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As always, the stuff that Bill C. does for SB Nation College Football over at the Mothership is excellent. His latest piece is one that is gaining a lot of traction today. It is an all-inclusive interactive map tracking where most players come from in terms of recruiting.
It is not a surprise, but South Florida, specifically Broward and Miami-Dade counties, produce a ton of talent. Where it gets interesting is when you break it down specifically for Purdue's roster. Currently, Miami-Dade County has the highest number of players on the roster (7) than any other county in the United States. Marion County in Indiana and Cook County in Illinois each have six players, but Purdue can thank Gary Bush, Carlos Carvajal, Andy James Garcia, Kevin Pamphile, Leroy Clark, Normondo Harris, and DaWan Hunte as the seven guy from Miami-Dade County on the 2013 roster. Gabe Holmes and Bilal Marshall are also from Broward County just north of Miami. Matt Burke, Cameron Posey, and Keith Byars II are just north of their from Palm Beach County, giving Purdue 12 of 85 scholarship players from "South Florida" this past season.
Another eight players hail from elsewhere in Florida, giving the Boilermakers 20 scholarship players from the Sunshine state compared to 28 from Indiana. Conversely, Purdue almost has no recruiting presence west of the Mississippi River, including the talent rich states of Texas (where much of Tiller's great teams came from) and California. Purdue only has six players from Texas, six from California, and just one other player from west of the Mississippi.
Bear in mind, This is the 2013 roster. There will be some changes with the 2014roster including at least two more players coming from Texas. I mostly found this map to be very interesting because it showed how centralized in two places Purdue recruiting is. We're getting the leftovers in a talent-rich state like Florida and mining heavily from a talent poor state like Indiana. Comparatively, Purdue has a very small presence in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, and California.
Feel free to play with the map, where you can see how Purdue stacks up in comparison to the rest of the Big Ten. It really explains why the Boilers were 1-11 this past year.