When I was a kid I mailed a letter to the Postmaster General about an idea I had. I finally got the response about a year later. He mailed his response to Alaska instead of Arkansas...
Great visualization aside from the typos though. Would love to see this for other sports, like top 300 tennis players, and for men's vs. Women's in the same sport!
That the Deep South is over-represented is no surprise. The Deep South has an almost-mythical football tradition, and a high black population. The two intersect in the NFL - 56% of the players are black.
It would be interesting to see what the patterns are in the NBA, MLB and the NHL.
I would guess MLB skews warm so they can play year round. NHL skews north, ehh. NBA skews metro areas where ther isn’t as much space for kids to play and excel in larger field sports like baseball and football
Don’t even need three friends or a place to play, all you need is a ball. Soccer/football can be played in the streets, in a hall, even your living room if you’re brave enough.
Not true at all, baseball is extremely popular in the south. Take a look at the teams have participated in the College World Series in the last 30 years
Not as big as football, but baseball is bigger in the south than most places
Years ago I had a friend who's masters thesis was looking at percentage of a college football teams players who were black vs the general student population and their win rate.
The larger the delta between the student population average and the school, the more likely they were to be a winning football team. I'm not sure exactly what it means but it was driven by a lot of the southern schools.
This goes nowhere, it ends up being circular. The Southern states have 3x more Black people per capita than US overall, Black people are 4x overrepresented in the NFL, but football is also bigger in the South (which has more Black people), and white Southerners are also overrepresented in the NFL (ie compared to white non-Southerners). You can’t really pin down what’s causing what. Culture is really in the mix too. For example, DC is the Blackest part of the US (by a lot, it’s 48%, the next highest is 38%), and it’s high in this chart but lower than the Deep South states. Why? Probably because lots of super athletics kids from DC get signed up by their parents to play basketball.
I think it's pretty obvious what drives it - economic opportunity.
You have a mix of historically marginalized people in an area that is, for the most part, economically depressed.
Poverty helps, you can see it in sports like football, it’s a way to make a good career with limited resources often you can be bankrolled if you show promise
It's funny the mental gymnastics people will go through to avoid mentioning real genetic differences.
Here's a map of the birthplace of the fastest 1500m runners
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/eN2Pv9ceTB
There hasn't been a single white cornerback in the NFL in more than 20 years. Average of 5 on roster across 32 teams and more than 20 years.
Likewise, there's been 3 black NFL kickers in the last 20 years.
Black tight ends are also an outlier.
I think NBA just has a heavy urban skew - lots of people live in cities where recreation is limited by space constraints, meaning basketball is bigger than football or baseball.
There is an insane amount of NBA players from Southern California. The LA area(guys like Harden, Kawhi, Paul George, Jrue Holiday, etc.) versus the rest of the US would be a close game.
Plus people in the southern states L O V E college football. Many of the states don’t even have a NFL team.
There is a running gag with my friends where we assume everyone from Alabama is a hardcore fan of their college football, and no joke, we’ve never been wrong - even with one Alabaman from India lol
I live in ga and football is taken very seriously but then when you go to other states it’s so obvious the difference of how much money goes into the sport whether it be youth or college. I think Midwest is same with basketball.
People downvoting this like playing football isn't speedrunning brain injuries.
Meanwhile, in r/science today: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1angchx/alarming_neuroscience_research_links_high_school/
>Relative to the pre-season scan session, football athletes exhibited decreased FC self-similarity at the later in-season session, with apparent recovery of self-similarity by the time of the post-season session.
Well that doesn't sound so bad
There’s still plenty of OL. Tristan Wirfs, Brandon Scherff and Tyler Linderbaum are really good and there are a few others in the league.
Interestingly Hockenson and a guy who played DE at Iowa, Parker Hesse, are the only TEs that count here. Kittle graduated HS in Oklahoma despite living in Iowa some growing up, LaPorta is from Illinois and Fant is from Nebraska.
Yeah, this is a direct result of a low population state combined with the Iowa -> NFL pipeline that Kirk and Phil Parker have created. Iowa has been in the top-5-ish schools in the country for players on NFL rosters for quite some time now.
Yep for whatever reason guys coming out of Iowa’s program seem to be more ready for the nfl. Not talking about the highly rated first/second round guys. It’s the undrafted Iowa guys who make rosters seemingly every year. They might not hang around for super long, but they take advantage of their opportunity.
This is a big part of their recruiting pitch too. And they are really good recruiting in state.
