Why the SEC dominates the B1G

Football is big in the South. For example, Texas high school football games frequently attract tens of thousands, and large school playoff games can draw more than 40,000. On the other hand, Eastern Michigan games are attended by the players' moms and fat little girlfriends. 

I noted earlier that California, Texas, and Florida provide more than a third of college football players. This is, in part, because they are large states. To account for that, I have calculated each state's PPC - players per capita - looking only at the relevant population, college-aged men. So, for example, for every 100,000 college-aged men in Hawaii in 2011 there were 280 FBS players. Florida produced 246 for every 100,000 and California 100. (POP and FBS are the percent of the total relevant population and percent of FBS players from those states, respectively).

Seven of the top 9 states in terms of players per capita come from the South and SEC country. The Big 10 has only one representative (Ohio) at the top of the list, a clear advantage for the SEC.

In the final column, I have included another characteristic of states that may also influence the number of college football players coming from the states. This final characteristic is the percent of the population that is Black/African American. The correlation between PPC and %Black is strong- .576 -but because %Black is also connected with being in the South we cannot draw any definitive conclusions. 

A few states stand out against this trend. Hawaii, for example, produces four times as many players as we would expect from the state's %Black, and Utah generates 2.5 times more. In both states there is a larger than average Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander population (using the Census Bureau designations), a group that is again over-represented in college football. The next five states that are most over-represented are Nebraska, Ohio, Florida, Texas and Oklahoma. At the other end is New York, with a relatively large African American population and less football tradition.

State	POP	FBS	PPC
Hawaii	0.50%	1.18%	280	3.07%
Alabama	1.34%	3.14%	279	28.53%
Mississippi	0.90%	1.87%	248	39.84%
Florida	5.52%	11.44%	246	19.66%
Louisiana	1.51%	3.11%	244	34.61%
Georgia	3.22%	5.59%	206	31.96%
Ohio	3.56%	6.07%	202	13.16%
Texas	8.28%	13.25%	190	12.35%
DC	0.19%	0.30%	188	41.22%
Oklahoma	1.14%	1.48%	154	8.49%
Utah	0.98%	1.26%	153	1.76%
Nebraska	0.56%	0.72%	152	4.74%
South Carolina	1.41%	1.67%	141	30.04%
Arkansas	0.84%	1.00%	140	18.54%
Kansas	0.92%	1.01%	131	7.13%
Tennessee	1.90%	2.06%	128	19.89%
Iowa	0.89%	0.87%	115	4.12%
North Carolina	3.14%	3.04%	115	22.84%
Delaware	0.25%	0.24%	112	23.79%
Nevada	0.80%	0.70%	104	9.52%
Virginia	2.76%	2.34%	101	21.70%
California	13.79%	11.60%	100	6.60%
Kentucky	1.32%	1.10%	98	9.91%
Idaho	0.46%	0.37%	96	1.59%
Maryland	1.96%	1.58%	96	30.36%
Michigan	3.30%	2.63%	94	15.72%
Pennsylvania	3.82%	2.87%	89	12.89%
Indiana	1.99%	1.46%	87	9.50%
Colorado	1.67%	1.23%	87	4.40%
New Mexico	0.62%	0.41%	79	3.02%
New Jersey	2.59%	1.71%	79	15.71%
West Virginia	0.47%	0.31%	78	5.16%
Missouri	1.86%	1.20%	77	12.94%
Illinois	4.21%	2.71%	76	15.38%
Washington	2.25%	1.44%	76	4.46%
Arizona	2.21%	1.35%	72	5.00%
Wisconsin	1.77%	1.04%	69	7.41%
Oregon	1.17%	0.67%	68	2.84%
Wyoming	0.16%	0.08%	57	1.93%
Minnesota	1.79%	0.72%	48	5.91%
Connecticut	1.07%	0.33%	37	12.36%
New York	6.39%	1.42%	26	16.99%
Massachusetts	2.12%	0.47%	26	8.24%
Montana	0.28%	0.06%	26	1.46%
New Hampshire	0.39%	0.06%	18	2.45%
South Dakota	0.24%	0.03%	15	2.18%
Alaska	0.28%	0.02%	10	3.59%
Vermont	0.22%	0.02%	8	1.99%
North Dakota	0.24%	0.02%	8	2.80%
Maine	0.38%	0.02%	5	2.23%
Rhode Island	0.38%	0.02%	5	8.60%