Which SEC schools attract most out-of-state players?

Not all football states are created equal, especially not in the Southeastern United States.

Some SEC schools hail from states loaded with high school football talent, allowing those schools to focus most of their recruiting efforts on kids in their own backyard. Other programs are not as fortunate, forced to scour the rest of the country seeking out the nation’s top talents and convincing them to leave their home states to play for a school they might not have considered previously.

That dichotomy between the SEC’s strong football states and its weak ones can be seen is the makeup of the conference’s 14 teams. For instance, strong football states like Florida, Georgia and Texas each produced teams filled with 75 percent or more in-state recruits. States like Arkansas or Kentucky, on the other hand, do not produce as much football talent each year, and as a result more than two-thirds of their 2014 rosters were made up of out-of-state prospects.

Teams like Alabama and Auburn boasts more out-of-state recruits than many would expect in a strong football state like Alabama, but that is more due to the prominence of those programs and the propensity the nation’s top prospects have for leaving home if offered a spot on one of those teams.

Vanderbilt, on the other hand, collects mostly out-of-state recruits due to its lack of prominence and its inability to out-recruit in-state rival Tennessee in its own territory. Vanderbilt’s well-respected academics also help recruit talented student-athletes from across the country.

As far as total number of out-of-state players is concerned, no team has more of them than Auburn, which boasts 80 players from outside the state of Alabama. Texas A&M has the fewest out-of-state players, claiming just 22 on its 2014 roster.

In terms of percentages, Vanderbilt has the highest proportion of out-of-state players on its roster with more than 80 percent of this year’s team hailing from outside the state of Tennessee. The smallest proportion of out-of-state players belonged to Texas A&M.

Take a look at how each team’s roster broke down in 2014 as far as in-state and out-of-state prospects are concerned:

Ethan Levine

A former newspaper reporter who has roamed the southeastern United States for years covering football and eating way too many barbecue ribs, if there is such a thing.