EDITOR’S NOTE: In an 11-part series, Saturday Down South contributor Gary Laney looks at the states in the SEC and what areas in those states produce the most players, per capita. The method was to count players who have earned at least a four-star rating from 247Sports’ composite rankings, because that ranking takes into account the rankings of all the recruiting services. We then calculate how many of these blue chip recruits each metro area has produced per capita over a five-year period from 2012-16. At the end, we’ll rank the 10 biggest hotbeds in SEC country in per capita player production.

Metro New Orleans was never supposed to recover from Hurricane Katrina.

In some ways, it’s not all the way back. In other ways, it’s better than ever.

Take high school football player production. With 11 players rated four-stars or better in the 2016 recruiting class, New Orleans metro was a gold mine of talent for college coaches, many of whom come down to the bayou to try to steal a player or two away from Les Miles.

None do this quite as well as Nick Saban, who, of course, recruited Louisiana well as the Tigers’ head coach before bolting to the NFL, then Bama. The Tide has taken at least one of the state’s top five recruits in each of the last five recruiting cycles.

Other than that, Miles and company usually get the pick of the litter in a talent-rich state that annually produces more NFL players than any other state.

How does it break down? Here are the numbers:

Note: sorted by per capita production (the “Rural/other” category was left for last):

METRO AREA SIZE PER CAPITA 5 STARS 4 STARS
Monroe 176,411 1/22,000 2 6
Hammond 121,000 1/24,200 0 5
New Orleans 1,190,000 1/36,000 5 28
Lake Charles 199,607 1/49,900 0 4
Shreveport 391,500 1/65,520 1 5
Baton Rouge 787,000 1/71,500 0 11
Lafayette 490,000 1/163,333 0 3
Houma 209,000 0 0 0
Alexandria 154,000 0 0 0
Rural/other 1,150,000 1/230,000 0 5

Three things to know

  1. “Funroe” = Football factory: Most know Monroe as a home of a Sun Belt Conference school that struggles to compete in the FBS, but in Louisiana, the small North Louisiana metro area is known for producing great high school teams and prospects. With players like former five-star offensive lineman Cam Robinson at Alabama and 2016 five-star defensive tackle Rashard Lawrence at LSU, Monroe is continuing its tradition as, arguably, the best pound-for-pound football town in the state.
  2. Don’t forget NOLA: Among the bigger cities, New Orleans is one of the country’s most efficient producers of talent, with per capita production of elite recruits that exceeds Atlanta (1/65,500) and Miami (1/78,000) over the last five years. The Crescent City has put out at least one five-star player in each of the last three years, led by Heisman Trophy contender Leonard Fournette, who hails from New Orleans’ St. Augustine High.
  3. Les lands a lot: For LSU, there is no Auburn to the Alabama or a Mississippi State to the Ole Miss, or even a Georgia Tech to the Georgia. The Tigers, unlike most SEC schools, are the lone Power 5 conference team in the state, and players have been pretty loyal. Of the state’s top 10 players over the last five recruiting cycles, 34 of those 50 total players chose to stay home and play for the Tigers. When LSU loses one, it’s typically to Alabama — see Robinson and Landon Collins for examples of impact players out of Louisiana who have done well in Tuscaloosa — but few other programs can make a dent in the Bayou State until LSU gets what it wants first.

Program to Know

While John Curtis Christian in the New Orleans suburb of River Ridge consistently puts out nationally ranked state title contenders, LSU’s on-campus prep school, University Lab, has been putting out more high-end prospects lately. The Cubs have sent Tim Williams to Alabama, Nick Brossette and Garrett Brumfield to LSU, and they had the nation’s top 2017 player, Dylan Moses, before he departed to IMG Academy for his senior year.