Recruiting pipelines

Which states produce college football players

54,753 college signees since the 2010 class, across 46 states, ranked by what they became rather than by how they were rated. Four states account for 42.9% of them.

AnalysisAll analysis →

States tracked

with a college signee

54,753

College signees

2010 class onward

2,080

NFL draftees

6.6% of 31,755 in the draft window

2,123

College contributors

offense skill

Where college football talent comes from

Texas, Florida, California, Georgia produced 42.9% of every college signee in this data, and the four states that produced the most NFL picks — Florida, Texas, California, Georgia — account for 42.5% of the picks. The bottom 23 states put together produced 12.7%.

Texas 13.5%Florida 11.9%California 9.1%Georgia 8.4%the other 42 states 57.1%

Share of 54,753 college signees by hometown state, 2010 class onward.

Every state, ranked

Signee counts cover every class in the data. The draft rate is measured over the draft window only — the classes old enough to have had five drafts behind them — which is why its denominator is smaller than the signee count beside it. Pick a position to ask which states produce it.

Rank by

46 of 46 states, ranked by college signees.

#	State	Signees	Picks	Draft rate	Contributors	Schools with a pick
1	Texas	7,408	255	5.9%of 4,325	342	288/ 858
2	Florida	6,532	280	7.0%of 3,984	312	226/ 509
3	California	4,991	178	6.1%of 2,911	229	186/ 654
4	Georgia	4,583	172	6.6%of 2,590	155	160/ 423
5	Ohio	2,561	90	5.9%of 1,523	95	109/ 418
6	Alabama	2,008	77	6.5%of 1,179	64	86/ 299
7	North Carolina	1,734	71	6.7%of 1,058	61	85/ 323
8	Louisiana	1,646	95	8.8%of 1,075	82	91/ 242
9	Illinois	1,597	58	6.5%of 890	68	78/ 303
10	Tennessee	1,496	40	4.5%of 882	38	49/ 235
11	Michigan	1,446	52	6.1%of 853	44	57/ 299
12	Virginia	1,383	51	6.0%of 850	45	60/ 241
13	Pennsylvania	1,354	62	7.6%of 817	52	71/ 322
14	New Jersey	1,200	53	7.2%of 734	55	62/ 235
15	South Carolina	1,032	45	7.1%of 632	43	61/ 190
16	Maryland	1,013	54	9.6%of 565	31	40/ 149
17	Arizona	990	32	5.9%of 540	40	32/ 127
18	Washington	931	23	4.8%of 479	25	39/ 184
19	Mississippi	929	43	8.3%of 520	29	53/ 201
20	Indiana	902	25	5.3%of 476	36	37/ 166
21	Missouri	724	27	7.1%of 380	26	38/ 151
22	Utah	724	24	6.3%of 381	14	22/ 82
23	Oklahoma	628	18	4.9%of 368	22	27/ 132
24	New York	519	16	4.4%of 366	20	29/ 201
25	Wisconsin	516	25	8.4%of 298	6	26/ 173
26	Minnesota	510	19	7.2%of 264	8	22/ 157
27	Kentucky	506	18	6.5%of 277	30	31/ 117
28	Colorado	497	14	5.1%of 272	19	22/ 98
29	Arkansas	468	12	4.3%of 277	19	22/ 116
30	Oregon	407	18	8.5%of 211	10	22/ 93
31	Iowa	401	16	8.8%of 181	12	20/ 148
32	Nevada	398	16	7.9%of 202	18	9/ 50
33	Hawaii	392	10	4.2%of 240	9	6/ 46
34	Massachusetts	348	13	7.0%of 185	9	17/ 110
35	Kansas	345	16	8.5%of 189	12	20/ 109
36	Connecticut	335	13	7.7%of 168	16	21/ 82
37	Nebraska	264	4	3.5%of 114	1	4/ 74
38	Idaho	231	2	2.1%of 95	5	7/ 52
39	Washington, D.C.	206	15	11%of 141	6	8/ 22
40	West Virginia	146	6	8.1%of 74	3	7/ 35
41	Montana	110	3	27%of 11	1	4/ 36
42	New Mexico	95	2	3.6%of 55	2	3/ 31
43	Delaware	83	5	11%of 45	7	10/ 30
44	South Dakota	57	6	26%of 23	0	5/ 26
45	North Dakota	55	3	16%of 19	0	3/ 35
46	ON	52	3	8.3%of 36	2	4/ 22

share of draft-window signees drafted95% interval

What this does not say

A state's draft rate is not a statement about its high schools. It mixes the players a state produces with the colleges that sign them, and the college is the half that matters — the same test run on both says the high school a recruit attended explains nothing his rating did not, while the program he signed with explains a great deal. Both halves, with the numbers.

It counts signees, not players — and “college” here is not only FBS. These are recruits who signed with a program CollegeFootballData tracks: about 84% went to an FBS school and the rest to FCS and below, which is why North Dakota State and Montana State appear in the outcomes at all. A state with few signees is not a state that plays no football; it is a state whose players more often went unsigned, and that is not in this data. The denominator is the pipeline, not the population — there is no per-capita number on this page and there should not be one.

And that selection is what the rate ranking cannot see past. South Dakota turned 6 of 23 draft-window signees into NFL picks — a real 26%, and the highest number in the table. It is not the most productive talent state in America; it is a state where essentially only players who were already NFL prospects got a scholarship at all. The rate ranking sorts the 0 states under 100 draft-window signees last for exactly that reason.

Small states cannot be ranked by rate, and the table says so. Delaware's draft window is 45 signees. Five were drafted, which is the highest rate in the table and is equally consistent with an average state getting lucky twice — so the rate ranking sorts on the bottom of each state's 95% interval rather than on the rate, and the interval is drawn beside it.

A recruit is placed by his HOMETOWN, not by his high school. That is the field CFBD publishes (stateProvince), and it is the right one for “where does talent come from” — but it means a player who moved to a national academy for his senior year is still counted at home. Ontario appears because the same field carries Canadian provinces.

Go deeper

What recruiting data actually says High-school pipelines, ranked How this is measured

Descriptive hindsight, not a forecast, and not betting advice. Draft outcomes cover the signing classes with five drafts behind them; contributor outcomes cover offense-skill signees, and from 2021 defensive production. Recruit ratings, signings and high schools: CollegeFootballData.