From: chyang@pun.engin.umich.edu (Chung Hsiung Yang)
Subject: Re: Washington THE STATE of Behzad SUPREME BS .
Date: Thu, 05 Nov 92 18:07:01 EST
Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor
Originator: chyang@pun.engin.umich.edu


In article <Bx89Cp.JBJ@acsu.buffalo.edu>, v262xxve@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Timothy C Pitts) writes:
> In article <+v-=SHC@engin.umich.edu>, chyang@jerseyblackgiant.engin.umich.edu (Chung Hsiung Yang) writes...
> #	Perhap, I should have qualified my statement as to say that 
> #the west coast or "left coast" as you referred to have just begun to 
> #produce larger number of high caliber football players.    
> 
> This is patently untrue.  California has long been regarded as one of the
> prime source areas for college football recruits (and Joe:  this needn't
> be substantiated since it is really common knowledge).
> 
> #[Re:  proof is in the fact that western teams are better]   This 
> #trend started several years ago and has persisted as far as I can see.
> 
> How do you rectify this belief with the fact that there are more teams
> from the Midwest (Michigan, Notre Dame, some might say Nebraska) in the 
> USAToday Top 10 than there are teams from the west (Washington)? 
> 

	This is very difficult for me to argue since we know that 
college football has long been suffering from east coast bias.  If we
discount this fact you have to note that the teams that have most potentials
to be in the top 10 are in PAC-10.  Unfortunately these teams tend to 
beat up on each other therefore there is no way that you will see several
teams from the west in the Top Ten, unless the WAC get their acts together.
The Big-8 in general is a mix of west coast and east coast.  I happen to 
consider Colorado a "west" team.  The have done pretty well until now.  

	Michigan, ND, and Nebraska belongs to different conferences 
the changes of them facing competition such as the one in PAC-10 is
not very likely.  So they will win games and they will rank high.

But if we take density of population into account the with the exception
of Michigan and ND,  The midwest teams have not done well as a whole 
(Again, look at BIG-10 this year) 


> #	If you are serious about examining these occurances, I think
> #you might not be able to find really good data because the balance have
> #only begin to shift recently.  
> 
> Then how do you know it's happening?  A ``feel?''  The most up-to-date 
> numbers (this last recruiting class) do not show Washington to be increasing
> in importance in producing college football players (the current count stands 
> at 22 recruits from Washington, but I haven't gone through all the 
> independents yet, compared to 1552 nationally).  Nor do I see Washington 
> increasing in importance in the national recruiting scene in the near future.
> Perhaps you care to explain why Washington will produce more recruits, say,
> for this next recruiting season?
> 

	Recruiting depend a lot on the reputation as well.  For example
many major colleges recruits out of Pennsylvania because it has a 
reputation of producing good quarterbacks.  College will not go to a
state to recruit unless they believe that there will be good talents in
that state.  Only recently have the State of Washington begain to 
attain that status and I do not expect the number of recruits to 
increase for another few years.

	Also, when you make the comparison of High School recruit for
the population you should take into account of high school aged population instead of taking the whole population.  If you take the whole population
and extract the expected number of high school recruits, you data will
more likely be skewed.  For example, suppose there are a lot of old people 
in the State of Washington because it is a good place for one to retire.  
I don't think we should expect these people to play major college football.
With this premise established, I am going to argue that the high school 
aged population in the State of Washington is quite lower than expected.
I think this may be a valid argument because when I was in high school
four years ago the enrollment in the Seattle School District went south.
And this seemed to have happend all over the state.  I may be wrong in my
assumption, but this seem to be the case.

	Again, if both Washington and WSU do well consistently in 
college football, I expect the number of national recruit from the
State of Washington to increase.  And it seems to me that Imagine 
if the three division I-A schools in FLA. were none-existent, would one 
still expect it to be a hot bed of college football recruiting?  I 
don't imaging that this would be the case.

	This is a very difficult point for me to argue because last 
year was an unusually bad year for the High School talents.  There
were only four Blue-Chip "best in the west" players last year and 
Washington signed all four of them.  Next year should be better, 
hopefully.  

	I respect your opinion, but I mostly disagree because I
believe the number of college recruit in the state should increase
in the near future based on the population growth and economic growth
of the state.  And the high school aged population seem to be on the 
rebound in the state.  We`ll have to see.

- Chung Yang
  
   


> Pitts             
> Canada US Trade Center
> Department of Geography
> University at Buffalo        
> V262XXVE@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
Newsgroups: rec.sport.football.college