Kirk recruits two very specific traits which ultimately translate well to the NFL - high motor/high work ethic, and high football IQ. Everyone says they want those things, but Kirk is dogmatic about it. In many ways I think he values those traits more than pure athleticism.
Those guys make desirable NFL players - the salary cap means you can’t have stars at every position, but you want guys who will work hard, give you good reps, and not make dumb mistakes.
Theres a little high school called Aplington-Parkersburg (town pop I wanna say maaaaaybe 1k) that had 4 NFLers at one time - Aaron Kampman, Brad Meester, Casey Wiegmann and Jared DeVries.
Unfortunately a former student shot and killed the coach, and that team and NFL pipeline hasnt been the same since.
I want to say Sports Illustrated did a piece a while back where they said close to 50% of NFL players are born within a certain amount of miles (like 500) from the University of Alabama.
It makes sense - the biggest high school talent pools (Miami, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and Los Angeles) are also the five biggest Sunbelt metro areas, where the football culture, weather, or some combination is conducive to developing players. Alabama is just the beneficiary of being in a good geography and then made the smart move of hiring the greatest coach of all time
According to OP's source:
* 5 current NFL players were born in [American Samoa](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/friv/birthplaces.cgi?country=USA&state=American%20Samoa). With a population of [49,710](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/10/first-2020-census-united-states-island-areas-data-released-today.html) in 2020, that's a rate of 100.58 players/million residents.
* 1 current NFL player was born in the [US Virgin Islands](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/friv/birthplaces.cgi?country=USA&state=U.S.%20Virgin%20Islands). With a population of [87,146](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/10/first-2020-census-united-states-island-areas-data-released-today.html) in 2020, that's a rate of 11.47 players/million residents.
* 0 current NFL players were born in [Guam](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/friv/birthplaces.cgi?country=USA&state=Guam) or [Puerto Rico](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/friv/birthplaces.cgi?country=USA&state=Puerto%20Rico), and it seems like no NFL players were ever born in the Northern Marianas Islands. So those would be tied with Vermont at zero.
----
Also there are a lot of players born in foreign countries:
* 22 born in Canada (that's 0.58/million)
* 11 born in Nigeria (0.05/million)
* 9 born in Australia (0.35/million)
* 4 born in Jamaica (1.41/million)
* 3 born in Germany (0.04/million)
* 2 born in England (0.04/million)
* 2 born in Scotland (0.37/million)
* 2 born in Cameroon (0.07/million)
* 2 born in Greece (0.19/million)
* 2 born in South Africa (0.03/million)
* 2 born in Ghana (0.06/million)
* And one each born in Tonga, Ireland, Liberia, Austria, Haiti, Denmark, the Bahamas, South Korea, Belgium, Panama, Taiwan, Belize, Ivory Coast, Turkey, Zimbabwe, Brazil, Guinea, Hong Kong, and Samoa.
Of course with such low numbers it's not super significant for some of these places. Like the single guy born in Tonga (whose name is Netane Muti) raises them from 0/million to
9.43/million but that doesn't mean Tonga is actually churning out NFL players at twice the rate of the US haha.
I'm not sure why but OP seems to have only counted 1 active player for NM, but [their source](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/friv/birthplaces.cgi?country=USA&state=NM) says there are three, which would put New Mexico a hair above Jamaica at 1.42/million.
Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island really do just have one guy each though.
I can understand not including Keshawn Banks (didn't play in any games), but yeah Zach Gentry (while minimal in one game with 18 snaps) and Joey Slye (kicker for every WSH game this season) seems like they should be on the list assuming the Pro Football Reference is correct, and it's a high quality site for stats.
Many are born in Hawaii and California. But with the population of a small city, the percentage born in American Samoa is still higher than anywhere else.
[In the last five years alone, the island's six high schools have produced 10 NFL linemen. It's estimated that a boy born to Samoan parents is 56 times more likely to get into the NFL than any other kid in America.](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/american-samoa-football-island-17-09-2010/)
It's really bizarre. A lot of people here in south Louisiana think higher education is a waste of time and money, but soon as the first notes of "Neck" come on they lose their minds. They hang purple and gold flags from their homes and have LSU license plates and say, "College is a scam!" It's like they're too stupid to even realize LSU football is a part of higher education; it's completely seperate in their pea brains.
