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.

Tennessee is a wide state, broad enough that to drive from Memphis in the southwest corner to Bristol in the northeast corner, you’d have to invest seven hours of your life and 500 miles of your car’s life.

Talk about a long reach.

But as far as football players, finding prospects in the Volunteer State is as simple as finding the airport at its two largest cities.

Greater Nashville and greater Memphis are two hotbeds in a state that is otherwise unremarkable. They are close to par with Baton Rouge and better at producing players than greater Birmingham, prospect-laden cities in states more noted for their player production.

But where Alabama gets help from its prospect-rich southern region (Mobile, Montgomery), Tennessee recruiting pretty much begins and ends with two metro areas. The pair produced 36 of the state’s 42 elite (four- or five-star) prospects in the last five years. No other metro area produced more than one.

Knoxville? Just one in an area of 700,000 folks. Chattanooga? Not one.

All in all, Tennessee is not a bad player-producing state. But the Vols have usually had to win with imported talent to supplement. Memphis, after all, is as much Ole Miss country (Oxford is in that Mid-City area) as it is Tennessee country.

How do the numbers break down? Let’s take a look:

Note: sorted by per capita production:

METRO AREA SIZE PER CAPITA 5 STARS 4 STARS
Nashville 1,600,000 1/72,727 1 21
Memphis 1,300,000 1/86,667 0 15
Cookeville* 106,000 1/106,000 0 1
Cleveland 114,000 1/114,000 0 1
Jackson 114,000 1/114,000 0 1
Clarksville 270,000 1/270,000 0 1
Knoxville 700,000 1/700,000 0 1
Chattanooga 525,000 0 0 0
Kingsport-Bristol@ 215,000 0 0 0
Johnson City 200,000 0 0 0
Morristown 138,000 0 0 0

*-The Cookeville area is considered a micropolitan area, but with a population that exceeds many metro areas, we decided to include it on the list.

@-The Kingsport-Bristol statistics include only the Tennessee side of the metro area and leaves out the Virginia area.

Three things to know

  1. Vols country?: Tennessee gets more top players in the state than any other school, but the Vols hardly dominate. They landed 14 of the 42 elite prospects, just a third. However, things have gotten better lately under Butch Jones. Although the Vols struggled some last year securing top in-state players, they got four of the top seven in 2015 and five of the top six in 2014.
  2. Let’s see the country: Where did the non-Vol recruits go? Ole Miss, with its proximity to Memphis, landed six, Vanderbilt five and even Georgia landed three. Tennessee kids have wanderlust with four-star or better prospects choosing 16 different schools between them.
  3. The rare gem: In the five-year span, the state produced just one five-star prospect, Florida State star cornerback Jalen Ramsey (now with the Jacksonville Jaguars), who prepped at Brentwood Academy outside of Nashville. Get to know that school’s name …

Program to know

Ramsey is one of five prospects with four stars or more to come out of Brentwood, one of the nation’s elite football factories, in the last five years. The perennial power sent offensive linemen Bryce Mathews and Ryan Johnson to Ole Miss and Tennessee, respectively, in 2016, defensive end Derek Barnett to Tennessee in 2014 and offensive guard Graham Shuler to Stanford in 2012.