The Stat Mine is about to get particularly geeky on you today. We’re venturing into policy-wonk stuff. But I’m convinced it has a college football angle. We’re just in search of what that might be.
Recently, I noticed a graphic from a report by an economic policy group in Washington formed by Sean Parker. In case that name rings a faint bell you can’t quite identify, he was the young entrepreneur behind the file-sharing site Napster that was ultimately deemed illegal but ended up basically taking down the music industry with it. At least, the industry we knew in the last half of the 20th Century.
Parker, then went on to have a founding interest in Facebook as a prime advisor of its founder Mark Zuckerberg. He was made famous (or infamous) by his artistically liberated portrayal by Justin Timberlake in The Social Network. Parker also was an early backer of Spotify which helped make iTunes obsolete.
Sean Parker, the man who created Napster and helped launch Facebook, has since 2015 been involved in a data-mining venture that aims to help create bi-partisan economic policy.
One of Parker’s more recent ventures is a data-mining organization attempting to drive public policy called the Economic Innovation Group. It purports to be a bi-partisan outfit whose aim is to identify the growing gap between haves and have-nots in the American economy and how to bridge it. EIG often uses geo-graphics to accent its findings.
One of those I found intriguing was a map of the United States using zip codes and counties to represent economically thriving and distressed areas of the country. And what I found most interesting about it was how much poverty was painted across a swath of the Southeast. You can find the full EIG report on growing economic disparity in the US here.
In fact, it pretty much drew a perfect border around the Southeastern Conference.
Meanwhile, one of the healthiest areas of the country economically, one that has reasonably rebounded from the so-called Great Recession, was a region stretching from the northeast Atlantic Coast to the Cornbelt. Well, if it ain’t the footprint of the Big Ten!
This graphic represents the healthiest economic areas of the US in blue with the most distressed in red.
Another EIG graphic in its report shows that, other than Missouri and Florida, every one of the other 9 states in the 11-state SEC footprint (TX, AR, KY, MS, LA, AL, TN, GA, SC) has a greater percentage of economically distressed zip codes than every one of the 11 states in the Big Ten footprint (NE, IA, IL, MN, WI, IN, OH, MI, PA, MD, NJ).
When you consider that a prime talker in college football circles these days is the semi-alarming drop in attendance at Football Bowl Subdivision games, I figure that might be a point of entry for a future Stat Mine conversation on who might benefit, and who might not so much, in the United States’ ever more polarizing economic climate.
But more, I have a feeling football is going to become more of a regional sport than it’s ever been in the last half of its 150-year history. This is only extrapolated from my own experience, admittedly based on anecdotal evidence and is open to debate. But I can see all regions of the country other than the most desperate shying away from football because of its risk factors.
For those with little to lose and the otherwise unattainable dream of a college scholarship or even fortune and fame as the goal, it will remain as important as it is. That will be in the South where it already is the most vital sport.
This graphic represents states with the most economically distressed zip codes in darker shades.
Everyone has heard and seen evidence of what long-term involvement in football can do to the brain. In the past several years, my colleagues and I have done many stories on former Penn State and midstate players with lasting neurological effects from playing in college and the NFL.
Parents of teenagers are noticing. I see it and hear from them all the time.
But I had to make my own decision. My wife and I decided our son, who very much wanted to play middle school football, was too big of a risk to play. Having had 2 serious concussions at 7 and 10 years old in freak accidents, we took the strong recommendation of our pediatrician to stay out of it. Instead, he played all sorts of other sports from lacrosse to wrestling to baseball. But no football. He didn’t need an athletic scholarship to get into college. We could afford it and he’s helping with substantial academic grants. Together, we’ll be able to pay off his loan.
That was 8 years ago and I’m glad we made that decision. A lot of other parents I know have made similar judgments for various reasons. Their kids play sports, just not football. But we live in an area with great schools where parents have good jobs and aren’t forced to chase college scholarships with athletics alone. They have options.
Poor kids have fewer options all the time in our society. The EIG report paints a bleak picture for those counties painted in shades of red on the map, mostly rural areas. Even when the kids who grow up there are fortunate enough to make it to college, if they pay for it with student loans, they often are socked with debt they aren’t prepared to pay off. And they often return to their towns where the once plentiful manufacturing jobs are all dried up.
The South is full of such wide swaths. If you know your geography, you can pick out the urban pockets of metro Nashville and Atlanta and Lexington and Orlando on the map – the enclaves of blue, designating more well-off counties. But otherwise, there’s a lot of distress out there.
What this means for high school and college football is anyone’s guess. But mine is that areas where people are the most financially desperate will hold onto football as a dream of escape. And those with other options, will use them.
I also believe the South is more entrenched in football than any other region of this country. It’s simply more important to the residents of the SEC footprint than it is up here. They will not give it up so easily down there. Kids will continue to play football with passion. The rest of America, I’m not so sure.
And so, I believe the disparity we have been seeing between the SEC and every other conference in the nation will only widen.
By the way, guess who Phil Steele has penciled in as his prediction for the 2019 national championship game. Yet another battle between Alabama and Clemson with Georgia again as a semifinalist. Who can make a logical argument against him?
Never before has one region of the country so dominated a sport as the South has taken over college football the past decade and a half. And honestly, I only see it continuing.