[KCCFootball]

after noticing a bunch of out of state wins/losses to other highschools, I got to thinking where would kentucky as a state rank against our fellow states? and what states would be the top ten..

anybody else want to take a guess at it?

I'll start
Top ten states: in order
Texas
California
Ohio
Florida
Georgia
Alabama
Pennsylvania
Louisiana
Michigan
Oklahoma

and i feel comfortable to say kentucky at #23

[RoShamBo]

Right now, I would say the top 10 states go like this:

1. Florida
2. Georgia
3. Ohio
4. Texas
5. South Carolina
6. California
7. Virginia
8. Alabama
9. Pennsylvania
10. Louisiana

Traditionally, I would say it goes more like this:

1. Texas
2. Florida
3. California
4. Ohio
5. Georgia
6. Alabama
7. Virginia
8. South Carolina
9. Alabama
10. North Carolina

The only thing that would keep Kentucky up in the top 25 states is Trinity, Highlands, and Bowling Green's success over the last few years. If not for that, Kentucky is definitely in bottom 20.

[Hoot Gibson]

Kentucky ranks 26th in the country in population. At best, the state ranks 26th in football. There are too many "running clock-type" games for Kentucky to be considered a good football state. All of the lop-sided scores on any given Friday night suggests that there is a severe shortage of competent high school football coaches and/or severe shortage of community support for high school football in Kentucky. Strong competition builds strong teams and it is very difficult for good teams in Kentucky to put together competitive schedules.

Sure, teams like Trinity and Highlands can put a few quality out-of-state teams on their non-district schedules, but there is nothing they can do to address extremely week district competition. Compare that to the strong Cincy or Indianapolis teams that often play a strong out of state team or two early in the season and then play a brutal conference or district schedule before the playoffs. Schools of near equal enrollment should not be consistently blown out by district opponents, but that is commonplace in Kentucky.

A state whose football competition is dominated by the same handful of teams year after year cannot claim to be a strong football state.

[Leonidas]

IMO you guys have Ohio a little too high abd Louisiana a little too low. But you know what they say about opinions.

Florida
Texas
California
Georgia
Louisiana
Ohio
South Carolina
Alabama
Pennsylvania
Oklahoma
Virginia....
KY is middle of the pack.

[Spirit100]

My first thought was middle of the pack. Mid to upper 20's seems to be a good fit concerning Hoots population figures.

Larger metropolitan areas don't always equate to football success. But they'll improve your chances. Many states have one or two perennial powers similar to Highlands and Trinity and then there's significant drop off.

I would place Louisiana in the top 5 and drop Ohio closer to 10. I agree with Leonidas' Top 5.

[BackShoulderThrow]

IMO you guys have Ohio a little too high abd Louisiana a little too low. But you know what they say about opinions.

Florida
Texas
California
Georgia
Louisiana
Ohio
South Carolina
Alabama
Pennsylvania
Oklahoma
Virginia....
KY is middle of the pack.

Like minds think alike. About the only changes I'd make would be leave out Oklahoma and throw in Maryland/Washington D.C. You could also make a case for New Jersey and New York.

[RunItUpTheGut]

How do you all consider Virginia to be good enough to be top 10?

[Hoot Gibson]

ESPN ranks Virginia 8th, Kentucky 27th. Virginia is a football state. SW Virginia does not reflect the quality of football played in Virginia's metro areas, which is where a large portion of its population is concentrated.

Overall state football rankings

[RoShamBo]

Louisiana got the downgrade from me just because of population. Their population to talent ratio is ridiculous but they are still limited by the population. Ohio does not have that problem.

[KCCFootball]

ESPN ranks Virginia 8th, Kentucky 27th. Virginia is a football state. SW Virginia does not reflect the quality of football played in Virginia's metro areas, which is where a large portion of its population is concentrated.

Overall state football rankings

The eastern part of kentucky doesnt reflect the quality of football here either. louisville schools would hold thier own against any virginia team regardless of class.

[Hoot Gibson]

The eastern part of kentucky doesnt reflect the quality of football here either. louisville schools would hold thier own against any virginia team regardless of class.

