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Pac 12 Recruiting RE Population Growth
Neighbor2972
Member Posts: 4,321
The increase in Washington recruiting talent recently isn't an anomaly, we can probably expect these types of classes to become the norm.
Other Pac-12 states, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, are also among the highest population growth state. We've definitely seen this reflected in the increased talent coming out of Utah and Nevada recently.
California on the other hand has slowed its growth relative to other states (losing a house seat).
Anyway, the takeaway here is that the distribution of talent in Pac-12 is becoming less centralized on California, and its becoming more and more important to recruit every area well. Theoretically this is good for us, and other non-California Pac-12 schools, but these changes obviously take a long time to make an impact.
S/O Split Zone Duo for talking about why this matters
Other Pac-12 states, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, are also among the highest population growth state. We've definitely seen this reflected in the increased talent coming out of Utah and Nevada recently.
California on the other hand has slowed its growth relative to other states (losing a house seat).
Anyway, the takeaway here is that the distribution of talent in Pac-12 is becoming less centralized on California, and its becoming more and more important to recruit every area well. Theoretically this is good for us, and other non-California Pac-12 schools, but these changes obviously take a long time to make an impact.
S/O Split Zone Duo for talking about why this matters
Comments
LA recruiting is less important
Also the culture of youth football in Washington sucks. Less kids are playing and there is a lot of shitty high school teams. Junior high programs dwindling. The future importance placed on youth and high school football is way more important. Just sayin.
Not judging. I found it amusing. Probably would do the same
Kids play baseball and basketball before kindergarten. I understand delaying tackle football, but kids need to be playing football early and in big numbers. I don’t think that will happen on the West Coast.
West coast football is dying. Larry Scott sucked ass but anyone is going to have a tough time selling this shit sandwich. If you think the Pac12 will get any prime time TV slots over football hotbeds of the midwest of south, you are just a fucking doog. Half full (at best) stadiums and awful TV ratings. Even UW and UO have trouble selling out games anymore.
It will never be big on the West Coast like in the South or even Midwest/Mideast but the inner city kids are still playing.
The white kids in the sticks are still going to play. It’s big in LA, it’s big in the Bay Area. Washington only churns out 10-15 legitimate P5 guys in a good year. I don’t think that will change, at least anytime soon.
The difference between the west coast and north east vs Midwest and south is widening. Fan interest in college football is also shrinking on the west coast. Hell, so many of the stadium rebuilds in the west coast have made their stadiums smaller in recent years. Your fan base in college should theoretically grow exponentially as enrollment and alumni increase over time. All these schools shrunk their stadiums.
Uw
Cal
Stanford
ASU
Wsu
Usc
The best athletes get identified early, sign up to 7on7 teams, and get recruited to play at private schools. High school football may be less important, but as Roadie said, 7on7 teams and 24/7 training programs help so that it doesn't matter if their community doesn't care about football.
West coast is more diverse than the souf, I get that, but being good at football at your shitty high school is still the fastest way to get laid.
A decline? Yes. Trend toward going away? Hell no.
~250,000 seniors in high school football
~1,400 P-5 FBS scholarships awarded per year
About a 0.5% chance, let’s call it 1/200.
There are 1.8 million boys who are high school seniors, and with 250k playing football it means one in 7.2 is playing football. That would mean out of 100,000 boys aged 18 you get 14,000 football players.
One out of 200 means that’s 70 P-5 scholarship football players.
Wow, but how many people does it take to get 100,000 18 year old boys? If the US population is 330 million and if age is distributed evenly by region that’s gonna be a little over 18 million.
18 million population growth is needed to produce 70 additional P-5 football players per year.
Then there’s a caveat. A touchy one.
Utah isn’t producing more talent because John and Angie gave birth to Kayden, Brayden, Tylan, Ibuprofan, Maverick, and Nebuchadnezzar in five years. It’s because Angie’s great-grandfather went to Samoa to recruit people for his cult, John’s dad cares about football as do his friends, there’s lots of space for football fields, the weather is okay to play in, and football is socially important so people play it instead of doing something else.
Polynesians, however, are a minor percentage of FBS football players. They’re over represented statistically per capita, but not as significant as African Americans - which, according to the NCAA, 48% of D-1 scholarship football players are. Making up 14% of the population that would mean they are 3.5x more likely to be a D-1 football player.
Shitty chart below, excuse my graphics guy Michael J Fox, shows the states that have produced the most blue chips over a five year span. Florida is number one due to IMG recruits counting for them, without they would be number two I believe.
Red is the state’s ranking in the population of AA while blue is the total population ranking. More on this later.
If that 18 million has the state of Washington’s 6% population rate of AA, let’s bump it up to 7% with changing demographics, that means that you’re not having 70 recruits per year but fewer. About 56. Let’s forget about the West Coast’s higher percentage of those who don’t play in Rose Bowls or prefer the other football and call it 60.
What percentage of those P-5 recruits are blue chips? Let’s be generous and call it 25% based on 350 blue chips per year. Out of our pool of 60 per year that means 15 will be blue chips.
From 2010-2020 Washington’s population increased by a little under one million people. Which yields about six extra blue chips per five year cycle. Not an insignificant difference to the makeup of a roster, but also not a game changer.
To go back to the earlier part about states by population, why do Louisiana and Alabama overproduce talent compared to New York and Illinois? There are still some demographic reasons, but mostly culture and geography.
As far as the decline of participation, I’ll touch on that briefly. In a sport dependent on athleticism like football it doesn’t matter too much for high end talent. Those with the physical gifts necessary will still be drawn to it, and others not getting developed doesn’t matter too much because the vast majority don’t have the genetics necessary to matter. Thanks for coming to my TED talk and please enjoy your bleach cocktail.