One of the joys I get from reviewing my database of Columbia football feeder schools is looking at how the recruiting map has truly become larger and larger over the decades.
In the early days of recruiting Ivy athletes, the Northeast was truly and understandably over-represented in recruiting.
Don't believe me, check out some of these figures:
-The recruiting class of 1970, (players who came to Columbia in the fall of 1966), consisted of 56 young men hailing from just 11 states. 47 of them were from the Northeast, including 46, (82%), from just five states: NY, NJ, PA, CT, and MA.
-The recruiting class of 1980, (players who came to Columbia in the fall of 1976), during the hey day of then-Head Coach Bill Campbell, hailed from just 10 states and 77% of the class came from those same five states of NY, NJ, PA, CT, and MA.
-The recruiting class of 1990, (players who came to Columbia in the fall of 1986), saw the number of states drawn from increase to 18, with just 38% of the players coming from the five states of NY, NJ, PA, CT, and MA.
-The recruiting class of 2000, (players who came to Columbia in the fall of 1996), culled its crop from 18 states and only 25% came from the five states of NY, NJ, PA, CT, and MA.
-The recruiting class of 2010, (players who came to Columbia in the fall of 2006), was a bit of an outlier. That class of 30 players came from just 15 states, and 40% of them came from the five states of NY, NJ, PA, CT, and MA.
-But this recruiting class of 2020 of 40 so-far-known incoming players comes from 20 states. Only 20% coming from the five states of NY, NJ, PA, CT, and MA.
The upshot of this all is the fact that today's recruiters at Columbia really have to cover a lot more territory than just a few years ago. The "offer offensive" many of you have noticed via Twitter helps achieve that goal as one shared Tweet about Columbia football can instantly cross the nation in a moment.
5 comments:
Okay, I get it. We don't necessarily even want to recruit as our incoming players the graduating seniors of, say, either Bergen Catholic or Don Bosco. But you also have to admit that if we did, we might right there have at least as good a team as Bagnoli seems to be assembling via national recruiting. Some of those schools in a 5-state area as you cited, yes, they do indeed seem to sometimes be that good.
We are recruiting at BC and DB and have at least one terrific recruit coming from one of those schools.
PS, Sam Tydings posted a fantastic piece on the four MBB seniors in IHO. I would post it if I knew how.
Here ya go Old Lion:
http://ivyhoopsonline.com/2016/03/07/the-four-that-roared-for-columbia/
Thanks Doc! PS, Lo is going to be introduced at the John Jay Dinner tomorrow night
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