Geography Lesson

My wife innocently asked me the other day, "why aren't there any good college football teams in the Northeast?"

"Depends on how you define 'Northeast'," I answered. "Penn State is historically a powerhouse, and Pittsburgh is sometimes good. Boston College and Rutgers are having nice seasons."

"Who else?" she asked.

Umm...must go blog.

First of all, Penn State and Pittsburgh are borderline in this discussion. When she said "Northeast," I knew what she meant - she meant Big East basketball country, the New England-New York-New Jersey corridor of her youth. The knee-jerk answer to this question - the high school talent in that part of the country can't compete with that of Florida, Texas, Ohio, California, et al - is a fallacy. Those states have a much larger pool of talent from which to draw, but having lived in central Connecticut for nearly seven years, I would argue that the top high school players in New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut have just as much Division I potential as the top high school kids in the Sun Belt states.

Florida State defensive back Myron Rolle is from Princeton, New Jersey. Florida offensive lineman Phil Trautwein is a Jersey kid, too. So is Miami tight end Greg Olsen. They're up there. There's fewer of them, but they're up there. Of course, the three players I just named all left the Northeast to come to Florida, which might provide a partial answer to Mrs. Watson's original query.

To the internet, and the spectacular Stassen college football database, which produces a grand total of three traditional "Northeastern" schools among the top 50 winningest programs of the last 50 years: Penn State (4th, 73.7%, still a borderline "Northeastern" school), Syracuse (31st, 58.9%), and Boston College (T-36th, 56.5%). By comparison, the Southeastern Conference has seven schools in the top 20, the state of California has three schools in the top 30, and your top three overall are Nebraska, Ohio State, and Oklahoma.

Over the last ten years, the numbers are even worse: removing the geographically troublesome Penn State from the equation, our Northeastern heroes Boston College and Syracuse barely crack the top 50; in fact, they're in a dead heat, tied for 43rd in overall winning percentage, with identical 75-57 records from 1995-2005.

Hmmm. Is it telling that I referred to the region as "Big East basketball country?" I checked the NCAA's official basketball statistics site and found four Northeastern schools in the top ten - St. John's, Syracuse, Temple, and Penn (the Quakers play in Philly; that counts as Northeastern for me). Princeton, Bradley, Villanova, St. Joseph's, UConn, and Fordham make it ten Northeastern schools among the top 50 all-time in college basketball wins (through 2004, the most recent list at the NCAA's site). Maybe the warm-state schools simply focus more on football, while those who suffer through Northern winters prefer their sports indoors?

Sounds great, until you check the last ten NCAA men's basketball champions: only UConn (twice) and Syracuse make the list, surrounded by two SEC schools (Kentucky 2X and Florida), three ACC schools (North Carolina, Maryland, Duke), and two schools from the Pac-10 (UCLA and Arizona). Furthermore, if you trace the entire history of the NCAA men's basketball tournament, dating back to 1939, only two Northeastern schools other than UConn and Syracuse claim national titles: Villanova in 1985, and City College of New York in 1950 - a title that was tainted a year later when seven CCNY players were charged in a national game-fixing scandal.

Have I mentioned that the NCAA's list of the 50 all-time winningest basketball teams includes four SEC schools, three ACC schools, and seven Pac-10 schools? So much for the "basketball country" theory.

So we're back to square one. Why aren't there more great football programs up north? Logic suggests that weather has something to do with it, as does population - from 1990 through 2000, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina were all top-10 among American states in population growth, while Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Maine, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania were all among the bottom ten. More people means more kids, which means a deeper talent pool. This theory would be bulletproof were it not for Ohio, which was also in the bottom ten for population growth from 1990 to 2000, yet manages to crank out some pretty good football players year after year.

To me, it boils down to two factors: commitment and competition. Schools that historically succeed in football are more likely to continue pouring time, money, and resources into the sport; in that sense, it's a never-ending cycle. And football schools that are geographically convenient to other football schools mutually improve each other. Exhibit A is the Southeastern Conference; Exhibit B is Penn State's non-conference schedule.

The flip side to this question: schools that have the resources and the geographical competition, but don't have the football history or success. South Carolina, North Carolina, Duke, and Stanford come to mind, among others. Why are they only occasionally competitive?

Umm...must go blog. Some other time.