Football Cities: Where the 2012 NFL Players Come From

Miami, Florida, led by Baltimore Ravens defensive stars Ed Reed (pictured) and Ray Lewis, is one of the top producing regions for NFL players.

The National Football league regular season kicks off tonight, with two marquee teams – and markets in Dallas and New York – facing off. Last week, I looked at the states and regions whose colleges produce NFL players. This post looks at which cities and metro areas the 2012 NFL rosters come from, to see which ones produce the most players.

Using data available from this map, as well as player biographies on Wikipedia and their college and NFL team sites, I assembled a database of players along with their hometown and metro region (according to Metropolitan Statistical Area). The list is comprised of 1917 players who were on an NFL roster (active, injured reserve, or practice) as of late August/early September.

Looking at the 51 metro areas of over 1,000,000 residents, here are the top 10, with overall rankings on the left side and per capita on the right.

The Miami area shows best, coming in a close second in both overall and per capita numbers. Los Angeles edges out Miami in overall numbers. Both metros have produced many notable NFLers, in particular local players who went to prominent local colleges (USC and the University of Miami, respectively). Ray Lewis, Ed Reed, and Andre Johnson are three Miami locals who starred at The U before launching successful NFL careers. The Los Angeles area has seen quarterbacks such as Carson Palmer and Mark Sanchez go from local high schools to USC to the pros, and is also the home of defensive stars like Clay Matthews.

New Orleans, home of the Manning brothers, leads the way per capita. The overall top 10 track fairly closely to overall population. While the Northeast (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington) lacks colleges that produce top players, the region itself is sending many local players from high schools to the pros, with the exception of Boston (and most of New England). Texas and Georgia are known football hotbeds, so it’s no surprise to see their teams show up here. On the per capita side, the south leads the way, with only Cincinnati (on the border) cracking the top 10 from outside the region.

In the overall top 10, Los Angeles is the only metro without an NFL team, while 3 in the top 10 per capita (Birmingham, Oklahoma City, Virginia Beach – Norfolk – Newport News) are without one.

Here is how the 30 metros with NFL teams rank (New York City and San Francisco-Oakland both have two). The top 10 mirrors the overall top 10, with Detroit taking LA’s place.

Pittsburgh and the two Ohio teams show up here, amongst another grouping of predominantly southern and Californian metros.

The midwest, often thought of as a player-rich area, occupies most of the bottom 10 spots, with none boasting notable per capita scores either. Green Bay is an outlier due to its small size, but Milwaukee (the biggest city in Wisconsin) would be 25th if it was included.

We also see many metros without NFL teams producing players. Here they are grouped by metro size:

California shows its might here. In addition to overall leader Los Angeles, the neighboring Inland Empire (Riverside – San Bernardino – Ontario) produces a large number of players, as does the state capitol region of Sacramento in the north. This is another list where the south dominates, with the recognized football hotbeds of Austin, Birmingham, Oklahoma City, Orlando, and the Richmond and Hampton Roads areas of Virginia making the top 10. The only city from the north to crack the top 10 is Columbus, home of the Ohio State University.

Of the metros between 500,000 and 999,000 (below), we see that its once again only Ohio cities – Akron and Dayton – cracking the top 10, in addition to Honolulu, Hawaii.

Finally, the handful of metros below 500,000 produced 5 or more NFLers are again all from the Sun Belt and South.

Conclusions
Football’s Base Has Shifted South and West.
The major metros, both in raw numbers and per capita, are primarily from California, Florida, and the south. A handful of Ohio cities perform well per capita, and the large metros of NYC, Chicago, Philly, and DC produce their share, but if the day existed when the Rust Belt of Ohio and Western Pennsylvania was an NFL pipeline, it’s by and large passed.

Football’s Base is Slightly Less Urban than the Country.
Most calculations list the percentage of Americans living in an urban/metro area as being between 80-85%. Of the 1892 American players on this list, 1412 are from a metro area, which works out to 75%.

The next post will look at the player breakdown by state and mega region.

I plan to do this for the rest of the big four North American leagues (plus the American and Canadian professional soccer pools) to see what trends emerge regarding the metros, states, and regions that produce the most professional players.

(Update: somehow I missed Richard Florida’s post on this topic from April 2012, which used 2010 numbers, and birth place instead of high school location/hometown).

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