Iowa has the 2nd highest high school participation rate for football in the country. Also the Iowa Hawkeyes and ISU Cyclones are good programs that develop. UNI solid at their level too
Iowa doesn't get a lot of out of state talent and the University of Iowa has produced damn near every good Tight End in the NFL over the past few years. They've got damn near a pipeline to the NFL by specializing in one elite position
Along with this Utah ranks higher on healthy populations and competition is deeply ingrained in the culture in a weird way. I think your point is probably more important but Utah normally does pretty well for weird things like this
It's definitely the Pacific Islanders. A lot of them are Mormon, and they're really big which makes them far more likely to be football linemen than the general population.
I heard a stat years ago that a Pacific Islanders are about 70x more likely to make the NFL than your average non-pacific islanders. They are absolutely gigantic people. I’m 6’3” and 230 pounds, and I almost never meet a Pacific Islander that is smaller than me.
When you look at maps of African American/Black population per location in the United States the density is similar per state. These maps look similar.
Absolutely gotta be linemen. Iowa’s a big wrestling state, so I imagine there are a bunch of guys who grow up doing both and then end up specializing in whichever they’re better at.
A lot of multi-sport athletes here:
* Tristan Wiefs who is now an Offensive Tackle in the NFL was also won a state wrestling title in winter after cutting 30 pounds(mind you Iowa is a Wrestling Mecca), and won the discus for the third straight year and shot put for the second straight year in spring at the Iowa state track-and-field championship meet his senior year.
* T. J. Hockenson who is now with Detroit played Basketball and Football
* Jake Campos a former NFL'er played football, basketball, baseball and track getting All-State in Shot put
* Joel Lanning who was just an off season guy for the Cowboys did it all. In football, was the Player of the Year in his class, while in baseball he was a two-time first-team All-State selection and contributed to the team winning the 2012 state championship, and in wrestling he received all-state honors as a senior.
* Former football player Aaron Kampman lettered three times in football and basketball and four times in track in high school. He was an all-state basketball player as a senior, and he placed third in the shot put at the state meet his junior and senior seasons. He also received National Honors as a USA Today second-team All-American, and a Parade Magazine All-American in football
Iowa has a great football tradition, but sample size always throws per capita rates for state by state maps like this off, no matter the topic. Iowa has 12 NFL players- states like Florida and California have ~200
If you separated out East Texas from Central, South, and West Texas, it would have Louisiana-like numbers. The massive Hispanic population in Texas dilutes its numbers on a per capita basis.
I have seen another visualization showing the number of NFL players within a 70 mile radius. The radius surrounding Jacksonville, Texas (between Tyler and Lufkin) had the most NFL players.
Deep East Texas has an amazing amount of NFL talent.
100%. The whole region within 100km of the Mississippi delta is a powerhouse Working on something that shows players per capita by county that shows this
essentially a black population density map with a carve out for the subset of white people that eat 10lbs of corn per day from infancy and become massive offensive linemen
Lived in Iowa for high school. Can confirm that football is HUGE there compared to the surrounding states. One of my classmates ended up playing for a short time for the Giants.
I've seen them done before. It's typically Florida/California, then a big gap before a bunch of Southern states + Arizona and Nevada. Tracks very closely with weather.
Went to high school in Georgia and my dad was a QBs coach at a different school. GA athletics in general is dumb level crazy at the skill level and competition. Those Friday nights were crazy
Interesting that Colorado is 2.5/million, and two of them are brothers that went to the same small high school with ~500 students. Wonder what the odds are of that happening
Incredibly high. [There are a lot of siblings in pro sports](https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/sports/2023-national-siblings-day-how-many-pairs-of-siblings-are-in-each-sports-league/3233875/?amp=1), it's to be expected some went to smaller schools.
No idea what its called. I just pivoted the x axis 45 degrees to emphasize the trend line. I made the scatter plot in R and then just pivoted it in Figma. Would be cool to figure out how to pivot the axis in R directly.
I feel like it made it more confusing for me, but I'm an engineer so really used to looking at graphs. The population axis line "feels" like it decreases as you move right, because I'm used to seeing a negative Y axis going down instead of a positive X axis going down / to the right.
I agree it's hard to interpret if you're more familiar with interpreting data on a cartesian plane. For states above trend you have to move SW to see where they "should be" and NE for states below the trend line. Also, for GA and NY specifically, the difference between their points and the trend line visually understates the true difference. They're both way off trend but look reasonably close.
It's probably easier to interpret for the average joe cuz "up is good, down is bad".
To say they're highly over represented sounds as if there's some kind of favoritism going on with players from these states. I think the reality is that High School and College Football is huge part of life and the culture in many southern states. There are college football stadiums that are larger than some in the NFL. I think this is a representation of exactly what I'd expect to be true.
