SEC Recruiting: Where The Talent Comes From

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With everyone’s focus on recruiting, I thought it might be interesting to look at where each school is going to snatch up prospects.

Looking at the current commitment lists (and those could change by the time I finish… this… sentence), we can see which SEC states are producing the most SEC talent and which league programs have an easier time of finding prospects in their own backyard.

Let’s start with the talent-producing states.  Naturally, you would expect Florida to top the list when it comes to producing A-list athletes.  But this year in the SEC, there are more commitments/signees coming from another Southern state.

Below is the actual list. 

1.  Georgia — Has produced 57 commitments/signees for the 12 SEC schools so far

2.  Florida — 41 commitments/signees

3.  Alabama — 34 commitments/signees

4.  Mississippi — 30 commitments/signees

5.  Louisiana — 19 commitments/signees

6.  South Carolina — 15 commitments/signees

7.  Tennessee — 10 commitments/signees

8.  Arkansas — 5 commitments/signees

9.  Kentucky — 2 commitments/signees



So how is the Peach State out-pacing the Sunshine State in terms of SEC commitments?  My first guess would be that SEC teams have only Georgia Tech to deal with in the state of Georgia… whereas league teams must compete with Florida State, Miami, South Florida and to a lesser extent FIU, FAU and Central Florida in the state of Florida. 

In other words, there might be more prospects in Florida, but those prospects have more non-SEC programs to choose from.

A study of the above list also shows what most of us already knew — the programs at Tennessee, Arkansas and Kentucky are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to recruiting.  There just isn’t much SEC-caliber football talent coming out of those states. 

And don’t get me started on poor Vanderbilt.  The Commodores must deal with a lack of nearby talent AND their own high academic standards.

It’s no surprise then that the schools I just mentioned all have to venture outside of their own borders more often.  In the chart below, you’ll see the SEC states that each program is raiding for its commitments.

In the chart above, the red numbers draw your eye to the number of commitments/signees that each school has picked up in its home state.

The yellow fields show you the SEC states in which each program has picked up the most commitments/signees.

Observations:

* Four SEC schools currently have more commitments from Georgia than from any other state: Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Vanderbilt.

* Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and Vanderbilt all have two or fewer commitments from their own home states.

* No school ventures into more states (currently) than Tennessee.  In addition to the SEC states shown above, the Vols have had to go get commitments from California, Illinois, Virginia, Texas and Arizona.  Arkansas (Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and North Carolina) and Auburn (California, Kansas, Texas and Missouri) are comparable.

* No school stays as close to home as Georgia.  The Bulldogs have gotten 12 of their 19 commitments from within their own state borders.  The other seven came from border states.

 

Below, we list the numbers a bit differently, just to simplify things even further.  You’ll find each school’s total number of commitments/signees, those that came from their home states, those that came from SEC states and those that came from outside the South.