The Louisiana Per capita argument

I've said for a while if U of Illinois put up a fence in the state, they could be a perennial powerhouse. The whole university isn't invested enough to make that happen, there just isn't a school spirit or a state love for their flagship institution like other places.

That's a digression, but I think you make a good point here. LSU has become a national brand. While putting up a fence around Louisiana has been instrumental, out of state recruiting is still essential.

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I've said for a while if U of Illinois put up a fence in the state, they could be a perennial powerhouse. The whole university isn't invested enough to make that happen, there just isn't a school spirit or a state love for their flagship institution like other places.

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Chicago is to the rest of Illinois as North Louisiana is to South Louisiana, but even more so. There' just isn't a whole lot in common between the two.

Just throwing it out there for the people that think LSU has some sort of advantage over every other school when it comes to recruiting. They dont.

True, but very few of the top football prospects come from Chicago. Most are from the suburban areas. As someone who is from the Chicago suburbs, Champaign is a lot more like them than is Chicago itself. The fact that guys like Treadwell (cue shady recruitment talk) or Pocic don't even consider Illinois while about an hour and a half away is unusual compared to other states without a comparable alternative public flagship.

I would change the title to take out per capita as others have mentioned because an interesting discussion point is being lost by that misused term. The point being that LSU has managed to secure its talent while a state flagship school like U of Illinois gets almost none of its top talent in a state with just as much in total, population being irrelevant.

According to 247 composite, U of I's top in state recruit was rated 30th in Illinois.

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dgnx6

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1: The per capita thing kills your argument

2: Illinois (the school) gets pretty much none of its top talent

3: Because LSU has been established as a good football school, any half decent coach can recruit well here. I mean look at Charlie Strong at Texas or Brady Hoke at Michigan. Will Muschamp at Florida, Steve Sarkisian at USC, etc. With all the competition in their states alone, plus competition by good schools in bordering states, and average football play, they still recruit/recruited damn well. I'm pretty sure we'll have a guy that can form a staff that can recruit this top Louisiana talent whenever Miles retires or gets fired (if he does get fired).

4. (from the top of my head) If they all declare next year, Dupre, Dural, Fournette, Godchaux, White, Beckwith, Robinson (Bama), Williams (Bama), McGuire (ULL), will be drafted next year, all from Louisiana. All but McGuire are 1st-2nd round players.

Just saying, it's not really close when you realize LSU has almost a 3rd of the population of Illinois, Illinois has 1519 high schools compared to 627 for Louisiana, and Illinois has the 5th highest school enrollment compared to the 23rd for Louisiana. Got those numbers from high-schools.com if you want to check it out.

The amount of talent, and elite talent at that, that comes from Louisiana compared from the amount of kids to pull from, is ridiculous.

Illinois still has 2 Big 10 schools while Louisiana still has LSU as the only P5 school.

Illinois has just shy of 13 million people. Louisiana has just over 4.5 million.

You thred be dumm!

The per capita statistics are facts. They are based on actual outcomes. However, the size of the population from which they are drawn is of greater importance when it comes to assembling a football team.

A larger population will give you more players, and the expectation of better distribution of players among the various positions. As such a low population state like Louisiana is less likely to produce quality QBs in any year than a large population state like Texas. Building a team with Louisiana players will more often than not leave you with inferior players at some positions relative to teams assembled from the best talent regardless of state.

It is pretty simple application of the laws of numbers.

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Illinois still has 2 Big 10 schools while Louisiana still has LSU as the only P5 school.

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Some of you are forgetting 1 very important thing

Notre Dame is very close to Chicago, closer than Illinois is. Northwestern is basically in Chicago, but again, it's Northwestern. Basically like GT is to Georgia/Atlanta.

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Northwestern is one of the finest schools in the nation

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Exactly. My point was, because of the elite academics, Northwestern is not recruiting from the same pool of athletes. U-Illinois is not sharing the state in the same way as other state schools with other big conference, state school competitors in the state, i.e. Michigan/Michigan State, Alabama/Auburn, South Carolina/Clemson, etc. As a result, if they could keep a good portion of their recruiting pool at home, U-Ill could be elite.