State Rankings D1 Players Per Capita(Football)

#2
#2
Not sure I see the point of a per capita ranking when it comes to recruits.
 
#4
#4
I'm shocked that TN is higher than Ohio and PA.

I'm not. Population growth = more high caliber athletes.

As long as Butch doesn't screw up he could create a dynasty at Tennessee cause the instate talent pool keeps getting better each year.
 
#5
#5
I'm not. Population growth = more high caliber athletes.

As long as Butch doesn't screw up he could create a dynasty at Tennessee cause the instate talent pool keeps getting better each year.

I'm sure this makes sense in your head.

Ohio and PA have twice the population of TN. I assume this shows that football is more popular than other sports in TN.
 
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#6
#6
Not sure I see the point of a per capita ranking when it comes to recruits.

It's for data purposes mostly but way more than that. It's showing where the best recruits in comparison to population comes from. Can't believe you don't understand that GAVol.

There's more to it than what I just said too but not worth the time if you don't see the point like you said. Thanks.
 
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#7
#7
Great post!

For those who don't want to stare at the tiny print, here's how the state of Tennessee fares on a per capita basis:

1. Florida
2. Louisiana
3. Georgia
4. Maryland
5. South Carolina
6. Tennessee
7. North Carolina

Looks like FL, LA, and GA are worlds ahead of the other states, and we're in that 2nd tier close to MD, SC, and NC. Also, what this tends to show is which states are best at developing football talent.
 
#9
#9
It's for data purposes mostly but way more than that. It's showing where the best recruits in comparison to population comes from. Can't believe you don't understand that GAVol.

There's more to it than what I just said too but not worth the time if you don't see the point like you said. Thanks.
Not worth the time? Dude, put on your big boy pants and have a discussion. You can always hit the report button if I use words that are too long.

All I'm saying is OF COURSE the per capita number is higher in Tennessee and Hawaii than in California and Texas. I'm not sure statistically to be on a list right behind DC tells us much.

Edit: Thanks
 
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#10
#10
It doesn't say anything about football or the quality of play. perhaps the only thing you can gain from this is it's easier to find the good players that are in TN than some of the more traditional recruiting powerhouse states. Not sure that's something to get excited about.
 
#11
#11
Not worth the time? Dude, put on your big boy pants and have a discussion. You can always hit the report button if I use words that are too long.

All I'm saying is OF COURSE the per capita number is higher in Tennessee and Hawaii than in California and Texas. I'm not sure statistically to be on a list right behind DC tells us much.

Edit: Thanks

You're the one that that said what's the point & not me GAVol. I'm not arguing over this with you or anybody else. I posted the thread for members to have a view/look into this kind of topic but you said what was the point? Thanks.
 
#12
#12
You're the one that that said what's the point & not me GAVol. I'm not arguing over this with you or anybody else. I posted the thread for members to have a view/look into this kind of topic but you said what was the point? Thanks.
1. I'm not arguing.
2. I never asked what the point was.
3. I'm thinking you're not grasping the term "per capita".
 
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#13
#13
Okay, for those who don't understand the value of a per capita based ranking...

Imagine a real-life game of Where's Waldo. You have to find Waldo in a big three-story house with many rooms. Actually, we're gonna compare finding Waldo in two different houses, next door to each other.

In the first house, there are a TON of people in every room. You can't just glance in the door of the room and be assured you'll see Waldo, even in his red-and-white striped shirt, because he could be hidden behind other people or sitting on the chair in the far corner, that sort of thing. So you have to go through each room and look closely.

In the second house, there are still lots of people, but they're only in half the rooms. You have to look just as hard in the crowded rooms, but can just glance in the empty or near-empty ones. So your search can go almost twice as fast.

Thing is, there are two Waldos in the first house, and just one Waldo in the second. So the reward for "finding Waldo" is roughly equivalent between both houses. Law of averages says it will take roughly the same amount of effort to find a Waldo, whichever house you choose.

...

Waldo is a star football player, the houses are states, and the rooms are high schools. One state has twice the population of the other, and twice the raw number of great players. But it also has twice as many high schools you have to visit to find those great players. So the effort is roughly equal.

...

If every state on that map had the same value, were the same shade of pink, that'd be the end of the story. But it's not. Because there are actually slightly more Waldos per capita in some houses than in others. This per capita chart takes all of the variance mentioned above into account, and shows where you might find 1.5 Waldos (Tennessee), versus just 1.0 Waldos (Ohio) for the same amount of effort.

That means a recruiter is actually more efficient looking for talent in the states with higher per capita talent than the ones that are lower...even if the lower states have a bigger total number of great players.

...