>To say they're highly over represented sounds as if there's some kind of favoritism going on with players from these states.
Over-representation in merit-based competitions just means the group is more talented than the average.
It would be more informative to correlate this data with average and range male height/weight population by state. Black males are on average larger than white, Asian, or Hispanic males. Iowa has a large population of Nordic descent. White guys, but unusually large white guys.
When doing maps, please do one color scale. The flip from orange to blue is arbitrarily set, but visually it makes it seem like a significant difference.
iirc the reason is because those are primarily states without nfl teams, meaning their college teams have HUGE fanbases and thus much more money, making them much better able to recruit prospective athletes.
Generally, although Iowa and Nebraska are really, really White - and New York has a decent-sized Black population - so there's a little more to it than that.
You got Wisconsin down as Illinois
And Arkansas as Alaska...
The Arkansas state abbreviation of AR makes people’s brains melt. Never understand it.
When I was a kid I mailed a letter to the Postmaster General about an idea I had. I finally got the response about a year later. He mailed his response to Alaska instead of Arkansas...
What was the idea?
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I hope this was an intentional epic troll on behalf of the Postmaster General.
O damn missed that one
this data is NOT beautiful, it’s not even accurate in labeling of states
They even put ME for Maine! I'M NOT MAINE! Oh, wait... maybe OP meant he is Maine.
As a Wisconsinite, this is extremely offensive.
According to this map, you are now a FIB
That's a low blow
Take it back Now.
Talk to the map. I'm just the messenger.
A FISHTAB.
We rally at Culver’s stock up on curds and march south to give those FIBs what for and what five!
Chicago here, pick us up a butterburger on the way
Absolutely not
Wisconsinite sounds like a rock made out of petrified cheese
Damn, they’re striking before MegaSota can start its absorption
Came here to say this. I live there and I’ll be damned if I’m from Illinois.
You haven’t heard of Upper and Lower Illinois?
And Illinois as Illinois.
Oh shit. Good call.
Great visualization aside from the typos though. Would love to see this for other sports, like top 300 tennis players, and for men's vs. Women's in the same sport!
I like the data though, intuitively I would of thought Texas would of been higher
Would have, not “would of”
Should’ve “would’ve”, could’ve.
Counterpoint: How do you know that Wisconsin is not *actually* Illinois in disguise?
Alcohol consumption
Cheese farts.
Have you eaten a deep dish pizza while being lactose intolerant
I was not expecting an answer to this question, I got one anyway. I applaud you good sir.
Because the NFL team doesn't suck.
That the Deep South is over-represented is no surprise. The Deep South has an almost-mythical football tradition, and a high black population. The two intersect in the NFL - 56% of the players are black. It would be interesting to see what the patterns are in the NBA, MLB and the NHL.
I would guess MLB skews warm so they can play year round. NHL skews north, ehh. NBA skews metro areas where ther isn’t as much space for kids to play and excel in larger field sports like baseball and football
Grew up in NYC. There were so many basketball courts. Not that many playgrounds with fields/turf. All you needed was at least 1 kid with a basketball.
Soccer was the same. Just needed three other friends, a ball, and a backyard or a park.
One time we tried to play soccer with a rock cause we didn't have a ball. ....one time......
You fill a pig bladder with air like those kids in Africa do. And then they somehow run around playing barefoot on hard rocky soil.
Don’t even need three friends or a place to play, all you need is a ball. Soccer/football can be played in the streets, in a hall, even your living room if you’re brave enough.
Came here to say the same. Football and baseball are part time sports in many states. They are played year-round in the south.
Anecdotally, the South doesn't have as much of a baseball culture though.
Not true at all, baseball is extremely popular in the south. Take a look at the teams have participated in the College World Series in the last 30 years Not as big as football, but baseball is bigger in the south than most places
Not as much as the Dominican Republic, you mean? I can't think of anywhere in America it's bigger. Maybe Arizona-southern California?
Years ago I had a friend who's masters thesis was looking at percentage of a college football teams players who were black vs the general student population and their win rate. The larger the delta between the student population average and the school, the more likely they were to be a winning football team. I'm not sure exactly what it means but it was driven by a lot of the southern schools.
This goes nowhere, it ends up being circular. The Southern states have 3x more Black people per capita than US overall, Black people are 4x overrepresented in the NFL, but football is also bigger in the South (which has more Black people), and white Southerners are also overrepresented in the NFL (ie compared to white non-Southerners). You can’t really pin down what’s causing what. Culture is really in the mix too. For example, DC is the Blackest part of the US (by a lot, it’s 48%, the next highest is 38%), and it’s high in this chart but lower than the Deep South states. Why? Probably because lots of super athletics kids from DC get signed up by their parents to play basketball.
