Florida High School football

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Rog

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Spending the winter here I Florida it becomes obvious why H. S. football developes so many "good" players.

In this mornings paper I read about Dwyer HS still in the state play offs. and it is almost Christmas. When did the MN state playoffs end?

They have Spring football here in Florida and can schedule scrimmages with other High Schools. Did you notice that our new running back from Broward mentioned making so many yards in a Spring "Game". Didn't even say scrimmage.

Many H.S. here take their players to a summer camp for a week or two also.

High School football is big time here.
 

Repetitions...

Why are Minnesota kids better at hockey...more reps
 

That and..

A VASTLY larger pool of athletes. When I lived there in the late 90's I was amazed at how ever the smaller schools would churn out 1-3 divsion 1 players a year. As a comparison, imagine Shakopee turning out two division one players every year.
 

"imagine Shakopee turning out two division one players every year"... Until this past year it was hard enough to imagine Shakopee winning two games in a year.
 

Lots of money goes into Football also.
 


Time for a split calendar for all sports

If there is scholarship money to be had or a chance a career; MN kids should have the best chance possible.

It is time to develop a system in which an athlete can get the best preparation possible to move to the next level or levels. MN kids can make $ playing hockey the way things are set up now. Why cannot it be set up so an athlete from any sport can do the same? Maybe a season for schools specializing hockey, basketball, baseball etc. play a longer season, while catch-all schools can stay with what is currently happening.

The biggest schools would be impacted least because the number of students would allow them to compete at the highest level for all of the longer seasons.

Just a thought.

Rog said:
Spending the winter here I Florida it becomes obvious why H. S. football developes so many "good" players.

In this mornings paper I read about Dwyer HS still in the state play offs. and it is almost Christmas. When did the MN state playoffs end?

They have Spring football here in Florida and can schedule scrimmages with other High Schools. Did you notice that our new running back from Broward mentioned making so many yards in a Spring "Game". Didn't even say scrimmage.

Many H.S. here take their players to a summer camp for a week or two also.

High School football is big time here.
Click to expand...
 

It's a real double edged sword. Most experts are not excited about specialization at the high school age. If a kid is in spring ball, he's probably not playing baseball or track. Or doing both and not socializing properly. Allowing and fostering this type of situation gives into the demands of division one football at the expense of the overall development of the high school student athlete. Yes it's great for the couple dozen of eventual D1 football players we create every year, but is it really a good thing for the other thousands of kids trying to keep up and be relevant who will not be D1 material. It seems we sell our soul at the detriment of the many, for the benefit of the few and our own perverse second hand sporting needs (a group to which I happily belong).

It's a really tough argument. Clearly the south kids who grow up in this atmosphere have a huge advantage, but does that make it the best overall sporting environment? i really don't know where I sit on this.

To me I think a more well rounded athlete is a better athlete. I'm not sure I buy into the idea that the southern kids are better future athletes, I do agree they are much more proven, refined and easier to project. There is much less risk in recruiting a southern kid over one of ours. I'd like to believe the difference in experience can be mitigated in a RS year. What's missing is the opportunity. Perhaps as a state we need to have a prep school alternative. Possibly sponsor twenty scholarships to football prep programs. A little creativity might get us the best of both worlds.
 

I live in FL and can tell you that high school football is a big deal down here - besides spring practice, the annual spring game is really promoted and attended - the average college football fan here knows much more about football than do the "fans" in MN - you always hear about the gators, seminoles and hurricanes, and seldom about the 3 pro teams...college football rules in FL.
 




Dedication to football is one factor for sure in why the South produces more players than the North. e main factor, the 800lb elephant in the room is.....there's way more black folks in the South.
 

balds said:
A VASTLY larger pool of athletes.
Click to expand...

Didn't someone post something a while back and IIRC Louisiana and South Carolina had the highest per capita production of D1 players. I lived in SC for 10 years. They had spring practice but it was only something like 10 practices and it occurred after track and baseball had ended, right at the conclusion of the school year. I recall them playing HS baseball games in Feb and March. I don't think that any amount of spring practice is going to turn a DIII player into a D1 guy.
 

This is from 2004 but it probably hasn't changed much.

134318.jpg
 

Schnoodler,

Growing up in Texas we had a class for each sport. If you were in football, you took football as a class, just the same for soccer, swimming, track, even Cheerleading. I can't say for all schools, but the majority of schools wanted the football players to play a spring sports (most specifically track, as it helped with endurance at a minimum and hopefully improved your speed). The only reason I say the "majority" is that it always seemed that the good skilled football players were the same ones you saw running track.

