Below is a comparison of the top States for NFL Players and top rated HS football players.
Recruit ranking data is from SBN's June 28, 2016 article (Kirschner) which compiled the 4 and 5 star players (247 composite) from the last 5 years (I calculated the percent...tough duty); the NFL #'s are from a September 11, 2015 article at Cleveland.com (Exner); the per capita data is from an October 2014 article on Scout.com (Newberg). I determined the "discrepancy" by dividing the Recruiting % by the NFL % and subtracting 1. Positive percents result when the recruit rating fraction exceeds the NFL fraction (overrated) and negatives result when the opposite is true.
In terms of projecting high school stars to making it to the NFL, the most "overrated" states were: Indiana; Arizona; Texas; Tennessee; Mississippi, Louisiana; Georgia; Virginia; Maryland; and Florida. Some of these states produce a lot of top talent, but the ratings pubs also seem to go overboard.
The most underrated states were: New York; Wisconsin; Missouri; South Carolina; New Jersey; Pennsylvania...the latter three were a little surprising (to me anyway) given the amount of NFL talent produced there.
I give attaboys to the folks who do the ratings work in: Ohio; Alabama; California. This is particularly noteworthy because it isn't a function of small sample sizes...these states produce quite a bit of NFL talent. This doesn't mean that the ratings folks are right about each player, rather that they hit and miss equally. Texas and Florida recruiting folks should take notes.
Anyway, wanna find under the radar talent? Look in South Carolina. They are second in density (per capita numbers of citizens making it to the NFL) and the recruiting publications are about 40% less likely to identify top talent. Another really good place to look is New Jersey (11th/almost 23%). In Michigan and New York, the density is lower but the recruiting pubs miss a decent bit of talent there as well.
State (# in the NFL) (rank NFL players per capita) (% of NFL) (% 4 & 5 star recruits) (% discrepancy)
1. California (203) (15) (11.9%) (12.2%) (+2.5%)
2. Florida (193) (6) (11.4%) (14%) (+22.8%)
3. Texas (162) (8) (9.6%) (13.7%) (+42.7%)
4. Georgia (113) (5) (6.7%) (8.6%) (+28.4%)
5. Ohio (81) (10) (4.8%) (4.8%) (0.0 %)
6. Alabama (60) (3) (3.5%) (3.5%) (0.0%)
7. Louisiana (59) (1) (3.5%) (4.5%) (+28.6%)
8. Pennsylvania (55) (26) (3.2%) (2.6%) (-18.8%)
9. New Jersey (52) (11) (3.1%) (2.4%) (-22.6%)
10. Michigan (49) (22) (2.9%) (2.1%) (-28.6%)
11. South Carolina (48) (2) (2.8%) (1.7%) (-39.3%)
12. North Carolina (47) (17) (2.8%) (3.1%) (+10.7%)
13. Virginia (46) (14) (2.7%) (3.4%) (+25.9%)
14. New York (38) (37) (2.2%) (0.4%) (-81.2%)
15. Illinois (36) (36) (2.1%) (2.3%) (+9.5%)
16. Tennessee (33) (16) (1.9%) (2.7%) (+42.1%)
17. Mississippi (29) (4) (1.7%) (2.2%) (+29.4%)
18. Maryland (28) (18) (1.7%) (2.1%) (+23.5%)
19. Missouri (23) (19) (1.4%) (0.7%) (-50.0%)
20. Wisconsin (22) (24) (1.3%) (0.3%) (-76.9%)
States listed in the recruiting top 20 but not in the NFL top 20
Arizona (19) (30) (1.1%...tie 22nd) (1.6%...18th) (+45.5%)
Indiana (13) (39) (0.8%...tie 28th) (1.4%...19th) (+75.0%)
Oklahoma (19) (21) (1.1%...tie 22nd) (1.2%...20th) (+9.1%)
Comments
Good to know. If you combine our major recruiting areas of Virginia, the Carolinas, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, new Jersey we're talking about 28% of the recruits with huge disproportional share of good guys in Georgia and Florida. Helps playing teams in these states and getting press in those areas.
Remember what Frank wanted, 6 hour radius from Blacksburg is all he thought was needed to compete nationally.
Well,
I think if you land every guy you want in that 6 hour radius, you may have a shot every few years or so. But we aren't doing that so......
totally agree. We can't even land out top In State talent let alone kids in NC,MD,TN.
And also remenber that when Frank was saying that, the world was a bit different then.
The one thing Frank had to work with, beyond others as a limitation, was budget.
I seem to recall a number something along the lines of VT being one of the teams that made it to a national championship game with a dramatically smaller budget than the others.
Somebody straighten out my memory here, what stat am I thinking of.
Only team to make the BCS or equivalent with sub either 25 or 50 million budget.
Damn, is UCFs budget really bigger than ours?
National Championship.
It was also a changing world and instead of adapting and changing with the times, we dug in our heels and allowed ourselves to get walked on by those who did adjust.