Kentucky's high school football is extremely top heavy. Having one or two teams dominate most of the six classes does not mean that Kentucky is a strong football state. Kentucky's best teams, including Trinity and St. X., would struggle to compete on a yearly basis in many of the strong large school conferences around the country. RIUG asked how anybody could consider Virginia a top 10 high school football state, and the first list I found by Googling was the ESPN list.

If you want further evidence that Virginia is a top football state, then take a look at these numbers from Rivals:

Where the FBS signees come from

Note that on Signing Day, 2013, one out of every 323 Virginia high school players accepted D1 scholarship offers. In contrast, 1 out of every 826 Kentucky high school football players signed D1 offers on the same day.

D1 signees are not the only measure of the overall quality of football played in each state, but it is more objective than any of the bogus attempts to rank teams nationally that rarely play common opponents.

[Boonie]

If you are comparing a state's overall rank, then more densely populated states or those dominated by a densely populated area would almost always rank higher. If you look at just the premier programs out of each state, we might do a little better.

[Leonidas]

Like minds think alike. About the only changes I'd make would be leave out Oklahoma and throw in Maryland/Washington D.C. You could also make a case for New Jersey and New York.

Maryland is a football rich state, too. I forgot about them.

[BackShoulderThrow]

The most talent-rich area in Virginia is known as the Tidewater region. Michael Vick and EJ Manuel are a couple of names that come to mind.

[Leonidas]

How do you all consider Virginia to be good enough to be top 10?

Go to the Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, and Chesapeake areas and watch the football there.

The Appalachian part of Virginia is not where there good football is played.

[Leonidas]

The most talent-rich area in Virginia is known as the Tidewater region. Michael Vick and EJ Manuel are a couple of names that come to mind.

Bruce Smith, too.

There go those great minds thinking alike again.:biggrin:

[RoShamBo]

Go to the Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, and Chesapeake areas and watch the football there.

The Appalachian part of Virginia is not where there good football is played.

Right on. Every now and then there will be some top tier teams in Roanoke but for the most part it's all out East. Main reason those areas are so rich in talent is because of population. I had a cousin that played for Woodbridge in Northern Virginia. He played his Freshman year on the Frosh squad, and his Soph and JR year on the JV squad. His senior year he had to try out for Varsity and didn't make it. They dressed around 100 on their Varsity and it was almost all seniors with a couple juniors who had next level talent. In Northern Virginia you will have two or three schools within a couple miles of each other that will have three or four thousand kids.

[School Admin.]

California has more players than anyone. The talent there is crazy. It's the most populous state, but there are a ton of players there.

[RunItUpTheGut]

ESPN ranks Virginia 8th, Kentucky 27th. Virginia is a football state. SW Virginia does not reflect the quality of football played in Virginia's metro areas, which is where a large portion of its population is concentrated.

Overall state football rankings

I stand corrected. I guess all the years of watching EKY teams beat up on Western Virginia teams has mislead me.
I figured the suburbs outside of the DC metro area would be full of good teams, but i wouldnt imagine theyd be ranked that high.

[Hoot Gibson]

I stand corrected. I guess all the years of watching EKY teams beat up on Western Virginia teams has mislead me.
I figured the suburbs outside of the DC metro area would be full of good teams, but i wouldnt imagine theyd be ranked that high.

As Leonidas said, the Tidewater region of Virginia is a hotbed of high school football too. My brother-in-law was an all state offensive lineman for Hampton back in the 1970s. I looked at a list of the top 10 Virginia teams and recognize 4 of them being located within 30 miles of DC, one is in Richmond, and at least two are along the coast, so they are pretty well spread out in the eastern side of the state.

I don't know why Virginia does not receive more recognition for its football. It may be because the top Virginia teams apparently do not travel to play out of state much. I skimmed schedules of a few of the the top 6A teams, and all the games that I saw listed were against in state competition.

I can tell you from experience that it often takes a couple of hours of driving from DC on either I-95 South or I-66 West before rush hour traffic thins to the point where you can travel the speed limit consistently. If I were scheduling games in this area, I would schedule them as close as possible too.

[whackem'n'stackem']

I'll tell you in 3 weeks.

[Bob Seger]

West Virginia ranked #31 , while Kentucky ranks in at #36, tells me this poll may be somewhat lacking in credibility..