I'm not really sure I understand your perspective. If you played multiple sports (in our case our coaches encouraged you to) your class schedule would change when you switched seasons to be in that class. (Most of the time it was easy since the last period was your sport class so it could go right into after school activities).

If i remember correctly soccer was an earlier spring sport, starting in January ending in march, which would allow you to move back into football to do spring ball and finish out the year working out with the rest of the football players.

Bottom line: Since football is a class there is no extra work outside of your normal class load that you are doing when you are not in another sport. The obvious extra time in your life is the approximately 3 weeks of extra practices and one game. One could make a subjective comment about how that affected one's social life, but it definitely doesn't create a specialization type situation.
 



Costa Rican Gopher said:
Dedication to football is one factor for sure in why the South produces more players than the North. e main factor, the 800lb elephant in the room is.....there's way more black folks in the South.
Click to expand...

It's not that there are more 'black folks'. The big factor is population density. A larger number of people in an area is going to translate to a larger number of athletes. The more athletes there are, the higher the number of elite athletes you're going to have.
 

In addition a willingness to fund them, and provide an atmosphere in which people want to play football. It just isn't the sport, its the fame, and the attention. I bring out my old pictures to show some of the people around here, and it seemed to create a new level of oh I knew it was big down there, but I didn't realize it was that big/important.
 

badgerman27 said:
The big factor is population density. A larger number of people in an area is going to translate to a larger number of athletes. The more athletes there are, the higher the number of elite athletes you're going to have.
Click to expand...

Dumb post. If this is the case, why don't New York, Illinois, and New Jersey turn out vast amounts of D-IA college football players?
 

dpodoll68 said:
Dumb post. If this is the case, why don't New York, Illinois, and New Jersey turn out vast amounts of D-IA college football players?
Click to expand...

I'd say his post is half right. Given the same set of circumstances, areas with more kids will produce more elite athletes. However, when one state emphasizes more youth sports than another, they have will also produce more athletes when populations are equal. There are some states that have both more kids and also devote more resources to youth sports, so those states will produce more elite athletes.
 

denguegopher said:
Didn't someone post something a while back and IIRC Louisiana and South Carolina had the highest per capita production of D1 players. I lived in SC for 10 years. They had spring practice but it was only something like 10 practices and it occurred after track and baseball had ended, right at the conclusion of the school year. I recall them playing HS baseball games in Feb and March. I don't think that any amount of spring practice is going to turn a DIII player into a D1 guy.
Click to expand...

I think Mississippi is up there, too.
 

I would think the reason there aren't as many football players in the north is that more kids play basketball and (in Minnesota) hockey instead. Without knowing, I would bet that there are way more D1 basketball players in Chicago and New York than there are in Dalllas, Houston, Miami, or Tampa. There are more D1 hockey players in Minnesota. Most kids that are D1 athletes in other sports probably could be D1 athletes in football if they would have focused on football their whole lives.
 

I think NJ and Ill do turn out a large number of D1 players. New York is the oddity. NY also doesn't turn out the high number/high quality basketball players that the city did in the 70's, 80's, and into the 90's. Maybe there just isn't the commitment required.

We look at Milwaukee that way. If the City of Milwaukee put out the number of D1 recruits that comparable population centers across the US do, we wouldn't have to recruit so many out of state kids.
 

Omega015 said:
I would think the reason there aren't as many football players in the north is that more kids play basketball and (in Minnesota) hockey instead. Without knowing, I would bet that there are way more D1 basketball players in Chicago and New York than there are in Dalllas, Houston, Miami, or Tampa. There are more D1 hockey players in Minnesota. Most kids that are D1 athletes in other sports probably could be D1 athletes in football if they would have focused on football their whole lives.
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It is hard to focus on Football like one can focus on hockey and basketball and even soccer year round. Once you get into the Basektball or Hockey machine your whole calendar year is going from one season to the next. It is less so in football. In MN there is the fall season, and in the summer there is a camp + some 7 on 7 games. However you pretty much have all of winter and spring off.

In the south, you have the same set up except you have about an extra 3-4 weeks of practice for a spring game. The real difference is the class set up. You don't take PE in the south. You take football. That means everyday you are working on a football specific item (which is mostly weight lifting in the off season, but there are speed drills and other activities also).

Basketball is really picking up in Texas as I was leaving. A couple of my buddies dropped football so they could do basketball year round. It was basically a requirement to be able to keep up with the others to make the basketball team.

Will people not do a winter/spring sport so they can focus on football? Yes, that means they want to invest in the weight lifting speed drills to get better. However there isn't a league to get into to do it like the other sports.
 

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