I have to try harder not to fall behind on my David Glenn reading. Glenn has a nice post about North Carolina’s “Big Four” ACC teams and how (and why) they are struggling right now in football.
The most interesting part of his post is the section where he breaks down the number of Division 1 football prospects by state compared to the number of Division 1 teams in that state. Glenn estimates the numbers, but I’d love to see some actual figures. If I had more time, I’d see if I could compile that myself from current college rosters. Maybe it could be collected from espn.com or some other big site using a tool like Bukster.
Anyway, the bottom line of Glenn’s point, and one that I’m sure the actual numbers would corroborate, is that the state of North Carolina just isn’t well-situated to support a consistent, major program. There simply aren’t enough good players to go around compared to schools in states like Georgia or Florida. In fact, NC might just be the toughest location for any BCS team.