[EKUAlum05]

I'll second that Kentucky is firmly a middle of the pack football state... and for the most part KY football is much better than it should be based on population and number of D-1 athletes produced.

More than state's... it is specific areas that drive HS Football. For example in the NE the public schools are normally crap programs, but the private schools (think of like a Don Bosco Prep) are super powers.

In Georgia the city of Atlanta is relatively weak when it comes to football... but the surrounding suburbs are strong. In Gwinnett County where I live I can travel 15 miles on any given Friday and see any of these teams who has been ranked in the National Top 100 at some point over the past 5 years without leaving the county (Grayson, Peachtree Ridge, Norcross, North Gwinnett, Brookwood, Parkview, South Gwinnett, Buford). On top of this, even the middle tier and bottom tier programs are competitive within a couple TD's and there are 6-8 more of them.

The suburbs surrounding Atlanta constitute the vast majority of titles won in Georgia, especially in the largest classifications. The Valdosta area used to be a hotbed, but it has significantly declined.

I am not insinuating recruiting is the key to football success, but having a major metropolitan city and a program with strong financial stability goes hand in hand with our national powerhouses. Great programs don't have to recruit because the talent pool naturally flows to them. The number of elite programs in that metropolitan area then vary depending on the talent pool as ALL the great players simply cannot end up at one school.

That is what makes Highlands, Trinity, and St. Xavier so successful. Everyone wants to throw recruiting allegations at them, but the truth is they don't have to. Parents will recruit themselves. If you have an elite program with a history of winning and a quality school then it is human nature for parents of children to want their kids to pay there. People want to win..they also want the best opportunity for their kid to be successful.

The area that hurts KY the most is Lexington. The lack of a dominant program in the city has resulted in the talent pool dissipating over all the schools fairly evenly, and a sort of complacency has set in. Now the quality of football is simply mediocre. The talent pool of Lexington would support the rise of an additional elite KY power team and potentially raise the level of play in the city by default. LexCath came the closest to doing this under Bob Sphire, but they have since slid back. county School around Lexington have enjoyed success with teams like Scott Co, Boyle County, and right now Bourbon County surging.. but I still think if the right coach came to the right school in Fayette County there is a sleeping giant that could be awoken.

[EKUAlum05]

West Virginia ranked #31 , while Kentucky ranks in at #36, tells me this poll may be somewhat lacking in credibility..

The fact WV is ahead of South Carolina is even more of a disaster. There is no team in WV that could stay within 5 TD's of Byrnes.... ever

[Hoot Gibson]

West Virginia ranked #31 , while Kentucky ranks in at #36, tells me this poll may be somewhat lacking in credibility.

The overall rating is a composite of pro, college, and high school ratings. The high school rankings are Kentucky #27 and West Virginia #35. Those seem to be in line with other rankings that I have seen, including D1 scholarship signings that take population into account. I don't think any organization that hires a slimeball like Keith Olbermann twice has much credibility, but many sports fans disagree. The ESPN list was just at the top of the Google hits in my search.

[Hoot Gibson]

The fact WV is ahead of South Carolina is even more of a disaster. There is no team in WV that could stay within 5 TD's of Byrnes.... ever

The ESPN list has SC at #12 and WV at #35.

[EKUAlum05]

The ESPN list has SC at #12 and WV at #35.

http://sports.espn.go.com/sportsnation/n...munityfbIP

Is the one I was looking at.. it has SC at #32 and WV at #31

For the HS rank I agree... but think SC is probably a little bit higher than #12

[Hoot Gibson]

http://sports.espn.go.com/sportsnation/n...munityfbIP

Is the one I was looking at.. it has SC at #32 and WV at #31

That is the same one that I posted, but the only rank that matters for this discussion is the high school rank. Like I said, it was the first one listed from a Google search, and I was just looking for a reasonable random list to show where non-Kentuckians might rank Virginia.

I think too much importance is placed on the quality of the top teams in states versus the overall depth of quality teams. There are far more strong football teams in the Indianapolis metro area than there is in the entire state of Kentucky, for example. Large metropolitan areas make scheduling easier and generally provide good teams with better competition without having to travel unreasonable distances.