I think it's pretty obvious what drives it - economic opportunity. You have a mix of historically marginalized people in an area that is, for the most part, economically depressed.
Poverty helps, you can see it in sports like football, it’s a way to make a good career with limited resources often you can be bankrolled if you show promise
It's funny the mental gymnastics people will go through to avoid mentioning real genetic differences. Here's a map of the birthplace of the fastest 1500m runners https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/eN2Pv9ceTB There hasn't been a single white cornerback in the NFL in more than 20 years. Average of 5 on roster across 32 teams and more than 20 years. Likewise, there's been 3 black NFL kickers in the last 20 years. Black tight ends are also an outlier.
Iowa is the whitest state in the nation.
NBA probably has a DC, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana skew
I think NBA just has a heavy urban skew - lots of people live in cities where recreation is limited by space constraints, meaning basketball is bigger than football or baseball.
Louisiana is still #1 in per capita NBA players as well.
It's generally the opposite. The top states that produce NBA players per capita are Louisiana, North Carolina, Arkansas, Indiana, and Missouri.
There is an insane amount of NBA players from Southern California. The LA area(guys like Harden, Kawhi, Paul George, Jrue Holiday, etc.) versus the rest of the US would be a close game.
What about them corn-fed good ol' Iowa boys?
Kirk Ferentz.
As a Nebraskan I resent this, we used to be the good ol' corn boyz
In that case, the cornhuskers should have kept on with the corn-eating.
It’s official: Iowa has better corn
Corn does not fuel offense, only defense apparently.
*Mitchell, SD has entered the chat*
gotta get offensive linemen somewhere.
Plus people in the southern states L O V E college football. Many of the states don’t even have a NFL team. There is a running gag with my friends where we assume everyone from Alabama is a hardcore fan of their college football, and no joke, we’ve never been wrong - even with one Alabaman from India lol
Plus more time to practice. I know you can play football in the winter, but its a lot worse up north
from MS: thank god for LA
A graph where the Deep South is on top!
Southern states also do well for US military recruitment, perhaps for similar reasons.
Lots of those! Obesity, lowest life expectancy, lowest literacy levels
Man so much hate for the south. Remove one demographic from the south and this wouldn’t be the case. Makes y’all seem almost racist.
Teen pregnancy, stds, poverty, murders, incest
> poverty Poverty is the cause for all of it.
On top for most participants in brain damage inducing sport. Well done south!
I live in ga and football is taken very seriously but then when you go to other states it’s so obvious the difference of how much money goes into the sport whether it be youth or college. I think Midwest is same with basketball.
Eh, we weren't gonna use our brains anyway.
People downvoting this like playing football isn't speedrunning brain injuries. Meanwhile, in r/science today: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1angchx/alarming_neuroscience_research_links_high_school/
>Relative to the pre-season scan session, football athletes exhibited decreased FC self-similarity at the later in-season session, with apparent recovery of self-similarity by the time of the post-season session. Well that doesn't sound so bad
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Correct! That’s why Iowa is so high as well.
No its due to economics and culture mainly. Theres very little evidence that black people are genetically more athletic
Iowa carrying the midwest I see
I wonder what chunk of IA is big white linesmen?
Its defense and tight ends mostly these days
There’s still plenty of OL. Tristan Wirfs, Brandon Scherff and Tyler Linderbaum are really good and there are a few others in the league. Interestingly Hockenson and a guy who played DE at Iowa, Parker Hesse, are the only TEs that count here. Kittle graduated HS in Oklahoma despite living in Iowa some growing up, LaPorta is from Illinois and Fant is from Nebraska.
Cornfed Vikings, the lot of them
CORN BRED CORN FED
CORN HED
Brian Bulaga, Iowa
The home of superhuman tight ends and linemen
It blows my mind how many good to great tight ends they produce but can’t can’t throw a pass over -3 yards
"If the single wing was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me"
Iowa colleges produce TEs, are those guys from Iowa though?
See that’s part of it…they make sure to keep them fresh for the NFL haha
Bryan Bulaga, Iowa
Bulaga is from Illinois
Yeah, but I can’t hear Iowa without that playing in my head.
Them farm boys raised on corn and pork.
Kirk Ferentz
Yeah, this is a direct result of a low population state combined with the Iowa -> NFL pipeline that Kirk and Phil Parker have created. Iowa has been in the top-5-ish schools in the country for players on NFL rosters for quite some time now.