So that's why it's a very useful metric.

Hope this helps.
 
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#14
#14
I understand what the stat means, but I think you're oversimplifying by speaking in terms of efficiency. Nobody is recruiting Tennessee rather than Texas so they can be more efficient. They depend on relationships and Go wherever the players are.

What I'd like to see is the number of D1 recruits as a function of total players. I think that would say a lot more about the quality of football on a state by state basis.
 
#15
#15
Great post!

For those who don't want to stare at the tiny print, here's how the state of Tennessee fares on a per capita basis:

1. Florida
2. Louisiana
3. Georgia
4. Maryland
5. South Carolina
6. Tennessee
7. North Carolina

Looks like FL, LA, and GA are worlds ahead of the other states, and we're in that 2nd tier close to MD, SC, and NC. Also, what this tends to show is which states are best at developing football talent.

Georgia's inability to win a national title since 1980 is one of college football's greatest mysteries.
 
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#16
#16
I understand what the stat means, but I think you're oversimplifying by speaking in terms of efficiency. Nobody is recruiting Tennessee rather than Texas so they can be more efficient. They depend on relationships and Go wherever the players are.

What I'd like to see is the number of D1 recruits as a function of total players. I think that would say a lot more about the quality of football on a state by state basis.

But a "state" is a nonsensical term in recruiting. It's just a border around some land, an imaginary line on a map.

What matters in recruiting is the high school. That's the unit of definition. If one state has 200 high schools to keep up with, and another state has 1,000, it's gonna take five times as many recruiters to cover the state with 1,000, all other things being equal. There just aren't enough days in the year to do an infinite amount of scouting and relationship-building.

So don't think of Texas as having five times as many football players (=richer ground). Think of Texas as having five times as many coaches to stay in contact with, five times as many games to make each Friday night, five times as many parents to sit in the living room with.

That's why per capita is so valuable...if I visit 5 high schools, talk to 25 sets of parents, and get 3 recruits, that's a lot more valuable to me than visiting 5 high schools, talking to 25 sets of parents, and getting 1 recruit.

Per capita matters. Not some invisible line dividing this land from that land over there.
 
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#19
#19
You can do it by county. You can do it by region. You can do it by high school. Per capita is cool that way, it works at any resolution you choose. These folks divvied it up by state, but that line, that boundary, isn't what makes the data valuable.

The point is, there's a higher chance you'll find DI-level talent if you look at a player in Florida, Georgia or Louisiana than there is anywhere else in the country. And a higher chance of finding that level of talent in Tennessee than in, say, Ohio or Texas, for each player you look at (literally, what 'per capita' means).

That is the value of a per capita comparison. Your efforts get you more where the per capita percentage is higher.
 
#20
#20
Put another way, using Pennsylvania and Tennessee for comparison.

Pennsylvania's population is about 13M people. Tennessee's is 6.5M, almost exactly half of the larger state. There are 734 high schools in Tennessee, while Pennsylvania has 1,501 high schools. Again, roughly a 2:1 ratio.

So if it takes your team two assistant coaches to recruit the state of Tennessee (keep in contact with all the key high school coaches, go to a certain number of Friday night games each season, talk to X number of parents at their homes), it's probably going to take four assistant coaches to recruit the state of Pennsylvania.

In short, you can almost draw a line down the middle of Pennsylvania and treat each half as a near-equal of Tennessee. We'll call them PA-1 and PA-2.

So now you're recruiting TN, PA-1, and PA-2. You have six assistant coaches covering all this ground.

The coaches covering TN come back with 6 good recruitable players. The coaches covering PA-1 come back with 5, same as the coaches covering PA-2. [this is all using the percentages on the per capita map, where TN is 6.2% and PA is 5%] That's a total of 16 players you want to recruit next year, 10 from Pennsylvania and 6 from Tennessee.

The bigger state has more total recruits, sure. But you're getting more recruits for the effort of one coaching duo from Tennessee. It took you 4 assistant coaches to bring in 10 recruits, while these 2 assistant coaches over here brought in 6 all by themselves.

That's more efficient.

If you'd put those 4 coaches covering PA in a place as rich as Tennessee (say, the Carolinas), they'd have brought home 12 recruits for the same amount of effort.

And when the NCAA limits you to a total of 10 assistant coaches, being efficient in your recruiting efforts is important.

Hope this helps.
 
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#21
#21
So one should assume that potential D1 recruits in PA are going to lower levels of football because they were wearing striped shirts in a crowded house so everyone looked in TN?

I could accept that HS football coaching might be better in TN than PA. Or that more top athletes in PA are playing something other than football, where football rules in TN (which is the way I would interpret the data).
 

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