A running joke about Big 12 recruiters is that you can find more players in a six-block area in Dallas than most cities across the nation.
Those stories appear to be true, according to an innovative series developed by Tulsa World reporter Matt Baker.
Baker analyzed every FBS roster and checked for hometowns. His findings were interesting.
He found one in every 20 players on NCAA FBS rosters last season came from the DFW Metroplex. About one in seven FBS players came from Texas, including almost half of the Big 12.
Here's a look at how many Big 12 players came from an area and its percentage of the entire conference.
Baker did some innovative work crunching recruiting numbers in comparison with U.S. Census numbers. He found that the nation's most fertile recruiting area in terms of recruits per capita is Honolulu, which produced 4.6 FBS recruits per 1,000 boys aged 15 through 19. That number is 41.97 percent more than the second-place finisher of New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, La.
The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington area ranks fifth on that list, the only Big 12 metropolitan area ranked that high. But the old Bob Stoops-Bo Pelini stomping ground of the Youngstown, Ohio, metropolitan area ranks seventh and is the only non-Sun Belt area represented in the per capita top 10.
It's an interesting piece of work where each conference and its recruiting areas are analyzed. Get a second cup of coffee and check out these numbers and some of his findings.