Can The Heat Be Beat?

in a few hundred years, if Al Gore's prediction turns out to be correct....lol.

Also, IMHO, I think al least Texas should be a warm weather state and Oklahoma is on the fence in either direction. It is hotter then a hell in Oklahoma in the summer!!!! Which makes this analysis even more weighted to the warm weather teams..

i left texass and oklahomo cold because they do play a few games in bad weather i.e. nebraska, iowa state, kansas, missouri, and the like.--and it CAN get cold in both those states.

but, yeah

It is warmer in Texas than Clemson.

Most Dixie teams didn't allow African-Americans to play. This shrunk their athlete pool considerably, and forced African-Americans to go to the North or the West Coast to play football, unless they wanted to go to "black colleges" such as Grambling.

When de-segregation finally happened, the numbers started to turn around. It just seems that it is a lot easier for warm-weather athletes to not only keep in shape during the off-season, but keep improving. That is why I am so glad that UM and RR are recruiting a lot of warm weather kids.

Hopefully us recruiting in "warm weather" states will help us in the future then.

Since 1940, and especially since 1960, the fastest growing states in the nation in terms of population have all been in the Sun Belt, stretching from CA to FLA. Combine that statistical fact with Tater's point about African-Americans finally being allowed to play for southern schools in the 60s and 70s, and you have a collection of advantages for warm weather schools. In addition to the warm weather itself, which doesn't hurt for all kinds of reasons.

I don't care—you couldn't get me to move to the deep south for anything.

But as a critique of your conclusion I'd echo the sentiment Don alluded to--while you have found that there is a positive correlation between teams playing in warm weather and an increasing share of championships, this does not show a causal relationship. What would be really neat would be to do some further analysis on demographics or whatever it is that warm weather coaches are doing to be successful and figure out how to replicate it up north.
The difficult part of this is that there are so many variables. Relative academic strength over the years will change the attractiveness of a school to talented athletes, coaches, and athletic administrators (and each group might have an overall preference for weak or strong academics, and that preference may change throughout the years), economic strength of the surrounding region affects funding for the university and therefore its overall attractiveness, scoring one talented coach or athlete or administrator by dumb luck may attract more talent in a domino effect, or maybe weather has had a direct effect on success--but again, weather might theoretically attract a good AD who wants to be somewhere warm, who discerns and hires a good coach, and the coach is then effective at recruiting and coaching talented athletes. Or maybe the whole trend is entire coincidental. The possibilities are basically endless.

is due to the fact that in all sports - pro and college - the season and the off-season are getting more and more blurred.

It use to be when the season ended - it ended. Kids went and played another sport (basketball) or nothing at all. Now kids are more "specialized" to a sport.

Warm weather kids can simply play their sport of choice all year long. How many Northern kids were playing pick up football or baseball in 4 feet of snow and a blizzard? Or going for a run?

4-5 months of more practice and keeping in shape have to be an advantage. Now multiply this by 6-7 years and the Southern kid has a lot more development time under his belt. This is why Northern schools are recruiting down South.

I thought this thread was going to be about how good Miami's NBA team is. Which would be surprising in a wide variety of ways.

I thought the Heat were struggling to make the playoffs, so I guess they can be beat.

I fail to see why 1940 is the demarcation point. I though you were using the end of single platoon football as the point but that was 1941 (when substitution was allowed freely). Why not do CFB history as a whole or use a date that signifies a change or a leveling of the playing field?

Tater's thoughts on post segregation CFB are as good a start as I can come up with. I was thinking of any of the years that the NCAA began implementing scholarship limits ('73, '78, or '92).

Finally, I certainly appreciate you doing the work for this and have always appreciated your posts since your famous woody hayes explosion on the sackcarr?!?!.com boards. I just thought a little constructive criticism was in order.

Demographic shifts. Industry collapsed in the "cold states" (see Rust Belt)and the cold population has shrunk. Population has grown in the southern states. More population = more players, period.