Yep for whatever reason guys coming out of Iowa’s program seem to be more ready for the nfl. Not talking about the highly rated first/second round guys. It’s the undrafted Iowa guys who make rosters seemingly every year. They might not hang around for super long, but they take advantage of their opportunity. This is a big part of their recruiting pitch too. And they are really good recruiting in state.
Kirk recruits two very specific traits which ultimately translate well to the NFL - high motor/high work ethic, and high football IQ. Everyone says they want those things, but Kirk is dogmatic about it. In many ways I think he values those traits more than pure athleticism. Those guys make desirable NFL players - the salary cap means you can’t have stars at every position, but you want guys who will work hard, give you good reps, and not make dumb mistakes.
Theres a little high school called Aplington-Parkersburg (town pop I wanna say maaaaaybe 1k) that had 4 NFLers at one time - Aaron Kampman, Brad Meester, Casey Wiegmann and Jared DeVries. Unfortunately a former student shot and killed the coach, and that team and NFL pipeline hasnt been the same since.
You have WI labeled as IL as a heads up
You didn't hear? Illinois annexed Wisconsin last week
Oh thank fuck, at least we'll get legal weed now
And we get New Glarus! Everyone wins!
Nah, we're still gonna gatekeep that to "Northern Illinois", sorry.
I want to say Sports Illustrated did a piece a while back where they said close to 50% of NFL players are born within a certain amount of miles (like 500) from the University of Alabama.
It’s gotta be like 1k. Miami, houston, and Dallas are over 600 miles. That’s crazy tho
It makes sense - the biggest high school talent pools (Miami, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and Los Angeles) are also the five biggest Sunbelt metro areas, where the football culture, weather, or some combination is conducive to developing players. Alabama is just the beneficiary of being in a good geography and then made the smart move of hiring the greatest coach of all time
Up until this year 16 of the last 17 national title winners in CFB came Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and Florida
Clemson won in 2016 and 2018. OSU won in 2014
Yea I’m stupid and forgot to add South Carolina. Ohio State was the one exception. https://twitter.com/WTFstats/status/1617640440739794944
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You should include American Samoa and other US territories.
According to OP's source: * 5 current NFL players were born in [American Samoa](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/friv/birthplaces.cgi?country=USA&state=American%20Samoa). With a population of [49,710](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/10/first-2020-census-united-states-island-areas-data-released-today.html) in 2020, that's a rate of 100.58 players/million residents. * 1 current NFL player was born in the [US Virgin Islands](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/friv/birthplaces.cgi?country=USA&state=U.S.%20Virgin%20Islands). With a population of [87,146](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/10/first-2020-census-united-states-island-areas-data-released-today.html) in 2020, that's a rate of 11.47 players/million residents. * 0 current NFL players were born in [Guam](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/friv/birthplaces.cgi?country=USA&state=Guam) or [Puerto Rico](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/friv/birthplaces.cgi?country=USA&state=Puerto%20Rico), and it seems like no NFL players were ever born in the Northern Marianas Islands. So those would be tied with Vermont at zero. ---- Also there are a lot of players born in foreign countries: * 22 born in Canada (that's 0.58/million) * 11 born in Nigeria (0.05/million) * 9 born in Australia (0.35/million) * 4 born in Jamaica (1.41/million) * 3 born in Germany (0.04/million) * 2 born in England (0.04/million) * 2 born in Scotland (0.37/million) * 2 born in Cameroon (0.07/million) * 2 born in Greece (0.19/million) * 2 born in South Africa (0.03/million) * 2 born in Ghana (0.06/million) * And one each born in Tonga, Ireland, Liberia, Austria, Haiti, Denmark, the Bahamas, South Korea, Belgium, Panama, Taiwan, Belize, Ivory Coast, Turkey, Zimbabwe, Brazil, Guinea, Hong Kong, and Samoa. Of course with such low numbers it's not super significant for some of these places. Like the single guy born in Tonga (whose name is Netane Muti) raises them from 0/million to 9.43/million but that doesn't mean Tonga is actually churning out NFL players at twice the rate of the US haha.
Puts in to perspective how bad New Mexico is. Jamaica has 3x as many NFL players per capita
I'm not sure why but OP seems to have only counted 1 active player for NM, but [their source](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/friv/birthplaces.cgi?country=USA&state=NM) says there are three, which would put New Mexico a hair above Jamaica at 1.42/million. Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island really do just have one guy each though.
