Dallas Jackson, Senior Analyst at Rivals recently ran a story explaining where Division 1 talent comes from and it made me think that this data should be taken a step further.

The following table shows the total amount of recruits signed per state, the total number of high school football players per state, the percentage of players signed from that state and finally the Average Remaining Talent (ART).

This last value, ART is a little fuzzy and deserves some explanation. I derived this value by first excluding four outliers: Florida, Louisiana, Georgia and Alabama. They were left out because the percentage of players that make it to the next level in these states is crazy high and skewed the national average.

After elminating the aforementioned states, I next ran this formula for each state:

(total_signed_nationally / total_athletes_nationally) – signed_from_state

This number left me with the average number players under or over recruited, or the ART.

The states with a negative(-) value have been over recruited and the positive numbers had left over talent that was overlooked for whatever reason.

After pouring through the data, the first thing I found was it’s incredibly hard to get a D1 football offer. Only one out of 500 high school players get that chance—about one player out of every 10 high school teams.

I also found that alarmingly more players from Florida get a D1 scholarship. 344 out of 38,268 players (.0089%) in Florida received scholarship offers or 4 times the national rate. Either Florida is overhyped or there is significantly more talent than the national average.

As far as the states where a coach may be most successful in finding unfound talent, I would start in New York. The ART suggests 55 players may be found there. Could this be due to college bound athletes being interested in other sports on the East coast (soccer, lacrosse, etc.)? Or is the next super star not being offered?

For those of you hating on Dan Enos for attacking the state of Michigan in his recruiting efforts, it is definitely not validated by the data. Not only did a lot of the national talent come from Michigan (2.43%) but there was talent leftover. The ART suggests that 36 unknown players are left in the state.

I expect the 2012 Michigan class to again far exceed the national average and this only bodes well for CMU. Coach Enos and his staff have strong ties to the state and with the recent departures from the program, expect another big and talented class in 2012.