Regional variations in player attributes

Submitted by Optimism Attache on

I was just reading this SBNation piece on Taggart and it mentioned how Coach had to adapt to "Florida's speedy talent." It got me thinking that if you follow college football you often hear this stuff about fast kids from the Southeast and Winnebago-sized lineman from Wisconsin, etc.

I'm wondering if there is any reliable data to back up these regional generalizations, or are they just canards. I recognize that there is more and/or better talent in certain parts of the country--but I mostly attribute that to areas that simply play more (or less) football due to culture, weather, etc. I'd like to know if there are truly regional differences in the kind of athletes that each part of the country produces. 

[edit: This took a turn toward issues that I should have anticipated but somehow didn't. People are being adults about it and I'm ok with informed dialogue, but moms should feel free to shut 'er down if need be.]

stephenrjking

December 7th, 2016 at 6:28 PM ^

"Speedy Florida talent" sounds like typical shallow media thinking to me. Sure there are fast guys there. There are fast guys in California and New Jersey and Ohio and Texas and even in Michigan, too.

There's clearly a larger quantity of talented guys in Florida than in many other states. Assigning one characteristic or another to it seems simplistic. 

What I suspect he has adapted to is recruiting at a place like USF that can't get the most talented guys, and if his team does in fact use a lot of speed players he has found a niche in which guys with incomplete profiles are targeted for one particular asset and developed in other areas.

But that's just a guess. 

BellyRub

December 7th, 2016 at 6:34 PM ^

See the size of the people and the food that they eat. Always going to be large humans in the cheese state.

FauxMo

December 7th, 2016 at 6:35 PM ^

I have never, ever bought these "regional differences = different physical attributes" arguments. Even if we were to get into the incredibly awkward, non-PC discussion about physical differences across racial categories and racial differences across regions, I don't think there's much there. The Southeast and Southwest produce more football talent because it's warm all year and they practice all year from about 6 years old through high school. To my mind, it's just that simple. 

But what the hell do I know? 

goblue2017

December 7th, 2016 at 8:17 PM ^

So how do we explain how skill positions in college football (and every position in basketball) are overwhelmingly dominated by blacks people? Furthermore, if you say SES is more important than genetics for determining athleticism, wouldn't we expect these skill positions to have a higher proportion of white players? After all, black people in America have lower SES than white people, on average... and this trend is even more prevalent where the majority of football recruits come from (highly populated areas)




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vbnautilus

December 8th, 2016 at 1:14 AM ^

It's definitely possible that there are regional differences in training and diet that affect the probability of different body types. The OP was just asking for some data to confirm or contradict the canard. It's a reasonable question. 

We could compile weight distributions of players from each state, possibly even (fake) 40 times to begin testing this. 

goblue2017

December 7th, 2016 at 6:47 PM ^

I think it's safe to see black people on average are objectively faster, more explosive, and generally more athletic (at least as it relates to basketball and football). I don't think there is anything wrong with saying this, as these professional sports are overwhelmingly dominated by black people.




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FauxMo

December 7th, 2016 at 6:54 PM ^

Yeah, I don't even know if that is true though, man. Remember, "sports dominance" has often been driven by socioeconomic status rather than race, though it seems like race at times and we conflate the two. Regardless, I'd bet on context/environment over race 9 times out of 10. 

RIP Hamilton's…

December 7th, 2016 at 8:05 PM ^

Strongly disagree that socioeconomic status is more important than race (genetics). Easiest example to point out would be the NBA dunk contest. Or on the other end of the spectrum how about swimming? Different genes have different bodies which result in some tasks being easier for some people than others.

LBSS

December 8th, 2016 at 4:51 AM ^

the NBA dunk contest is dominated by black guys because the NBA is dominated by black guys. whether their dominance is attributable to some genetic component of their blackness as such is debatable. certainly leaping ability is not the special domain of black people, whoever they are: eight of the top-10 male and six of the top-10 female high jumpers in the world right now are white, arab, or chinese. the best dunker in the world right now is a white dude (jordan kilganon, look him up, the dude can dunk with his hands literally behind his back). 

socioeconomic status is a grossly oversimple explanation of elite-level athletic dominance, but so is race. race is a social construct that has little to do with most genetic characteristics. for example: obama, a half-kenyan half-white guy, is considered black in the US. so is chris wormley, who is probably of mixed west african and white descent. other than sharing some visual physical characteristics like dark, tightly curled hair and brown skin, the more recently african parts of their genetic makeup are very different: there's more genetic variability among sub-saharan africans than among any other people. 

canzior

December 8th, 2016 at 9:44 AM ^

How do you know that athletes who participate in other sports aren't better at leaping? Do you remember Antonio Mcdyess?  Who had nearly a 50 inch vertical at 6'9 and nearly 250 lbs? It's hard to say definitely that the best dunker or jumper are a certain race just because they are the ones that do it on the bigegst stage.  Training can level  the playing field.  Every pro basketball player can tell you someone they played with that was better than them that never made it.  

And to your statement that black people dominate the dunk contest because they are dominate the league...why is that?  Because they are inferior athletically?  

Socioeconomic status only plays into athletics inasmuch as poorer families are statistically more likely to let their kids play football..and also kids from lower income families see it as an only option, be it a college degree or professional career.

