So yesterday I was scrolling through football highlights and this random question popped into my head: which state actually cranks out the most NFL players? Seriously, no clue. Figured it should be fun to dig up the answer myself instead of just guessing. Grabbed my laptop, opened Google, and typed in “what state has the most NFL players 2023”. Hit enter, expecting some clean data list. Boy, was I wrong.
The Google Search Disaster
Tons of links popped up, but most were either older than my grandma’s recipes or articles talking about something totally different, like college recruiting. Clicked the first three. One was paywalled. The second showed rankings from like 2016 – useless. The third started rambling about high school football culture. Felt like hitting a brick wall. Closed Google, frustrated.
Time to get serious. Remembered ESPN’s site has a ton of stats. Headed over there and navigated to the NFL player section. Found this giant table listing every active player. Jackpot! Scrolled down the page… and realized they don’t have a simple “filter by state” button. Great. I’d have to do this the hard way.
Manual Slogging Begins
Opened a blank spreadsheet. Created three columns: Player Name, Team, and Hometown State. Started at the top of ESPN’s list. Player one: Joe Smith, New York Jets, born in Miami, Florida. Typed “Florida” into the State column. Player two: Mike Johnson, Dallas Cowboys, born in Austin, Texas. Typed “Texas”. Player three…
This was gonna take forever. Made myself a huge cup of coffee. Clicked, scrolled, typed. Clicked, scrolled, typed. For an entire hour. My eyes started glazing over halfway through. Seriously considered giving up, but stubbornness kicked in. Pushed through. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, I reached the last player. Victory!
Time to count. Selected the whole State column in my spreadsheet. Hit the “Sort A to Z” button. This grouped all the same states together. Then, I just needed to count the rows for each state chunk. Started tallying.
The Final Tally (And Some Surprises)
The clear winner? Florida. Counted a whopping 228 players listing Florida hometowns. Texas was close behind with 215. California? Yeah, third place with 197. Honestly surprised Texas wasn’t number one, felt like every other player I saw was from there. Georgia and Ohio popped up a lot too, but way behind these three.
Here’s the clear top 3:
- Florida: 228 Players
- Texas: 215 Players
- California: 197 Players
Double-checked my spreadsheet counts against a couple of smaller sports blogs’ mentions – seemed legit enough for my curiosity. Honestly? Thought Texas would take it. Shows you what assumptions get you.
Parting Thoughts
Moral of the story? Sometimes the answer isn’t where you think it is. Took way longer than expected, mostly because the big sports sites love making simple data hard to find. Felt good figuring it out myself though, even if my method was dumb as rocks. Maybe next time I’ll just ask someone smarter! Honestly, Florida, Texas, California… kinda makes sense looking at high school football craziness down there. Wild though.
