Interesting Article From ESPN about Texas High School Football
This article takes a look at Texas high school football, and how the players are no better or worse(post high school football career), compared to football players in other regions.
January 30th, 2012 at 7:25 PM ^
I believe that's true. What the article failed to mention (or I missed) is that while they may not perform any better in college there are just exponentially more of them.
Basically if you can recruit successfully in Texas, Florida, California or Ohio you'll do just fine. Pennsylvania used to be the 5th member of that group but lately Lousiana has been giving them a run for their money.
January 30th, 2012 at 7:36 PM ^
For NFL players, after the Big 3, it's Ohio, Georgia and Louisiana. The next plateau is Penn, NJ, Michigan, Bama and Virginia (all at about the same number).
January 30th, 2012 at 7:56 PM ^
Thanks to the population growth in the Sun Belt and the relatively slow growth (or outright decline) in Rust Belt areas. Demographics plays a huge part in the dominance of the SEC.
January 30th, 2012 at 8:14 PM ^
Texas increased it's population 21% since the this last decade. North midwestern states were meager in growth...especially Michigan @ -1%.
January 30th, 2012 at 9:34 PM ^
My question about Texas and its population growth - and this is no way a judgment statement - is whether or not that growth is from the types of individuals who would be involved in football at a higher rate than normal. It's like how Florida has had some growth, but much of that has been due to retirees and the like. It has had some natural birth-rate increases, but not nearly as great a rate as its overall population. Texas, with its large immigrant population, has had an uptick in growth but probably not as great as growth in HS-aged kids as 21% would make you think.
January 31st, 2012 at 12:08 AM ^
I think you hit on a key point. Not only do these states have more blue-chip talent, but you can make yourself into a quality program by recruiting the guys at the 2nd and 3rd level in places like Texas, Florida, and California. I remember when I lived in Orange County that the local paper would list the exploits of high school prospects who had gone on to play in college. Every week there would be 5-6 guys at USC and UCLA, but the next biggest school on the list would be Boise State. Getting those guys who are a little under the radar in a football hotbed is a great recruiting strategy. We've gotten great contributions from guys like Omameh, Ryan, Denard, and it looks like the same thing will happen with Frank Clark down the road. Anywhere else in the country and those guys probably would have gotten more attention, but folks in their state, league, or in Ryan's case on his own team, stole their spotlight and allowed these talented guys to fly under the radar.
As a related side note, I am very curious to see what Colorado looks like in 4-5 years. Their current class is virtually all guys from California and Texas (along with some DC guys and of course Yuri Wright). Their staff has a lot of NFL coaching experience and a number of African Americans with significant playing experience as well. If they can get some on-field momentum that program could turn into a recruiting powerhouse.
January 31st, 2012 at 5:29 AM ^
I was under the assumption that Colorado had pretty subpar facilities, can anyone verify this or knows something about it? Anyway, I was just curious
January 31st, 2012 at 4:55 AM ^
I agree. While on average the top kids from TX will fair about the same as the top kids from everywhere else at the next level and beyond, there are just more of them. More importantly, there are a lot of them below that top tier that find success. The old cliche about high school football being like a religion down here is actually truth.
February 1st, 2012 at 2:19 AM ^
I second the religion comment....coming from a school that had 119 in the graduating class down there, we could fill an astroturf stadium in 1990 with 15k fans in a town that only had 8k people....a very deep rooted religion!
January 30th, 2012 at 7:37 PM ^
"Too often, it works the other way. Coaches and prospects, from Texas and elsewhere, come together with mismatched priorities in a stressed environment -- and players pick the wrong school for the right reason or the right school for the wrong one."
I think several of our near misses are going to regret not playing for Hoke.
January 30th, 2012 at 7:54 PM ^
This is how I look at it.
January 30th, 2012 at 7:42 PM ^
students playing different sports in college or high school, i.e. Lacrosse, soccer,basketball, baseball, etc. I mean look at Chad Ochocinco, he wanted to play soccer if this season didn't happen.
January 30th, 2012 at 7:57 PM ^
Follow me on twitter! @RecruitBlue
January 30th, 2012 at 8:25 PM ^
Our recruiting guru market is pretty saturated at this point around these parts. That is not to say that we can't always use another source. But that was not a good first impression.
January 30th, 2012 at 9:28 PM ^
Everything is bigger in Texas, even the myths.
January 30th, 2012 at 11:29 PM ^
January 31st, 2012 at 12:09 AM ^
Just shows the abundance of the hype
January 31st, 2012 at 12:52 AM ^
Kind of a random comparison, but some of the ideas in the article remind me of cross country recruiting -- not always the best idea to go with a recruit just based on high school times, as some kids will come in having trained huge mileage in high school and are pretty near their peak, while other kids will have slower, but comparable times off of relatively little mileage and have much more room to grow. I buy the argument -- to some degree -- that prospects coming out of the big programs in Texas might be closer to their overall peak than some in lesser programs around the country that haven't had the same resources/coaching.
January 31st, 2012 at 5:34 AM ^
I have often wondered about this as well, I wonder if someone can figure out a metric or do a chart on this, did you say chart?
January 31st, 2012 at 6:23 AM ^
The bigger discrepancy is how many elite players are produced, compared to population. Texas has 2.5 the population of Michigan. So based on strict numbers you'd think it would produce 2.5 times the blue-chip football players.
But Texas, on average, produces about 5x the number of four-star recruits as Michigan, on every recruiting site. I agree that a huge part of this is the football culture in Texas, but in general I think recruiting gurus have just sort of made up their minds that players are better in Texas, Florida and California. ESPN in particular is really skewed towards those states and the southeast.