Well now you are making different points

by Jeff (BGS) , A starter home in suburban Tempe, Tuesday, February 24, 2009, 14:06 (6300 days ago) @ ReginaldVelJohnson

The theme of the paragraph that "programs which draw at least 50 percent of their players from within 200 miles or from within their home state stand a far better chance of winning consistently than those that did not." is misleading and false. The article talks about talent rich Mississippi, but when is the last time Ole Miss or Mississippi State was any good? The article talks about Pete Carroll recruiting in talent-rich southern California, but didn't Paul Hackett and John Robinson also recruit in Southern California?

As you point out, it is not recruiting close to home that leads to strong teams, it is recruiting in talent rich areas, which is easier if you are located in those areas. My problem with the article is that it presents data which is misleading, even if the conclusions have a grain of truth in them. This type of "argument by anecdote" is why stats get a bad name.

"Of the last ten national champions, eight came from states that end in the letter "A", therefore it must be difficult to win a championship if your state does not end with the letter "A"." That is a ridiculous (but true) statement, it just happens that California, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Florida all end in A. By the same token, "Of the nine schools that won 50 or more games from 2004-08, seven signed more than half their recruits during that span from within their state or from within 200 miles of campus" may be true, but it links two sets of facts that may not be linked. To verify these statements, you need to look at what happened to teams that didn't perform well and see where they recruit (or how their state names are spelled).

I also don't like the "Of the 22 schools that won 40 or more games during that span, 16 attracted more than half their players from within 200 miles or from within their state. Of the 44 schools that won fewer than 40 games, only 13 met the homegrown recruiting criteria." statements in the article. Why draw the line at 2004? Did the landscape of football and TV exposure significantly change in 2004? Why not look at 10 or 15 years worth of data. And why is winning or losing 40 games the benchmark for being good or bad. Why not 35 games? Or 50? Are wins the best measure of a program's strength? Why not look at final rankings or computer polls? Why not bowl wins?

I'd be curious to see the data they used, but and there may be truth to their statement. But the you can't draw the conclusions they've made with much certainty from the data they present. Certainly we are in a down cycle for many of the more "poorly" located schools. Colorado, Nebraska, Washington, Notre Dame, Penn State, and Michigan are all currently underperforming their historic standards, but I could just as easily attribute that to the coaches at those schools as I could to their location. As it happens, coaching cycles are much longer than 5 years, and it is true that Les Miles and Urban Meyer chose southern schools over northern ones. But that doesn't automatically mean that southern schools necessarily have an significant advantage. Did they choose LSU & Florida because talent is close by or because academic standards are more lax? Geography isn't necessarily the answer.