Stallion wrote:You're not getting it. Dallas is a City not a State. the Dallas Ft Worth Metroplex would place about 5th IF IT WERE A STATE. ex. Pennslvannia last I saw had about 80 Division 1A recruits a couple of days before signing date. The DFW Metroplex usually produces 150 or so Division 1A signees twice as much as the State of Pennslvannia which has traditionally been considered in the past one of the more fertile recruiting areas in the country(although less so these days). Texas Football has a run down on this every year.
My point is that Dallas has a greater population than most states. While I can't speak to the current competitiveness level of high school football in Pennsylvania, I still contend this is mainly a population issue.
Don't get me wrong--coaches who don't recruit Texas do so at their peril. It is the argument that Texas produces more talented athletes or Texas football is somehow inherently better that bothers me. You can't just look at the raw number of scholarships and declare that the talent level is higher in Dallas either. There are a lot of issues that go into it--population, size of the schools, ease of recruiting, number of D1 colleges in the area, walk-ons in other states, etc.
I know, I know. Don't argue with Texans regarding anything that affects their view that Texas is the best at everything. But if you took the geographical area of Texas and placed it over somewhere with a similar population, you would see the same results. Yes, Texas will produce more D1 football players than an area where football is not as popular (NY) or where there are other things to do (mountain sports in CO,) and the 7-on-7 leagues have contributed a lot in recent years because there are more kids who have had more practice time running ever more complex offensive schemes. However, Florida, which is maybe 1/50th of the size of Texas produces similar numbers per capita--because it has similar characteristics--large population, high pop density, tons of D1 schools in the area, and warm weather allowing year round training.
The number of D1 schools in the area makes a huge difference. Most kids want to stay close to home. (Even going as far away as Nebraska or Colorado is only a day's drive or 90 minute flight from Dallas.) So there are far greater opportunities for a scholarship for a Texas player. Maybe that makes kids work harder at football in Texas because there are more scholarships available--but it also means that there are more scholarships available, so more total scholarships are given out to players in the area. Why would Rice or Tulsa or North Texas go recruit out of Pennsylvania when they can get a player of equal caliber out of Dallas?
The other big factor is mainly a time issue. Why would coaches spend time scouring the earth in Iowa or Alabama and try to out-bid the one or two major schools in the state for a player who most likely already wants to go to their in-state school when you can just go to Dallas and Houston and evaluate 30 or 40 kids and develop relationships with 10 coaches all in one week?
The size of the high schools in Texas is helpful as well. When so many of the schools have 3000+ students, they will usually produce several D1 athletes each year (or a couple every few years at minimum,) so it is really important for coaches to develop relationships with the high school coaches at these schools, giving the high school coaches a better opportunity to market their players. Compare that to a school with 500 kids which takes almost every male student in the school to field a football program and might produce 1 player every 5 years, and you don't have as many college coaches stopping by.
The number of walk-ons in states with only one or two D1 schools also skews the numbers quite a bit. Not many colleges come from out of state to recruit in the midwest because there are so many kids in Nebraska and Kansas and Iowa who would rather walk-on at their state school than take a scholarship to move to Tennessee or New Jersey. This allows coaches in these states to retain scholarships that would go to in-state players and go to population centers like Dallas and hand out more scholarships to lure kids to their state. Whereas, some kids may walk-on at UT, but they may be more likely to go down the road and take a scholarship to go to College Station, Norman, Lubbock, Waco, Houston, or Highland Park. This forces the big schools to make more offers as well. There are also a lot more kids of this caliber in the area because of the population size, so their chances of making the team as a walk-on are smaller, making them more likely to take an offer if it is presented.
This creates a huge disparity when you look at the raw number of scholarships in an area. If you have kids of equal talent level in Dallas and Des Moines, the kid in Dallas will be more likely to get a scholarship offer. It doesn't mean that Dallas has more talent per capita. It means recruiting conditions are more favorable in Dallas, and good coaches go where the recruiting conditions are the most favorable. There are more second- and third-tier players in Dallas who will get a scholarship offer versus a walk-on offer, and there are more who will go to Rice, or Tulsa, or Baylor, or SMU because they can stay close to home and still play ball.
Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 10:59 am