As the 2019 college football recruiting class’ Early Signing Period wraps, let’s take a look at where the blue chips (four- and five-star recruits) ended up. The 247Sports Composite rankings currently have 380 players rated as blue chip recruits.
Early Signing Day 2019’s blue chip signings, mapped
With most of 2019’s recruiting class signed, let’s take a visual look at who landed elite talent.
We decided to map these recruits and the schools they have committed to. In this map, the distance from each recruit’s hometown (as listed by 247) to the geometric center of each county is measured, and then the county is given to the team which the closest recruit has committed to.
If multiple recruits are from the same town, the town belongs to the highest rated recruit. The gray territories without a logo belong to players who have not committed to a team yet.
The map shows areas with a high density of talent.
- Atlanta: With nearly every county surrounding Atlanta going to a different team, it can easily be seen that Atlanta is a prime battlefield for many of the biggest teams in college football.
- Central Texas: High school football in Texas is known around the country as some of the best, and with 5 Power 5 teams in the state, it is no surprise to see plenty of teams focused on recruiting in the populous parts of the Lone Star State.
- Florida: Miami, Florida, and Florida State all want a piece at their hotbed of recruits, and they collectively did a pretty good job of keeping the country’s biggest collection of talent in state, despite lacking impressive overall class rankings.
- California is almost solely responsible for producing recruits for the Pac-12, and that can be seen with the large number of teams trying to take recruits from the state.
While most of the map is dominated by blue bloods, some up and comers find their place.
- The Midwest is full of teams who historically haven’t been great, but have promising futures with their current head coaches. Kentucky, Virginia, Iowa State, and Purdue are all coming off some of the best season in their recent histories and will hope that their Midwestern recruits will help them continue forward.
- Boise State is the only Group of 5 school to pick up a Composite blue chip recruit this season and find its way onto this map. The Bronco’s are putting together one of the best recruiting classes by a G5 school ever.
Typically, recruits either stay close to home or go to a top 15 team.
- Notre Dame, Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Michigan, Clemson, Penn State, Georgia, LSU, and Ohio State are the only schools that appear to be able to recruit players from outside their part of the country. Also, they are almost all in New Year’s 6 games (Penn State finished just shy in the committee’s rankings). Players want to play for good teams, who knew?
- Stanford is the only team that breaks this mold. This is probably due to its status as both an elite school academically as well as athletically. The Cardinal are known to be one of the country’s choosiest recruiters. They also have some of California’s best scenery working for them, so that can’t hurt.
We will update this map once again after National Signing Day, so be sure to be on the lookout around February 6th.