Race is a social construct, but the fact that society contrued to have 1 particular race perform as labor and an industry relying on them being stronger and bigger, then it absolutely blurs the lines between race and genetics.  When "survival of the fittest" is left to man's own devices instead of evolution, you get more athletic people. 

http://www.aaihs.org/the-capitalized-womb/

FauxMo

December 7th, 2016 at 7:11 PM ^

Since "Autocracy Now" posted this with a picture of the Dear Leader, it's a good example... South Koreans can (in very, very limited numbers, and after huge government clearances) visit relatives in the North. Those who come back are reporting how incredibly small their immediate relatives are compared to modern South Koreans. The differences lie, after just two generations, in things like health care, food and vitamins, exercise standards, etc. Modern South Koreans are just huge compared to their Northern brethren, who come from the exact same genetic pool, and have been separated for only 65 years. It doesn't take long for the appearance of "racial differences" to emerge in populations, is the point here... 

canzior

December 7th, 2016 at 8:00 PM ^

I think the reasoning behind his could be that slaves were bred to be bigger, stronger, faster. Leading up to the civil war, breeding and selling slave labor was becoming a larger part of the Southern economic plan. 150 years later I'd be interested to see if there is any scientific data to back up African Americans being more athletic now.




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uferfan

December 7th, 2016 at 6:44 PM ^

I saw some random dude with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth outrun a horse in Northern Montana this summer.

These coaches and other experts need to be aware of the speedy Montana talent out there.




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LSAClassOf2000

December 7th, 2016 at 7:54 PM ^

I recognize that there is more and/or better talent in certain parts of the country--but I mostly attribute that to areas that simply play more (or less) football due to culture, weather, etc. I'd like to know if there are truly regional differences in the kind of athletes that each part of the country produces.

I think the only thing you are going to be able to show reliably is in the first part of this statement, and indeed Football Outsiders has already done a workup on how the most D1 talent per capita comes from the southeastern US, Texas, California and some other locations. I have to think that this study - done about 40 years ago - might have had different results, so the volume of football talent seems like it follows migration patterns in the US to some extent. 

HimJarbaugh

December 7th, 2016 at 8:04 PM ^

I don't have any data for you OP, just similar observations to what has been posted. One thing that is hard to quantify is success of a player. Pro Bowlers? All Americans? Drafted into the NFL? 

Also, people move around. Some kid may be born in Michigan and raised in Florida. Add in things like prep schools and IMG and it further distorts things.

One caution I would have is against generalizations about natural talent level. Most often guys from larger metropolitan areas will have better competition and exposure. Beyond that, I think there is more of a correlation with genetics (height/structure) and training time.

One observation I have from moving down south is that high school kids don't often play 3 sports down here, many of the highly recruited ones do private training for whatever sport they focus on. Growing up in Michigan, me and most of my friends played a different sport in fall, winter, and spring. Down here, they just go to camps and training all year round.

Zarniwoop

December 7th, 2016 at 8:09 PM ^

I have no statistical data, but I do have a story.

My best friend and I were very good basketball players our entire young lives (for kids from primarily white suburbia in Michigan).  He left after freshman year of high school and moved to Florida.

He was "white as could be" and I could easily jump 6 inches higher than he could. By my sophomore year, I COULD dunk, but only if no one touched me or in any way messed up my approach. That didn't really change in the next 3 years excpept that I could go up off two feet if I had 2 steps.

Neither of us changed much at all in terms of height or build in the intervening years and he came to visit prior to our senior year. He was double clutch dunking off two feet, 360 dunking, everything. It was like he was flying.

He could flat-out jump out of the gym.

He told me, "we play outside every day, all day, all year round. It just happened."

 

LKLIII

December 7th, 2016 at 8:19 PM ^

I really do think it's a mixed bag. Part of it could be genetic. Certain Olympic sports tend to be dominated by certain groups disproportionately on a per capita basis (Kenyans in distance running, Turks or Bulgarians in power lifting, etc). I've yet to see a dominant basketball player who was a natural born Englishman. Much of this can be alternative endeavors as well. How many great athletes south of the Mason Dixon line are siphoned off into hockey instead of football? How many kids outside of New England per capita are lost to lacrosse instead of football? How many kids in California are lost to surfing or skateboarding? Or Colorado kids lost to mountain climbing or skiing? Plus the cultural factors at play--football is big out west and in the Midwest, but it isn't revered nearly as much as it is in Texas or the south. And just like in non athletic fields, certain geographies tend to spawn more innovation & competition and attract people in that industry. Silicon Valley for tech, certain neighborhoods in NYC, Culinary excellence in Paris, etc. Football understanding & training can culturally proliferate more in the south simply because it becomes self perpetuating.




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Clarence Beeks

December 7th, 2016 at 10:46 PM ^

There is a FASCINATING Ted talk on body composition that looks at several sports (one being Olympic level swimmers) and discusses studies into how the bodies of those athletes differ from the general population (and are very similar to each other). For swimmers it was a ratio consisting of legs legs proportionally much shorter than the regular person and torso much longer than the regular person. The other sport they looked at was basketball. Very interesting.




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DrewGOBLUE

December 8th, 2016 at 3:09 AM ^

This reminds me of a story from several years ago about an implausibly strong kid who could do an iron cross when just 5 months old. Eventually he was figured out to have an extremely rare genetic anomaly which lessens the effect of a molecule that normally restrains muscle growth. His case may even help lead to effective treatments for muscular dystrophy, sarcopenia, etc.

Fortunately for him, the condition isn't known to have any detrimental complications and he gets to enjoy athletically dominating his peers. Fortunately for us (maybe), this kid and his family live near Grand Rapids and are die-hard Michigan fans.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/rare-condition-gives-toddler-super-strengt…