(01-13-2021 03:48 PM)JRsec Wrote:  If you really want to see where the power is consolidated then confine the champions to the States of Alabama, South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana and drop the conference affiliation. What you are witnessing very clearly is a consolidation of football strength in a very small region of the country, but one in which high school football is still a religion. What this represents is quantitative proof that it not only is becoming a regional sport, but has become a regional sport.

Now if you look at the whole BCS / CFP era you can see that there is still strength in the states of Oklahoma and Texas and that Ohio is still strong as well, but with minor exceptions not enough to overcome schools located in the Deep Southeast. This isn't a statement of SEC superiority, but rather a very clear picture of the power centers of the game and they are far from nationwide.

I think you're on to something: the areas where high school football is "religion" are the places where great college programs are.

High school football is a religion really in only a few places: the Deep South, much of Texas & Oklahoma, and much of Ohio. And it's in a severe decline in the Northeast & the West Coast.

This explains why the strongest programs North of the Mason-Dixon line in recent years (Ohio State, Notre Dame, Wisconsin, Cincinnati) are in Ohio or don't recruit much locally. It explains the decline of programs like Syracuse, Boston College, Penn State, and the original PAC-8.