SPEED KILLS!!

College football, what is it really about? Is it about getting better as a program, developing a program, or even starting one. Let's face it, in the FBS it's about winning a National Championship. Even if your trying to get to a bowl game for the first year, the very next year the conference title will be your next goal. The natural progression after that is the National Champioship title. So, how do you get to a National title. To get that answer, I went straight to the NFL which host the best football players in the world. The latest stats were from 2005; "NFL Players State NFL Players California 199 Pennsylvania 58 Florida 179 Michigan 50 Texas 176 Virginia 49 Georgia 90 South Carolina 48 Ohio 78 Mississippi 46 Louisiana 76 Illinois 45 ." By looking at these numbers you can easily see that the top recruiting states for colleges need to be FL, CA, and TX. Now, instead of yelling and screaming about your coach, QB or bad defense. Start looking at your depth chart and see where the kids are from. More likely than not , the teams that are made up of student-athelete's from these 3 states are more likely to be playing eachother in the National Championship games than not. Why is it like this? Why are kids from these states better football players? I will answer this question personally because I have played in the NFL and reign from Florida. When I left Fl for college the consensus was we are better because we have great weather and play year round. This is true only in baseball because floridians do play little league baseball year round. I think our weather does help in that we play outside almost all year. You got to remember 60 degrees is cold to floridians, so to us we really do have a winter. The real reason for our football dominance is our competitive nature with speed. Aquianas High (FL) 52 -7 vs Upper Arlington (OH) proved how much of adavntage speed gives you. Florida kids would make moves and gain fifteen yards while Ohio kids would make moves and gain 3. It reminded me of Ohio St vs UF (41-14) national champioship game. In Fl it's not how big or strong your are. It's all about who's the fastest. Even if your the biggest kid in the neighborhood, you still have to be fast. I remeber racing on the street many of times, taking breaks as cars came by, to see who was the fastest in the neighborhood. Even at school the most prestigous award in elementary and middle school is the 50 yard dash. It's a fixation on speed there, so much so that most high school coaches "encourage" there players to also run track in the offseason. Football is also a religion in Fl. If you aren't playing football your considered "soft". You essentially prove your manhood on the feild. Basketball , track, baseball and other sports are great to play as long as you play still play football. Little league football games are very exciting. They're played on saturday's and draw big crowds and are very serious. Parents and coaches get really envolved and it's not uncommon to have very heated disagreements at games. There's no such thing as everyone plays unless your winning big. Our competitive spirit and focus on speed makes Fl one of the best states in the country for football.