North vs South (football)

I think it really goes to the mentality of north vs south. high school football is king in the south. nothing can touch it. in the north it is very important but not the king. in the south you have fulltime head football coaches and at some southern high schools the oc and dc just coaches.

in the north the majority of head coaches are teachers first and coaches second. just the difference in education.

I also think economics plays a great deal in kids using sports to get out of poverty situations. not trying to demean the south but there are high levels of poverty in the south.

I think this is why the south is good in the football. football is largely a blue collar sports.

the midwest, aka rust belt is staring to see poverty at higher levels in rural areas. the 1950 to 1980 was really the heyday of the rust belt. industrial era, cars, heavy equipment manufacturing, farm equipment manufacturing. this lead to high social economic levels thus the common man moved up.

I think also the advent of spring and summer football in the south makes it a hotbed for developing high school football players. this intern brings the level of play up at the D1 universities.

I will say this though, bring me a southern school to madison wisconsin in a late november nonconfrence matchup. I really would like to see how southern teams would fare in the could.

bobby bowden did one time, he brough fsu up to south bend in november and said he woudl never come north after sept again.

I think its all about mentality; schools in the south take their high school football very, very seriously. Communities rally around their HS football programs; playing on Friday nights is a big deal.

Now, up north, it varies from community to community, big time. The overall love of HS football just isn't there in some places. The communities that love and support HS football do very well; lots of kids out for ball, lots of kid hitting the weight room and it attracts a lot of good football coaches.

I don't think the population demographics have much to do with it. Look at wrestling; it's THE HS sports in a lot of towns in the mid-west. We're talking about tiny little communities that spit out very good HS wrestlers every single year. Wrestling is king up here in MT; the state wrestling tournament attracts as many people as the UM-MSU football rivalry game up here some years. Montana barely has a million people in the entire state, but we produce a lot of D1 wrestlers every single year.

IN still is a BB state, IMO especially in Southern IN. There is no doubt that the east central city with the 8100 seat BB arena is a BB city and school. That general location has the 3 biggest in the state, including one of the biggest in the country.

But, some of us believe we are moving more and more towards football. For the first time football state finals surpassed BB in attendence. The Gridirondigest claims to be the largest 100% HS Football Forum in the country, Warren Central and Ben Davis High Schools are always nationally ranked, and Indy Catherdral has faired fairly well vs Lasalle and St X from Ohio. I don't mean to insinuate that every school in IN is ready for Ohio, but are good schools are just as good as anyone (like they are in most states). I am not sure how many schools MI has, but OH and PA have almost twice as many as IN.

Now back on target. I think that the waether and spring football are the key reasons. Year around work would be huge!!! With the short spring BB and spring football could not co-exist at all. Even though we don't get along real well. In Indiana the Basketball state, I have always had more problems with the Baseball programs than the Basketball.

Lets look at this from another angle.

We've played teams in the past that just FLAT OUT LOSE GAMES. There are teams around here that are lucky to eek out 1-2 wins each season and they've been doing so for over a decade. These schools have had the same coaching staff for years also. The school and the community has just accepted that they're going to lose football games.

How often would that happen in Texas? The community would be out for blood from the coaching staff after 1 bad season, much less a decade... Now, it's not say that its right; but it is a fact.

I think that crediting spring football is a vast oversimplification...there are probably MANY factors...

I think the biggest factor is simply tradition...for MOST of American history, young Southern men of the gentry class had a tradition of military service...they were expected to be able to ride horses, shoot straight, be fit, lead men and be led, and exhibit moral and physical courage.

While that military tradition is still important in the South, athletic prowess is really where a man proves himself...in fact, many of those "soldierly" qualities are also the qualities of a good athlete.

So, what I think is that the emphasis placed on high school and collegiate sports in the South is largely an outgrowth of that tradition of young men having to prove their mettle (and manhood) on the field of battle (even if that field is only 120 yards long and the guys in the other uniforms don't have any weapons).

You can also look at the fact that, up until the late 19th Century, the South was largely agricultural and wealthy, young Southern men who didn't aspire to be farmers had few other options outside of sports.

My point is that the factors probably have a lot more to do with Southern society, tradition, and history rather than the 15 days of Spring practice the coaches down there get.

First of all I have never had it, so I might be wrong.

I know that my team can do a heck of a lot more after 15 days of practice than it could be fore. So if I had 15 days in May after school in which I got 90% of my players the learning curve of what we could master would be gratly increased.

