Been looking at the ESPN top 150 watch list a bit recently and since it was a weekend morning...I decided to dig a little deeper and count up how each state is represented in their top 150 watch list at this time. I realize they still are evaluating and whatever else...but some of these numbers were interesting to me.
(and I may be off one or two here and there....if so, my apologies)
Top 10 states
Florida - 84
Texas - 76
Georgia - 47
California - 44
Ohio - 32
Alabama - 24
Virginia - 21
South Carolina - 18
Louisiana - 17
North Carolina - 17
Georgia ahead of California (and Cali so far behind Florida and Texas) is pretty much mind-boggling to me as I've always thought the general consensus was that Florida, Texas and California were the clear top 3 with the Georgias and Ohios etcs fighting it out behind them. But, there's people here that follow this stuff more than I do...hence the post.
Also, no Pennsylvania in the top 10? (they are 11th with 15 kids).
Also interesting...
Florida total - 84
Ohio + Pennsylvania + Michigan + Illinois + Indiana + Wisconsin + Iowa + Minnesota = 83 (32+15+8+10+6+3+5+4)
Basically all of Big 10 country = Florida according to ESPN/scouts.inc. Not trying to say Florida doesn't have a lot of talent, as the state clearly does...but their number of top guys equals the entire number of those that can be found in Big 10 country? Really? Also, all of the SEC states add up to a whopping 214.
I also counted 528 total kids on their top 150 watch list at the moment....
Florida's 84 of the top 528 equates to roughly 15.9% of the entire Watch List being from Florida. For comparison, I counted up 40 of the scout top 300 being from Florida, for 13.3333%. Small difference but it's there. Georgia's numbers are similar...8.9% on espn and 6.6% on scout. California is more in line with what normally is conventional thinking on scout. Cali has 29 of the top 300 (9.6%) and is a good deal ahead of Georgia.
Not sure what it means, if anything. Just kind of interesting.
Also, and on a bit of a different note, since I counted 528 guys on the watch list....that means that
OSU commits Whiting, Fields, Boren and Fragel...who are not on the watch list...are at this point rated as being outside of their top 500 nationally. In the case of Boren and Fragel, maybe...but Fields and Whiting, I don't know about that.
Anyway, like I said, I was looking at their list a bit, hung out with my calculator for an hour and I thought I'd throw this out there and see what people thought. Not really wanting this to sound like another bashing ESPN post...just found their take on the recruit season being somewhat oddball to what seems to generally be held as conventional wisdom.