IMO, it is the quality of football played outside of large metro areas that provides the best measure of the quality of a state's football programs- not two or three well financed schools that get USA Today's attention. A state whose football teams totally lack parity are not good football states, IMO. When there are a half dozen or more schools in each class that begin each season with a realistic shot at winning the state title in Kentucky, then I will consider it a football state.

[BackShoulderThrow]

I'll second that Kentucky is firmly a middle of the pack football state... and for the most part KY football is much better than it should be based on population and number of D-1 athletes produced.

More than state's... it is specific areas that drive HS Football. For example in the NE the public schools are normally crap programs, but the private schools (think of like a Don Bosco Prep) are super powers.

In Georgia the city of Atlanta is relatively weak when it comes to football... but the surrounding suburbs are strong. In Gwinnett County where I live I can travel 15 miles on any given Friday and see any of these teams who has been ranked in the National Top 100 at some point over the past 5 years without leaving the county (Grayson, Peachtree Ridge, Norcross, North Gwinnett, Brookwood, Parkview, South Gwinnett, Buford). On top of this, even the middle tier and bottom tier programs are competitive within a couple TD's and there are 6-8 more of them.

The suburbs surrounding Atlanta constitute the vast majority of titles won in Georgia, especially in the largest classifications. The Valdosta area used to be a hotbed, but it has significantly declined.

I am not insinuating recruiting is the key to football success, but having a major metropolitan city and a program with strong financial stability goes hand in hand with our national powerhouses. Great programs don't have to recruit because the talent pool naturally flows to them. The number of elite programs in that metropolitan area then vary depending on the talent pool as ALL the great players simply cannot end up at one school.

That is what makes Highlands, Trinity, and St. Xavier so successful. Everyone wants to throw recruiting allegations at them, but the truth is they don't have to. Parents will recruit themselves. If you have an elite program with a history of winning and a quality school then it is human nature for parents of children to want their kids to pay there. People want to win..they also want the best opportunity for their kid to be successful.

The area that hurts KY the most is Lexington. The lack of a dominant program in the city has resulted in the talent pool dissipating over all the schools fairly evenly, and a sort of complacency has set in. Now the quality of football is simply mediocre. The talent pool of Lexington would support the rise of an additional elite KY power team and potentially raise the level of play in the city by default. LexCath came the closest to doing this under Bob Sphire, but they have since slid back. county School around Lexington have enjoyed success with teams like Scott Co, Boyle County, and right now Bourbon County surging.. but I still think if the right coach came to the right school in Fayette County there is a sleeping giant that could be awoken.

I agree with the part about parents wanting to send their children to schools such as Trinity, St. Xavier, Highlands, Beechwood etc. Don't need to discuss all of their accomplishments as it's well documented, who wouldn't want to pick a winner, right? Living in eastern Kentucky I wish an assistant off of said schools would take a chance and coach in our neck of the woods, bringing a winning mentality and culture too. Maybe restore some balance.

[EKUAlum05]

I like what ESPN is trying to do with that link, but I would like to tweak it to get a true representation of High Schools' Performance. Instead of judging the collegiate side based on how well the football universities in that state do and the players they produce to the pro's... I would rather see it based off the players from within the state that go to college and the to the pros.

For example WV is skewed because WVU and Marshall have very, very low amount of in-state players..and subsequently even fewer in-state guys who move on to the pro's. Meanwhile WV is rewarded for a guy like Geno Smith who played in Florida.

Kentucky obviously isn't tearing up the charts in this aspect..but the UL and UK roster have many more in-state guys and guys like Jacob Tamme, Brandon Deaderick, Yeremiah Bell. Michael Bush, Tim Masthay, Corey Peters, Alfonso Smith, and Larry Warford should give the state of Kentucky a bump over WV. In fact WV is getting credit for Keith Tandy who played his HS ball at Christian County, KY.

By comparison the KY college and pro ranking should be substantially higher than WV.

What I do like above the players above is where they played their ball in HS.
Boyle County
Etown
GRC
Male
Murray
Central
Waggener
Madison Central
Christian County

4 County Schools, 2 Independent Schools (non-metro), 3 Louisville Schools.. nice balance there