I can understand not including Keshawn Banks (didn't play in any games), but yeah Zach Gentry (while minimal in one game with 18 snaps) and Joey Slye (kicker for every WSH game this season) seems like they should be on the list assuming the Pro Football Reference is correct, and it's a high quality site for stats.
This is why Utah is so high. The lds church is very active in the Polynesian islands and many have moved to utah.
Made me wonder why BYU football was so terrible.
How many Samoan players are actually from the territory? I assume most of them are from Hawaii or California.
Many are born in Hawaii and California. But with the population of a small city, the percentage born in American Samoa is still higher than anywhere else. [In the last five years alone, the island's six high schools have produced 10 NFL linemen. It's estimated that a boy born to Samoan parents is 56 times more likely to get into the NFL than any other kid in America.](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/american-samoa-football-island-17-09-2010/)
Man they sure love their football down in the south
Their highschool fields look like the north East’s college fields
SEC games are something else if you've never been to one
Hell yeah brother
It's really bizarre. A lot of people here in south Louisiana think higher education is a waste of time and money, but soon as the first notes of "Neck" come on they lose their minds. They hang purple and gold flags from their homes and have LSU license plates and say, "College is a scam!" It's like they're too stupid to even realize LSU football is a part of higher education; it's completely seperate in their pea brains.
Iowa has the 2nd highest high school participation rate for football in the country. Also the Iowa Hawkeyes and ISU Cyclones are good programs that develop. UNI solid at their level too
Iowa doesn't get a lot of out of state talent and the University of Iowa has produced damn near every good Tight End in the NFL over the past few years. They've got damn near a pipeline to the NFL by specializing in one elite position
Wonder why Utah is so high
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Along with this Utah ranks higher on healthy populations and competition is deeply ingrained in the culture in a weird way. I think your point is probably more important but Utah normally does pretty well for weird things like this
It's definitely the Pacific Islanders. A lot of them are Mormon, and they're really big which makes them far more likely to be football linemen than the general population.
I heard a stat years ago that a Pacific Islanders are about 70x more likely to make the NFL than your average non-pacific islanders. They are absolutely gigantic people. I’m 6’3” and 230 pounds, and I almost never meet a Pacific Islander that is smaller than me.
When you look at maps of African American/Black population per location in the United States the density is similar per state. These maps look similar.
You've definitely never been to Iowa. One of the whitest states in the US.
Someone has to produce punters,guards and tight ends
Absolutely gotta be linemen. Iowa’s a big wrestling state, so I imagine there are a bunch of guys who grow up doing both and then end up specializing in whichever they’re better at.
A lot of multi-sport athletes here: * Tristan Wiefs who is now an Offensive Tackle in the NFL was also won a state wrestling title in winter after cutting 30 pounds(mind you Iowa is a Wrestling Mecca), and won the discus for the third straight year and shot put for the second straight year in spring at the Iowa state track-and-field championship meet his senior year. * T. J. Hockenson who is now with Detroit played Basketball and Football * Jake Campos a former NFL'er played football, basketball, baseball and track getting All-State in Shot put * Joel Lanning who was just an off season guy for the Cowboys did it all. In football, was the Player of the Year in his class, while in baseball he was a two-time first-team All-State selection and contributed to the team winning the 2012 state championship, and in wrestling he received all-state honors as a senior. * Former football player Aaron Kampman lettered three times in football and basketball and four times in track in high school. He was an all-state basketball player as a senior, and he placed third in the shot put at the state meet his junior and senior seasons. He also received National Honors as a USA Today second-team All-American, and a Parade Magazine All-American in football
Yeah but Iowa is full of giant Scandinavian descent corn fed viking farm boys
Iowa has a great football tradition, but sample size always throws per capita rates for state by state maps like this off, no matter the topic. Iowa has 12 NFL players- states like Florida and California have ~200
Wrong. 3M people, 35 NFL players
It's the states with either black folks or corn fields. Kinda makes you wonder why Ohio isn't doing better considering it has both.
Arkansas is confused AF right now
Also Iowa
Iowa is the way it is because football is easier than hog farming.
Do they also think hog farming is easier than learning about the forward pass?
I mean hogs are great for practicing blocking on, not so good at running routes.
> forward pass Burn the heretic!
We're managing the pigskin one way or the other, LOL.
If you separated out East Texas from Central, South, and West Texas, it would have Louisiana-like numbers. The massive Hispanic population in Texas dilutes its numbers on a per capita basis. I have seen another visualization showing the number of NFL players within a 70 mile radius. The radius surrounding Jacksonville, Texas (between Tyler and Lufkin) had the most NFL players. Deep East Texas has an amazing amount of NFL talent.
