UM Needs to Recruit Montana Better & Other Fun Facts about Where NFL Players Come From
Lots of conversations lately about recruiting and where the coaches come from and their backgrounds, plus talk of Urban de-emphasizing OH to a degree to go South. Durkin seems to be bringing a lot of GA flavor already - I like.
So decided to do some sleuthing and found a cool blog article I don't think has ever been posted. Some fun facts in it as follows:
ALL THE EXPECTED STATES PROVIDE THE MOST PLAYERS PER CAPITA EXCEPT FOR ONE INTERESTING EXCEPTION - MONTANA
| State | # | Per Capita |
| LA | 59 | 77K |
| SC | 55 | 84K |
| DC | 7 | 86K |
| MS | 34 | 87K |
| AL | 52 | 92K |
| FL | 200 | 94K |
| MT | 10 | 99K |
| GA | 97 | 100K |
| VA | 55 | 145K |
| OH | 79 | 146K |
ONE HS IN FLORIDA HAS MORE NFL PLAYERS THAN 15 STATES CURRENTLY HAVE
| 1 - St Thomas Aquinas | |
| Ft Lauderdale (10!) | |
| T2 - Glades Central | |
| Belle Garde, FL (5) | |
| T2 - Glenville | |
| Cleveland, OH (5) | |
| T2 - Pahoke | |
| Pahoke, FL (5) | |
| 14 schools with 4 each | |
| 43 schools with 3 each |
- Looking at a map of Florida, Pahoke and Belle Garde are essentially neighbors; must be some epic HS football down there.
DETROIT HAS AS MANY NFL PLAYERS AS THE MUCH BIGGER L.A. - AND NYC IS NOWHERE TO BE FOUND IN THE TOP 12?
| City | # |
| Miami | 25 |
| Ft Laud | 16 |
| Houston | 16 |
| N. Orleans | 16 |
| Jacksonville | 12 |
| LA | 12 |
| Detroit | 12 |
| Cincy | 12 |
| Cleveland | 12 |
| Chicago | 11 |
| Dallas | 10 |
| Philly | 10 |
| Pitt | 10 |
TOP 25 STATES IN TERMS OF NFL PLAYER PRODUCTION (NOT ADJUSTED FOR POPULATION)
*D.C. is a powerhouse in its own right considering its tiny size, but couldn't decide whether it should be rolled into Maryland or Virginia so kept it independent
| State | # |
| CA | 213 |
| FL | 200 |
| TX | 172 |
| GA | 97 |
| OH | 79 |
| LA | 59 |
| SC | 55 |
| PA | 55 |
| VA* | 55 |
| NJ | 55 |
| AL | 52 |
| NC | 51 |
| MI | 44 |
| IL | 40 |
| TN | 35 |
| MS | 32 |
| NY | 28 |
| MD* | 25 |
| MO | 24 |
| WI | 22 |
| WA | 21 |
| AZ | 21 |
| IN | 20 |
| CO | 19 |
| OK | 19 |
| *DC | 5 |
- MS has more NFL players than NY - guess NY kids prefer basketball
January 14th, 2015 at 8:53 AM ^
But you also need space to play pick-up non-organized football for hours on end like they do in the south. There's just not much space to do it.
January 14th, 2015 at 10:43 AM ^
Native New Yorker here. There are plenty of fields--I went to high school in the Bronx (Go Truman Mustangs!) and we had a whole athletic complex, a football field/track, tennis courts (surfaced with concrete!), a handball court (it's a NYC thing--you wouldn't understand), a natatorium, a basketball arena, etc. As a kid, I played a LOT of pick-up (two-hand touch) football with friends. Thing was though, this only happened AFTER it was too cold to play baseball. As other posters have noted NYC is a basketball town--kids grow up dreaming of playing hoops at the Garden and not football at Giants Stadium.
I would also add that NYC is a big baseball town that probably produces far more MLB talent than NFL talent (it would interesting to see the number of baseball players produced as a comparison). My own sports dream growing up was playing centerfield at Yankee Stadium. The pro football teams are popular but remember that those teams actually play across the river in Jersey, which is a HUGE football state with super competitive high school programs. In many cases, City kids who are interested in football will actually go to Jersey Catholic schools (which dominate their public school rivals) or relocate to Florida.
January 14th, 2015 at 12:32 AM ^
Just build the fields vertically.
January 14th, 2015 at 1:09 AM ^
January 14th, 2015 at 9:19 AM ^
Neil Degrasse Tyson, is it you?
January 14th, 2015 at 12:27 AM ^
has as many as PA. and twice as many as NY. i'm really surprised by that.
January 14th, 2015 at 12:30 AM ^
Living in NJ makes you wanna hit people. Makes sense.
January 14th, 2015 at 12:35 AM ^
With the heavy population there, and more land than NYC (so HSs can actually offer football unlie NYC HSs apparently) it doesn't surprise me. Every year lately we're seeing quite a few highly ranked HS croots out of NJ, so just by probabililty of having that many high level recruits it would indicate a lot of guys play football.
The 2 surprises to me were (a) how many South Carolina guys there are, and (b) I thought IL would have generated more. Midwest state, massive population center in Chicago, Big 10 culture, large state in both land and population.
