Mississippi State’s Roster is the Most Localized in the SEC

Dan Mullen has always made an effort to do an impeccable job of recruiting talent locally, and for the most part, he’s done just that. Jake Sharpless of Rukkus sent me an email earlier today where he mapped out exactly where each player in all of college football came from and then calculated the average distance that they had to travel to get to their university.

As it turns out, Mississippi State is the 3rd most localized football team in the nation. The average distance that a player for MSU travels from their hometown to Starkville is 170.67 miles. The Bulldogs were beat out by only Louisiana Tech and University of South Florida.

In Mississippi, the Bulldogs do have to compete with a variety of other nearby programs for local talent, that is well known, but it appears that overall Mississippi State is doing a pretty damn good job at keeping Mississippi talent in the Magnolia State.

And here’s where all of Mississippi State’s players are coming from:

Hats off to you, Rukkus, for developing such interesting maps. As a cartography nerd, these were pretty interesting to take a look at.

You can view the original article from Rukkus right here.