When we were at our biggest name nationally, instead of trying to tap into that national recognition and start to branch out and develop and expand the brand, we became more insular, and doubled down on being a very regional program. We had that attitude of "we've accomplished what we set out to do" and instead of continuing the process, we rested on our laurels and it completely bit us in the ass. Our athletic momentum ground to a halt, our fundraising stagnated to an embarrassingly low level, and as such, we had to let numerous talented coaches go because we couldn't afford to pay them. And then, as recruiting developed into the national endeavor it has become, we fell even further behind because we never seized the opportunity to lay the ground work to be a program that had national contacts when our name would allow it.
Should we see the momentum we had between 95 and 2010 again, I really hope we have learned to take advantage of it. Should be interesting what happens in basketball over the coming seasons, because it certainly seems like they could be on the verge of hitting similar waters.
IMO, we under recruit OH and PA especially for O Line. There are some athletes as well that are under the radar. I do like that we are hitting LA, And GA more.
Not too many surprises here. I've been saying forever that Texas evaluations and ratings are way overstated. But the ratings services sure know how to tell the folks in Texas what they want to hear about their local heroes.
And I've privately been suspecting for several years now that unfortunately Virginia players have also been overrated. But I have said for quite some time that VT needs to -- and Fuente will - recruit more regionally and less locally (regardless of the lip service being paid to in-state recruiting).
California has lots of talent, but not the breadth and depth of super passionate fans that buy scouting service subscriptions. So it's no surprise they're underrated.
Virginia has had some very talented/highly ranked classes in the last few years. Would like to see if these statistics hold true or if the ratings are closer to ground truth.
One thing to consider with this data is the effect of population shifts. OH, PA, and MI have all seen dropping populations for what seems like a decade, thanks to the auto industry manufacturing abroad, while the sun belt states have seen their population increase. The NFL per capita reflects some of these shifts I think and also seems like a better indicator for where to have a higher rate of success in finding talent.
The little disclaimer on stock prospectus' holds here: past performance is not indicative of future results. Fuente and company will have to guess where the recruiting hot beds will be in the future and plan the satellite camps now. I would propose to look at states with the highest NFL players per capita as this would indicate that there is a higher chance of the average player becoming an NFL talent where a state like NY would imply they are under-ranked, but would indicate to me that there are much more exceptions than norms (NYC's large population probably put some skew into the data).
Another thought I just had is that (if I am understanding the OP's analysis) the data needs to be shifted to reflect the 3-4 year college period. Of the last 5 years of 4-5 star recruits only 2 years worth of the data would be reflected in the NFL numbers, half of the recruits would still be in college. It seems like the recruiting ranking numbers need to include only data from 5-9 years ago to reflect the last 5 years of NFL rosters.
Daveinop, did you shift the data?
Very true, and I didn't shift the data. I just took the raw numbers in the articles as they were all relatively close to each other in time and was something I could easily calculate.
I did take a look at this about 3 years ago and gathered the 4-5 star totals myself from Rivals data. The trends in the big states and the northern states was the same, as was the per capita figure.
At that time Virginia was a bit "underrated". In states that have fewer players in the NFL, it doesn't take a lot of change in rosters to shift the "discrepancy" calculation. However, the ratings pubs are fairly predictable in terms of their, I'll call them "allocations", to the major clusters of their subscribers.
RELEVANT: This link allows you to click on a school and see where their recruits are from (2002-2013). Here's VT's map:
that is awesome. I'm so far resisting the urge to click that link because I actually want to get something done today, but wow. charts for the win.
I like the way things are going now with still grabbing recruits in state, then
looking out of state for guys here and there.
Take Lecitus Smith. I feel like it's worth it to go out of state for a guy like that.
I am definitely in favor of recruiting whatever region to insure we get the highest quality individual for the position of need. If VA kids want to string us out, lets offer a kid of the same skill set some place else.
Since I'm into numbers and stuff... if VT dropped all of our current recruits and instead replaced them with the entire top-15 from VA (pipe dream duhhh it will never ever happen) we'd have the #7 class in the country currently per 247 composite and, again, that's with 15 kids total in the class...usually classes have about 20-25 kids. Also, it wouldn't be a particularly well rounded class.. 5 defensive ends and 3 defensive tackles.
Obviously, this would NEVER happen... not even Alabama, Ohio State, Florida State, Clemson, USCal, etc. can keep the entire top-15 from their state in a given year. This was more or less some evidence that if we can get back to dominating our state, which I have faith we will in a year or two, we can get some damn good classes under our belt.
Nicely done, thanks for putting in the work
Great work, can I request another research project since I don't know how to do it. Do a class filled with best "needs" of VT instead of just straight top 15. Say best RB, best WR, best QB, best DE, best DT, best CB, best OL, best LB and see what kind of class that would give Tech.
Good idea, especially identifying areas for us to best get offensive linemen apart from competing with sec power teams. seems we have traditionally gone to Florida for defensive backfield speed.
Best at every position? I believe the kids these days refer to that as the "number one recruiting class" if I'm not mistaken.
From the state of VA. So it wouldn't be the best class overall, that's my point everyone wants the top class but you have to get guys to fill needs not just stars.
I see, that makes a lot more sense now.