January 14th, 2015 at 12:43 AM ^
I'm guessing Chicago has some of the same problems NY does (thought not as acute)? And basketball is king in Illinois/Indiana/Kentucky, in both rural and urban areas. Lots of good soccer players come from Chicago/Indiana/St. Louis area as well. This probably cuts down on numbers (but fairly minimally, admittedly).
January 14th, 2015 at 12:59 AM ^
There is probably a cultural aspect to it as well. The parents who have the money to support a football program in NYC don't want their kids playing football. They often don't come from the same football culture as parents in cities like Chicago or aren't the types who were into football growing up.
January 14th, 2015 at 1:11 AM ^
Yes, this has always been a problem for soccer in the US. Wealthy parents supported it as an alternative to football and thus it turned into a white-collar sport that is much more expensive to play competitively than football is, even though football requires much more equipment.
January 14th, 2015 at 3:51 AM ^
If concussion research keeps going the way it is and football goes "out of favor" with most parents, we may see a lot more young athletes playing soccer in the US in the next ten years or so.
January 14th, 2015 at 10:37 AM ^
January 14th, 2015 at 3:02 PM ^
January 14th, 2015 at 1:39 AM ^
Also that basketball is the top dog in a lot of places in Illinois. This might just be personal experience/bias but a lot of good athletes that would play football in the south play hockey in northern Illinois instead.
I went to two basketball-first high schools in Illinois (west and northwest suburbs) and really didn't grasp how big high school football was in some places until making good friends from Cincinnati and visiting Austin, TX. It's just a different culture.
As an aside, other than maybe San Francisco I can't imagine any other big American city has the problems with space that New York does. Chicago has a population density of ~12,000/sq mile, NYC is nearly 28,000/sq mile.
January 14th, 2015 at 3:27 AM ^
Not to mention lacrosse.
January 14th, 2015 at 5:44 AM ^
Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad
January 14th, 2015 at 7:58 AM ^
I had that in my post and then deleted it because I didn't know how much more lacrosse has been growing, but it went from club to varsity at my alma mater my senior year. Any sooner and I would have loved to have played.
January 14th, 2015 at 12:36 AM ^
Obviously there are the big college programs that churn out NFL talent (The U, Bama, etc.) which tends to coorelate to how good the teams are and how "pro-style" they are.
But it really seems like the rest of the NFL guys that get drafted or wind up in the league just kinda spring out of nowhere. Small D-II and D-III schools often have just as many guys in the league as some of the Power 5 teams...because guys progress and grow differently.
It's not as much of a crapshoot as say the baseball draft or probably the hockey draft but how guys get into the NFL almost seems completely random, again unless you're at one of the 50 biggest schools or so where some of the talent comes from.
January 14th, 2015 at 12:38 AM ^
January 14th, 2015 at 12:47 AM ^
Here's a great story ESPN did on the area a few years ago. Kids grow up chasing rabbits on foot. It's like something out of Greek mythology.
January 14th, 2015 at 12:47 AM ^
Vincent Smith's take on this.
January 14th, 2015 at 12:49 AM ^
January 14th, 2015 at 1:08 AM ^
has become quite a regular MGoUser here over the last couple years. So, yeah, I think he still has his head well-attached. Maybe better than most around here.
January 14th, 2015 at 1:43 AM ^
January 14th, 2015 at 1:57 AM ^
I don't know if this reply means you knew about Smith around here or not, but if you didn't and you're interested, he's MrSmith on MGoBlog, and a search for "Hope for Pahokee" or anything "gardens" would end up with some interesting Vincent Smith/Martavious Odoms results.
January 14th, 2015 at 1:53 AM ^
What you won't see are guys popping right back up on their feet 1 sec later like Mr Smith did. That Pahokee Toughness is no joke.
January 14th, 2015 at 8:58 AM ^
He also blocked Clowney so hard earlier in the game that Clowney doubled over and hobbled off the field.
Some body .gif that one please.
January 14th, 2015 at 4:19 AM ^
where is Hawaii on these lists...aren't native Hawaiians the group with the highest representation per capita in the NFL?
January 14th, 2015 at 6:03 AM ^
You are probably thinking fo the influx of Samoans which is more of a "Mountain/Pacific Time Zone" thing than Hawaii. Hawaii has 9, same as Utah - both places Samoans hang out.
American Samoa by the way has 3 NFL players.
January 14th, 2015 at 4:27 AM ^
January 14th, 2015 at 5:57 AM ^
Was curious about this St. Aquinas and one of the top google searches was a cleveland.com story on Urban Meyer's relationship with the school. (unfortunately). It is pretty in depth if you want a read.
http://www.cleveland.com/osu/index.ssf/2014/01/st_thomas_aquinas_ohio_s…
January 14th, 2015 at 9:51 AM ^
January 14th, 2015 at 1:10 PM ^
Pahokee, Glades Central, and to an extent St. Thomas Aquinas all pull from the same towns. In the communities surrounding Lake Okeechobee, those kids start developing fast-twitch muscles when they are 8 years old, chasing rabbits in the swamps for $3/rabbit.
Just look at the NFL alumni for Glades Central--most are wide receivers, DBs, or RBs.
So I guess the lesson is: If you want your kid to play in the NFL, have him start chasing rabbits around your backyard when he's in elementary school.
January 14th, 2015 at 1:13 PM ^
recruited the State well, everything considered. I would love to see more kids pulled from California and Texas, but, you know, geography and everything...