40s and the rest of the Nike tests done rather than relying on hand times or trying to look up track records, it gives players a chance to do drills against the other best athletes in a region, and it creates hype and evaluation opportunities for recruiting writers.

The South also has more 7on7 camps and other events because football is more of an intense, year-round sport in that region than in the cold of the Northeast, Midwest, or greater western US.

With all of the extra hype, attention, and overall product coming out of those hotspots there’s little doubt as to why they’d tend to get overrated in terms of how many NFL players they are actually producing.

The south also tends to coach up talent more than in the north. Coaches love snatching up kids from Texas because they’ve been well coached and proven their stuff against real competition with real stakes, but that also means that some of the players from Texas are much closer to their ceilings than a kid from a less intense football culture like the Michigan high schools. When you compare them side to side it appears that the Texas kid is much better but that gap can shrink or disappear after three years or so of college coaching.


There’s much more in the full article and it’s links.
https://www.footballstudyhall.com/2...kings-midwest-texas-south-florida-boise-state

This little snippet is fascinating. Three Star U.


Urban Meyer’s wandering eye
When Ohio State won the national championship in 2014 their starting lineup included eight Ohioans on offense (including the QB and entire OL) and seven Ohioans on defense. They also had three former 3-stars on defense and seven former 3-stars on offense. Four of those were the OL.

Incidentally, from left to right that OL went:

Taylor Decker: 3-star drafted in the first round.

Billy Price: 4-star DT that was drafted in the first round.

Jacoby Boren: 3-star that was undrafted.

Pat Elflein: 3-star drafted in the third round.

Darryl Baldwin: 3-star that was undrafted.

The funny thing about this crew was that not only did they prove immensely talented overall, but Jacoby Boren was All-B1G in 2015 at center and then Elflein moved over and won the Remington award for nation’s best center there in 2016 and Price did the same to lock down the award in 2017.

The 2018 Buckeyes look like a national contender but only figure to start seven Ohioans TOTAL (five on offense with two on the OL, two on defense) and only have two former 3-stars projected to end up in the starting lineup. One of those 3-stars is an Ohioan being asked to carry on the tradition at center (Brady Taylor) After winning big with Midwest talent, Meyer has leveraged that success into national recruiting with regular forays into Texas to sign the top players from the Lone Star state and into Florida and other favorite locals to take the top rated players in the country.

How well that works out for Ohio State remains to be seen but there’s little doubt that someone else stands to benefit.

Some of it is that the sheer number of the population increases the amount of and level of talented football players. Texas has counties that have 2 million or more people to draw from according to the ESPN article.

Pompous Elitist said:

There has been some recent interesting data related to why the agencies tend to overrate recruits from down south. From Football Study Hall:


The other day our own RedmondLonghorn posted one of the most fascinating pieces of 2018, examining “where blue-chippers come from” and contrasting that to “where NFL players come from.”

The major and somewhat shocking revelation was how overrated everyone’s favorite recruiting regions (Texas, Florida, and the South) are and how underrated the traditional recruiting turf of Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania has become. There’s a lot going on in all of that data and a dozen variables of causation to sift through in determining how to interpret everything.

Here’s a few stabs at explaining what we see in these numbers:

The recruiting services are incentivized to invest more time and scouting into the south
There are a solid number of reasons why this would be the case. The first is that the south, Texas, and Florida legitimately produce a higher number of players per capita than do the Midwestern states so it makes sense to allocate most of your focus on those regions.

Another is that interest is higher there and it’s easier to sell #content on the top players to SEC fans then to try and figure out which Pennsylvania kids might be better than anyone currently guesses.

But even beyond that, if you’re spending most of your time scouting the well known blue-chippers in Georgia then you’re going to be more aware of different gems that show up and explode onto the scene from other parts of Georgia than you’ll be of players from less heavily scouted areas.

There are more opportunities to scout and evaluate kids in the South
Nike currently has eight SPARQ events scheduled for 2018. They’ll be taking place in:

-Miami, FL

-Dallas, TX

-Houston, TX

-San Francisco, CA

-Los Angeles, CA

-Atlanta, GA

-New York/New Jersey (the Jets facility)

-Canton, OH

That’s where you can get laser timed 40s and the rest of the Nike tests done rather than relying on hand times or trying to look up track records, it gives players a chance to do drills against the other best athletes in a region, and it creates hype and evaluation opportunities for recruiting writers.

The South also has more 7on7 camps and other events because football is more of an intense, year-round sport in that region than in the cold of the Northeast, Midwest, or greater western US.

With all of the extra hype, attention, and overall product coming out of those hotspots there’s little doubt as to why they’d tend to get overrated in terms of how many NFL players they are actually producing.

The south also tends to coach up talent more than in the north. Coaches love snatching up kids from Texas because they’ve been well coached and proven their stuff against real competition with real stakes, but that also means that some of the players from Texas are much closer to their ceilings than a kid from a less intense football culture like the Michigan high schools. When you compare them side to side it appears that the Texas kid is much better but that gap can shrink or disappear after three years or so of college coaching.


There’s much more in the full article and it’s links.
https://www.footballstudyhall.com/2...kings-midwest-texas-south-florida-boise-state

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I'll add a simpler explanation. If you go to Texas they believe they're the best in basically everything -- from being the best state in the country down to having the bathrooms in their government buildings be bigger than the bathrooms in any other states government buildings (I'm not making that up, that's one that I heard from a lot of folks within their gov't). The whole "Don't Mess with Texas" theme is spoken with pride down their. So, they believe their high school football players are the best, and that comes across in the rankings. Texans naturally give higher rankings to high school players from their own state. Contrast that with the midwest attitude of not boasting about anything. Just my random thoughts...

Livingat45north said:

I'll add a simpler explanation. If you go to Texas they believe they're the best in basically everything -- from being the best state in the country down to having the bathrooms in their government buildings be bigger than the bathrooms in any other states government buildings (I'm not making that up, that's one that I heard from a lot of folks within their gov't). The whole "Don't Mess with Texas" theme is spoken with pride down their. So, they believe their high school football players are the best, and that comes across in the rankings. Texans naturally give higher rankings to high school players from their own state. Contrast that with the midwest attitude of not boasting about anything. Just my random thoughts...

Click to expand...

Human bias is always in play. That, groupthink and even peer pressure issues tend to cloud things IMO.

Another aspect of this is that these states have about 50% of the US population. California and Texas and Florida make up about 27%