What’s the North/South population discrepancy? A better metric would be Div 1a football scholarships per residents. An even better metric would be football scholarships per varsity football playing high school graduates.

As a humorous sidenote to your point about scholarship reductions over the decades, Bear Bryant was famous for not only offering a star high school recruit a scholarship but all his friends scholarships as well. Even those that didn’t play football.

Josh

Don’t forget about the impact of the changes in the Div 1-A scholarship rules through time.

Pre 1973, a program could issue as many scholarships as they wanted. 73-77 they were allowed to give out 105. 78-91 the number shrank to 95. The number then shrank to 85 by 1994, which is where it still is.

As of 2008 there are 119 Div. 1-A football programs in the US. 67 are in the North and only 52 are in the South. As a result, the south has 1,275 less scholarships to give out since 1994. So… the top echelon of players in the north can spread out much thinner than in the south.

As a result… it seems pretty obvious that the SEC has recently been granted a considerable advantage over say the Big 10 or the other northern conferences in that the very best players are more likely to not be able to obtain a scholarship somewhere else within the same geographic vicinity.

“Down here, you’re not born a boy or a girl, you’re born a Gamecock or Tiger. Down here, football is just as entrenched in our culture as Jesus, sweet tea and barbeque sandwiches. We say ‘Yes Ma’m’ and ‘No Sir’, but we also say ‘Roll Tide’, ‘War Eagle’ and ‘Pig Sooey’. Down here, ‘two plus two equals third down and six’.”

http://catholicgator.blogspot.com/2006/08/for-terri-down-here.html