College Football Recruiting Map

General NCS Football Sports Junkies10

We’re spending a little time on football tonight, so it is a good time to highlight a really, really neat website that we ran across a couple of weeks ago when football recruiting was hot.

Amongst a lot of other things, this hotlink to “MapGameDay.com” maps the geographical location of every high school commitment throughout the country. Very cool

About StateFans

'StateFansNation' is the shared profile used by any/all of the dozen or so authors that contribute to the blog. You may not always agree with us, but you will have little doubt about where we stand on most issues. Please follow us on Twitter and FaceBook

General NCS Football Sports Junkies

10 Responses to College Football Recruiting Map

  1. GAWolf 02/20/2007 at 10:12 AM #

    That map is spectacular… except for the fact that it shows just how poorly we recruited the greater-Charlotte area. The information that thing provides, however, is just amazing.

  2. BoKnowsNCS71 02/20/2007 at 11:32 AM #

    Very interesting when you look at Boise State (which has had some success in past years) and you see they pick strong recruits from all over the country to come to Idaho.

    I would think that Raleigh would be a much more pleasent place to spend one’s college and post-college days versus the blue field of BSU. But if our focus is always on the same patch of kids in NC/VA/SC — it’s going to be tough.

  3. Winston Wolf 02/20/2007 at 1:17 PM #

    What’s interesting and surprising about the map is that the state of North Carolina retained more talent to play in the state than SC, TN or VA.

    I would have thought the opposite. It seems like it’s hard to get kids away from both SC and VA.

  4. RedTerror29 02/20/2007 at 2:44 PM #

    Of the states I looked at, NC and LA retained the highest percentage of in-state recruits. I compiled the numbers for ten states, and there was a halfway decent correlation (0.56) between # of 1A programs in the state and % of recruits staying in-state. There was virtually no correlation between # of BCS programs in the state and % of recruits staying in-state (-0.11).

    Why? Think about it like this: if you’re a 1A prospect out of LA, even if you’re not good enough for LSU, chances are UL-Lafeyette, La Tech, Tulane, or UL Monroe will take you. If you’re a prospect out of GA, if you aren’t good enough to play at UGA or Ga Tech, then you either have to go 1AA (e.g. Ga Southern) or leave the state.

    It’s not conclusive, but I think this refutes somewhat the hypothesis that NC is hurt by having too many programs in the state.

  5. Winston Wolf 02/20/2007 at 3:20 PM #

    Interesting RedTerror. I’m sure glad that we have someone on our staff to target GA now. We have overlooked that state for a good while.

  6. crackdog 02/20/2007 at 4:08 PM #

    It looks like neither Georgia nor Texas will let their coaches cross the state line for recruits, not that they need to I guess. State had a very in-state focus this year, supplemented by O’Brien’s NY and Ohio Valley connections. Many programs (Tennessee, LSU, Florida) recruit regionally and do just fine. Few recruited truly nationally this year, with the exception of Notre Dame. Even Southern Cal stuck mostly to kids from California’s big cities and agricultural valleys.

    This was a great, fun, application of technology. As a GIS professional, I wish I’d come up with it first.

  7. GAWolf 02/20/2007 at 4:32 PM #

    The contrary argument to Redterror’s philosophy (or maybe I’ve misunderstood) is that NC produces so little D1 talent when compared to other states that after the in-state schools take theirs there are very few others that remain to go elsewhere. In other words, Florida and Georgia have so much attrition to schools in other states percentage-wise because there are a lot more D1 athletes and thus more that go out of state.

    Does that make sense? It makes sense to me, but I’m not sure I explained it very well.

  8. RedTerror29 02/20/2007 at 5:12 PM #

    ^Way ahead of you buddy. I also looked at correlations between # of recruits and % staying in-state and between # of recruits and # of 1A programs. There is virtually no correlation between # of recruits and % staying in-state (0.06), but there was a fairly strong correlation between # of recruits and # of 1A programs (0.68).

    Georgia is the one real outlier when it comes to # of recruits vs. # of 1A programs. I think the correlation isn’t so strong for # of recruits and % staying in-state is muddied by the # of programs as well. It appears that states like Texas, Ohio, and Florida have so much talent much of it escapes the state despite the high numbers of 1A programs in-state.

    In the interest of full disclosure, I looked at only 10 states (AL, FL, GA, LA, NC, OH, SC, TN, TX, VA). Obviously the data would be more trustworthy for all 50 states over a period of several years. And I’m not sure the MapGameDay feature is entirely accurate. I just did a quick and dirty look to satisfy my own personal curiosity.

  9. RedTerror29 02/20/2007 at 5:13 PM #

    I also used relative (ranked 1 thru 10) rather than absolute numbers to calculate the correlations.

  10. tedintern 10/20/2007 at 11:10 PM #

    Wow, how about that USC – Notre Dame game today. College Football sure has seen some upsets this year. App. State over Michigan, USF over Auburn, Stanford over USC.

    What do you guys think, will we see the SEC in the BCS title game?

Leave a Reply