Big C said:
With all the people in the Northeast, why isn't college football bigger? The cold weather? Hockey is really big? Folks tend to follow the NFL more than college? (that latter is a challenge we face in N. California)
There must be top prep football programs in the Philly/NY/NJ area, right? But we hardly ever hear about them, or about top recruits coming from that area. (Again, the weather?)
There are isolated pockets of hs fb excellence in the northeast, but most areas are historically weak. My top 5 reasons:
1. Parents are just not that gung ho. It is a region of high intellect (at least they like to think so) and intellectual types tend to see contact sports as coarse and anti-intellectual.
2. Money and its allocation. Why put money into an endeavor that doesn't have a direct connection to producing great prosperity for little Johnny?
3. Scale. Most northeast municipalities are small. CT has 169 municipalities for 3 million people. Nearly every one of them funds their own schools; there are no counties. Other than the greater Boston area, it's the same in the other NE states - hs grad classes are usually under 700. NYC and Philly could produce, but have no space for fb facilities, nor the money.
4. HS spirit. There isn't much, comparatively.
5. Local support. In other regions, local businesses, like car dealers, restaurants, etc., thrive on the parasitic support for hs athletics, especially fb - big crowds, advertising. In the NE, that's considered bordering on the corrupt. Local media don't care, comparatively.
Case in point - Newington, CT - a Hartford suburb of 30K or so, had a fb team that did very well. The coach there was friends with the coach at North Ft Myers, FL - a pretty good team in THEIR area. The coaches agreed that the Newington kids would come down as a team for a joint spring practice. The Newington kids got hammered, but learned what it took to be that good. They went back home and did what NFM did. They won the state championship the next 2 years. The town shrugged, the state shrugged and things returned to the way they were.
That's NE football. Occasionally, a 5 star appears, but only because of natural ability, not because of development, and usually they're "not from around here." NJ has some pretty good programs.
