Roster Maps for the Big Ten Teams

Submitted by milk-n-steak on September 20th, 2022 at 12:57 PM

I was wondering the other day how regional, national, or international Big Ten teams were so I decided to plot their players hometowns on a map.

Google wouldn't let me do all 14 teams on one map so I did the East and West separately.  The layers overlap quite a bit but you can turn them on/off individually or in combinations.  

One issue with how importing to Google Maps worked was, for example, all 18 players from Omaha on Nebraska's roster were placed in exactly the same spot so it looked like just one person.  Therefore, for each location on each team with more than one player, I just moved the icons apart a little bit to show multiple people.

This means that not all of them are exactly in the right spot (and I wasn't trying to put them where their high school is) but it gives a little better picture of how many players are from each area. 

Not sure what I learned, but it was entertaining to make.

East Division

West Division

MGoBoard
Football

Blue@LSU

September 20th, 2022 at 1:07 PM ^

Very cool, OP. Great job and thanks for doing this. 

I was surprised to see that we actually recruit Florida better than OSU and have pretty much the same number of recruits from Texas as them. I suspect that they have more *s for the Texas recruits, though.

Had a good chuckle at the symbol for MSU. 

Joined: 11/04/2016

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M Vader

September 20th, 2022 at 1:25 PM ^

Thanks for doing this.  I think some people solve the problem of having multiple people come from one area by making a proportionally larger icon, don't know if your method allows this.

Joined: 06/28/2011

MGoPoints: 2474

Longballs Dong…

September 20th, 2022 at 2:58 PM ^

PowerBI or Tableau can do this without any code. You'd almost have to do a sizing based on in-state ranking to really understand if we are recruiting well.  I'm sure we could get 25 kids from any state in the country if we wanted, the question is if we're going into states and getting top recruits.  Maryland has quite a few kids from Florida but I'm guessing I won't be that impressed if I look up the recruits.  

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Venom7541

September 20th, 2022 at 1:36 PM ^

The thing I took away is the each division's teams have players from the same areas for the most part. West seems to recruit all the same places and East seems to recruit all the same places.

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markh100

September 20th, 2022 at 1:46 PM ^

Agreed.  Seems like there may be more NCAA basketball players in the Big Ten than NCAA football players.  Canadian rules tend to result in different player shapes for the same positions, but there has to be a lot of untapped talent.  Scouting may be difficult, although Michigan does tend to do a good job identifying and evaluating talent in states where the talent level isn't as high.  Would love to see more Canadians on the team.

Joined: 11/11/2009

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markh100

September 20th, 2022 at 1:42 PM ^

Love it!

  • Maryland pulls a lot of players out of Florida. 
  • It looks like only Michigan, Ohio State and MSU are capable of recruiting in the Western half of the United States. 
  • I'm surprised that Penn State only has two recruits west of Austin
  • Rutgers has the highest density footprint in the East, with ~80% coming from the NYC-Washington, DC area

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Mr. Elbel

September 20th, 2022 at 2:27 PM ^

Holy smokes, this is probably one of my favorite things I’ve seen on here in a while. I know what I’m doing for the rest of the afternoon. Wonderful job, and great idea!

Joined: 03/02/2014

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