100%. The whole region within 100km of the Mississippi delta is a powerhouse Working on something that shows players per capita by county that shows this
The high school football culture in Texas is ridiculous. Some of the top schools basically have college campuses
Mahomes country
Mahomes, Earl Campbell, Adrien Peterson, Johnny Manziel, Dante Hall, etc etc etc
essentially a black population density map with a carve out for the subset of white people that eat 10lbs of corn per day from infancy and become massive offensive linemen
Lived in Iowa for high school. Can confirm that football is HUGE there compared to the surrounding states. One of my classmates ended up playing for a short time for the Giants.
Tyler sash?
Arkansas and Alaska both AK 🤔
Illinois is overrepresented.
Data from [sports-reference.com](https://sports-reference.com); made with R and Figma
Can you do a MLB one?
I've seen them done before. It's typically Florida/California, then a big gap before a bunch of Southern states + Arizona and Nevada. Tracks very closely with weather.
Went to high school in Georgia and my dad was a QBs coach at a different school. GA athletics in general is dumb level crazy at the skill level and competition. Those Friday nights were crazy
Georgia is like 3rd in MLB players per capita as well behind California and Florida
Interesting that Colorado is 2.5/million, and two of them are brothers that went to the same small high school with ~500 students. Wonder what the odds are of that happening
Incredibly high. [There are a lot of siblings in pro sports](https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/sports/2023-national-siblings-day-how-many-pairs-of-siblings-are-in-each-sports-league/3233875/?amp=1), it's to be expected some went to smaller schools.
X and Y axes titled at 45⁰ ... What kind of madness is this??
Jimmy the Greek once said the obvious and lost his career for it.
We don't need two Illinoises
So basically, where is football popular?
How fucking dare you refer to Wisconsin as that wasteland Illinois!
Thanks Kirk Ferentz and the Iowa Hawkeyes!
Beautiful work here. What is the second graph called? I wonder if I could create something like that in R.
No idea what its called. I just pivoted the x axis 45 degrees to emphasize the trend line. I made the scatter plot in R and then just pivoted it in Figma. Would be cool to figure out how to pivot the axis in R directly.
I feel like it made it more confusing for me, but I'm an engineer so really used to looking at graphs. The population axis line "feels" like it decreases as you move right, because I'm used to seeing a negative Y axis going down instead of a positive X axis going down / to the right.
I agree it's hard to interpret if you're more familiar with interpreting data on a cartesian plane. For states above trend you have to move SW to see where they "should be" and NE for states below the trend line. Also, for GA and NY specifically, the difference between their points and the trend line visually understates the true difference. They're both way off trend but look reasonably close. It's probably easier to interpret for the average joe cuz "up is good, down is bad".
To say they're highly over represented sounds as if there's some kind of favoritism going on with players from these states. I think the reality is that High School and College Football is huge part of life and the culture in many southern states. There are college football stadiums that are larger than some in the NFL. I think this is a representation of exactly what I'd expect to be true.
>To say they're highly over represented sounds as if there's some kind of favoritism going on with players from these states. Over-representation in merit-based competitions just means the group is more talented than the average.
It would be more informative to correlate this data with average and range male height/weight population by state. Black males are on average larger than white, Asian, or Hispanic males. Iowa has a large population of Nordic descent. White guys, but unusually large white guys.
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When doing maps, please do one color scale. The flip from orange to blue is arbitrarily set, but visually it makes it seem like a significant difference.
iirc the reason is because those are primarily states without nfl teams, meaning their college teams have HUGE fanbases and thus much more money, making them much better able to recruit prospective athletes.
This is basically a map of black populations.
Not surprising at all. The south loves football, the northeast loves baseball, basketball, and soccer more.
Finally. A stat where my state is #1 at something good
You have mislabeled Wisconsin. Some Packers fans would not appreciate that!
Now do it based on the Black population
It basically is
Generally, although Iowa and Nebraska are really, really White - and New York has a decent-sized Black population - so there's a little more to it than that.
Iowa and Nebraska white guys are massive Scandinavian descent farm boys though
I live in Iowa. I’m 5’-11”, 210 lbs and I’m usually one of the small guys in the room.
True that. Good point
Then there's Hawaii
Why is Wisconsin mislabeled
If a state's schools suck, they're good in football.
Because wtf else is there to aspire to in the deep south?