Rivals 100 US Map and SI Article

That is cool but it seems to have forgotten about the West Coast. I heard they had some good players in Cali.

"The model created by Mike DuMond, Allen Lynch and Jennifer Platania...found that among heavily recruited players choosing from among only BCS-conference schools, distance from home is the most important factor in a recruit's choice. The model was published in the February 2008 issue of The Journal of Sports Economics.

The model found that a school's academic standing -- whether it's in the top 50 of the US News and World Report rankings -- provides a miniscule bump. So does the final poll ranking of the school the previous season. What didn't matter to players shocked the economists more. According to the data, the players weren't, on the whole, worried about the depth chart, how many national titles schools had won or how many players the school put in the NFL."

So now we know why the SEC has won the last three BCS championships.

Perhaps we should be rooting for global warming to make the Midwest climate less of a negative for recruiting.
Especially considering how weak they make the NFL factor sound.

What the hell, where are the bluechippers from Up State New York?

I've had a theory about why the football players coming out of the south are so much better- school sizes.

I've been unable to find any good info about average high school sizes by state, or even number of high schools per state, but Wikipedia (always a trustworthy source, of course) has lists of [presumably] all high schools by state. The Michigan list is slightly longer than the Florida list... but Michigan is barely half the size of Florida!

This is backed up by my own observations- growing up in Metro Detroit, my school and pretty much all the schools around mine ranged between maybe 1000-1200 students. Whereas, I have several friends who grew up in Florida and ALL of them went to enormous schools with 3000+ students. I think this trend carries across the midwest/northeast vs. south.

Let's suppose that my hypothesis that the south tends to have more large high schools, while the midwest and northeast have smaller schools, in general, is true. What difference does this make?

Well, suppose you have 3000 kids divided between 3 schools, versus 3000 kids at one school. Assume each school has a football team with 60 players. The funding that goes into each of the smaller schools will be much less (maybe a third?) of what goes into the one large school. As a result, the football team at the large school is better funded, and can afford better coaches, trainers, weight room, etc. You're getting three times as much money spent per football player at the large school.

Furthermore, though I think this would be less of a factor, the large school will have better competition both within the team and against other teams. The 20th best kid at one of the small schools might would theoretically be between the 58th and 60th best kid at the large school. I imagine these kids would have to work a lot harder for playing time at the large school.

The kids coming from the large schools clearly have an advantage over the kids coming from small schools. I think this advantage is not insignificant in regards to creating more highly-rated prospects. If my south vs. midwest/northeast student distribution hypothesis is correct, I think the map above could be partially explained by this.

(Again, I realize this is pretty much all theory that I have little evidence or education to back up. Just thought I'd throw it out there)