Isn't a lot of recruitng doen in the spring? Can college coaches come and watch spring practice?

My contribution to this discussion would be this - There are more successful D-I programs in the South because there are simply more D-I programs in South. As a small sampling indicates -

Florida has Miami, FSU, UF, and now USF. Wyoming has Wyoming!
Alabama has The Crimson Tide, Auburn, and UAB. Montana has ... sorry, no D-I teams.
Texas has the Longhorns, Texas Tech, the Aggies, TCU, & the Cougars. Washington has UW & WSU.
Georgia has the Bulldogs, Yellowjackets and even Georgia Southern. Idaho has Boise State.
Tennessee has UT, Vandy, MTSU, and Memphis. Oregon has the Ducks and the Beavers! By the way, I'm also a huge Duck Fan!

As far as the North East is concerned, you have Rutgers and Boston College as top teams (maybe U Conn., and then you have to move south to get Penn State, Pitt, and Navy.

Here's a semi interesting stat - actually from a 2006 college media guide - that might shoot down your dominance of the South theory. Keep in mind this is in the modern day of the wide open Bowl eligibility.

2 teams have played in a Bowl game each of the past 17 years = Michigan and FSU.
4 other teams have Bowled 16 out of 17 = UF, Nebraska, Ohio St. & Tennessee.
1 team has Bowled in 15 out of the past 17 years = Miami
2 more have Bowled in 14 out of the past 17 years = Colorado and Virginia
4 others have 13 Bowls in the past 17 years = Notre Dame, Georgia, Penn St, and OREGON!

6 Southern Schools and 7 Northern schools. Sorry, I guess more D-I school in the South doesn't necessarily mean better football.

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt to prove it ... lol

Yes.

Re: the Texas D-I schools, I was just listing the TOP D-I schools. I know that comparing high school and college/university "talent" is different (many colleges - like Oregon - recruit over 1/2 their roster from well out of state). I just thought the bowl participation was particularly telling for those who like to trumpet the merits of the SEC

As far as high school kids and geography, I've coached (HS and College) in order - Oregon, Washington, Missouri, Vermont, Florida, California, Arkansas, and Florida again for the past 7 years. Not saying that this is scientific but for my money, the best kids in Florida are better than the best kids almost anywhere else. Why? Good weather, Spring Ball, and lots of college opportunities (in state and the out of state recruiters) . I would also say states like Texas and Georgia are "ahead" of Florida due to the phenomenon of "Year round Baseball" that exists in Florida. Football is big here, but Baseball never stops!

ill join in a little bit with some of my theories. first of all, weather has ALOT to do with it. alot of our in-state recruits vow that they will go play football at a college "down south" where its warm. second, there's alot more to do here in the metropolitan area. kids dont spend every waking moment training for football. (a player transfered from nebraska to a d-3 school in NJ, and he told me that out there all he did was farm and play football. i know thata not the south but its a different environment.) another factor is that bsketball is so huge, alot of potential big-time football players never even play the sport.... they are too busy playing fall basketball and aau in the summer. i think its just a numbers game as well. here in jersey, rutgers was always the only show in town (unless you were good enough for syracuse, BC or penn st.) when rutgers was awful for a long time, almost every major recruit from here went to an out of state school (most in the south). maybe if there were other schools around that were competetive, those recruits would have stayed home. - "the north thought keep them stupid and poor and they wont revolt again..." did i really read that???

still weather

er.....I guess this all got started a while back in another discussion elsewhere ....concerning

HOW DO WE RAISE THE LEVEL OF PLAY IN (OUR) STATE?

With top high school football (factory) states being the benchmark for FOOTBALL production......what would the lesser schools have to do to IMPROVE their overall state performance.

If your high school produces 1 DI athlete every 2 years, and Around The Way High School in another state produces 4 DI athletes every year.........it would stand to reason, you might be able to deduce what is the cause & effect for that.

Despite the graphics, I wasn't trying to incite a civil war on who is "better", just find some things that are done differently elsewhere that contributes to a higher level of performance.


Common denominators found in that previous discussion were;
1) Climate / Spring Ball
2) Youth League Standards
3) Coaching Salaries
4) Military Base regions
5) Expectations

I heard the same thing about mississippi and that is why jr colleges football is strong. great athletes, limited brain power.


what the movie october sky. you either had to be really smart or get a athletic scholarship. otherwise your life was going down into the mines. sort of a great motivator I think.