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For The SEC Football Fan During The Offseason By R.C. I'm an NFL draft guy. I love reading the mock drafts, combine results, potential sleepers/risers; everything. So, as you can imagine, this time of year keeps me almost as busy as the actually season. As I was preparing to write on the upcoming draft, my mind began to wander. So, before I get to this year's draft (besides it's going to take a few days to digest all the combine results), let's look at something else that's dear to my heart. That something would be none other than SEC football. You'll never convince me that there is a better conference in all of college football. Besides the best athletes in the country, but it's also the site of the biggest parties every Saturday afternoon and night. There is nothing like taking a stroll along  A good way to see the incredible talent present in the SEC is to look at the number of NFL draft picks annually. And, the results are staggering. There have been 313 players selected in the first round of the last ten drafts. Of these, 63 of them played for a school residing in the SEC. That's an astounding 20.0% of all first round draft picks. Keep in mind that only 12 of the 119 division 1-A schools are in the SEC, yet the conference still produces 20% of all first-round draft picks! While that in itself is enough to prove the conference's toughness, this can be taken a lot farther. To get an idea at the insane depth the SEC possesses, let's look at all first-day draft picks (first through third rounds). Looking at the second round, there have also been 313 total picks in the last ten drafts, with 65 of those chosen being SEC players (which is remarkably similar to the number of first round picks). The total number of SEC players taken in this round equates to about 21%. On to the third and last round of the first day, the SEC slips off a bit, but the results are still impressive nonetheless. The last ten drafts saw 16% of all third round picks come from the SEC (54 of 335 total picks). As you can see, the SEC basically provides 20% of all first day picks for the NFL. Now, let's look at it a different way. There are 12 teams in the SEC, each of which obviously has 22 starters for every game. This equates to 264 starting football players in the SEC. Now, if we take the yearly average of first-day draft picks from the SEC we get 18.2 players drafted per year. Since we obviously can't have .2 of a player, we'll round to 18. Using these numbers we can see that around 7 % of SEC starters will be first-day draft picks in that year (18/264 = 6.8%). That's impressive in itself. But what we have to realize is that those are only the players that will be drafted following the current season. We haven't even considered all the underclassmen (and seniors that did not declare for the draft early) that will be drafted. For simple math (and so this writer doesn't have to do any more research), we'll simply assume every player that gets drafted from the SEC leaves school a year early (obviously this isn't the case; don't worry, it doesn't inflate the numbers in a material way – it actually makes the numbers not as impressive for the SEC). Anyway, on average 18 players get drafted yearly, so that's at least 54 total first-day picks that will be playing in the SEC at any given time. That means that at least 20% of all SEC starters at a given time will one day be first-day picks (the fact that the 20% number keeps popping up is simply coincidental, they do not relate in any way). If that doesn't sell you on the absolute brute strength of the SEC, nothing ever will. I could go even farther and take it through the seventh round, but I think my point has been proven. Oh, and by the way, the SEC is showing no signs of slowing down. Many mock drafts have as many as 10-11 players being drafted in the first round of the upcoming draft. (Looking even further down the road, the SEC signed 34 of the top 100 2007 recruits in the country so don’t expect a drop off.) Now that the combine is winding down, in the next few days I'll be writing to let you know the winners and losers of the combine; who could be the biggest surprises, and who are the biggest sleepers of this years draft. There are some very interesting story lines in this year's draft, and next time I assure you I'll be off the soap box. ROUND 1 Year: SEC Players/Total Picks in Round 1997: 4/30 1998: 10/30 1999: 8/31 2000: 6/31 2001: 5/31 2002: 6/32 2003: 4/32 2004: 6/32 2005: 10/32 2006: 4/32 63 SEC players Selected 313 Total First Round Picks (1997-2006) 20% of players selected in last ten years drafts from SEC ROUND 2 Year: SEC Players/Total Picks in Round 2006: 6/32 2005: 5/32 2004: 9/32 2003: 5/32 2002: 5/33 2001: 8/31 2000: 11/31 1999: 9/30 1998: 5/31 1997: 2/30 65 SEC players Selected 314 Total Second Round Picks (1997-2006) 20.7% of players selected in last ten years drafts from SEC ROUND 3 Year: SEC Players/Total Picks in Round 1997: 4/36 1998: 6/31 1999: 6/34 2000: 4/32 2001: 7/33 2002: 9/33 2003: 4/33 2004: 5/33 2005: 5/37 2006: 4/33 54 SEC Players Selected 335 Total Third Round Picks (1997-2006) 16% of players selected in last ten years drafts from SEC  February 28, 2007 |
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Be Careful What You Wish For
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Jumpology: My Bracket Jumpology: Scouting The Heavyweights Jumpology: Reviewing The Bracket
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