Blog...Is the SEC Faster?

Speed. Every coach wants it, every great player has it, and every fan loves to watch it. But who has more of it? Is one conference really faster than the others? Milam tries to settle the debate once and for all: Is the SEC Faster?

By Chris Milam, send in your questions for Milam's First Monthly Mailbag!

I know what you're thinking.

If you're an SEC fan, you just thought, "Yes, Milam, the SEC is faster. The SEC is the fastest and the best, and its linebackers breathe fire. Case closed. Let's get some lunch."

If you're a Big Ten fan, you're thinking, "Great, Milam. Here it comes. Another guy from down South calling our athletes slow and un-athletic. This is a regional bias, and a myth, and it's tiresome. Case closed. Let's get some lunch."

If you're a Pac 10 fan, you're thinking, "Everyone in the Pac 10 is fast. Everyone knows that. Why does this debate only cover the guys out east? Everyone's got fast players. Case closed. Let's get some lunch."

If you're a Big 12 or a Big East or a Big, Little, or Mid-Major fan, you're thinking...well, you get the picture.

The topic of the SEC's speed remains one of college football's most persistent and divisive debates. The problem isn't the fact that the debate exists, it's that most sports writers have framed the debate in the wrong way: "SEC Speed Defeats Big Ten Size," or "Fast Beats Big...Again." These columns leave only polarizing sound bites that validate or aggravate either side. They spark message board shouting matches, but don't look at game film, or history, or (here comes the f-word)...facts.

However, if there's a nationwide sense of a speed discrepancy, there's probably a reason for it; if everyone's talking about it, there's probably something there. So, what gives? Is the SEC faster? And is there any definitive way to prove it?

First, one might point to the tradition of fast athletes in the SEC. For example, the conference has long-dominated the list of American sprinters, with 2008 being no exception: half of the quarter-finalists at the Olympic sprint trials were from the SEC, including world champion Tyson Gay (Arkansas) and excluding former champ Justin Gatlin (UT). Sixteen of the twenty-three are originally from SEC country. Also, three of the top sprinters have actually played on SEC football rosters (Trindon Holliday and Xavier Carter at LSU, Jeff Demps at Florida).

Simply put, there have always been a lot of fast people in SEC country. That's no secret. But fair's fair, and most of these runners aren't football players, so this alone doesn't necessarily mean anything in our football debate.

Second, one might point to conference-to-league matriculation as proof of the SEC's speed superiority. No other conference has sent more players to the NFL than the SEC. In 2007, the league led all conferences with 263 players on opening day NFL rosters. The ACC was second with 238, interesting since ACC schools share recruiting bases with SEC teams across the Southeast. The SEC also led in NFL matriculation in 2006 and 2005, indicating an overall trend. College-to-league matriculation largely depends on speed and quickness (especially at the line positions), but this doesn't necessarily mean that all SEC alumns in the NFL are faster than their teammates from elsewhere.

Also, to be fair, the two programs with the greatest NFL matriculation are Miami (46 players) and Ohio State (44). Neither are SEC schools.

Third, one could point to the unique culture of speed that's so much a part of athletic communities in SEC country. While there are certainly fast people from everywhere, this story could only take place in the Glades region of Florida, a mecca of elite football and basketball talent.

(Side note: If you do nothing else today, click that link and read "The Chase." It's one of the best sports columns I've read in the last few years.)

Florida alone has such a rich and unique heritage with speed that it has single-handedly supplied the bulk of players for Miami, Florida State, and Florida, not to mention many of the top play-makers for programs elsewhere. Ohio State looks to Florida often for its fastest skill players, with Michael Jenkins, Santonio Holmes, and Chris Gamble the most-recent examples. Add in Noel Devine at West Virginia, Keith Rivers and Mike Williams at USC, and countless others, and it's clear that Florida's speedy exports are hot commodities to the country's top programs. Also, the rest of USC's skill players hail from SEC recruiting bases (Joe McKnight from Louisiana, Vidal Hazelton from Virginia, and Patrick Turner from Tennessee). The list goes on...

While there's clearly a trend there, it's not conclusive. Certainly fast players at the skill positions come from elsewhere, if not necessarily in the same per capita volume.

It may be fruitless and inconclusive to compare the league's speed across the board, but can we point to one position and say definitively, "yes, SEC teams are generally faster there, and it greatly affects the outcome of non-conference games"?

Let's start with the 2006 and 2007 national championship games, in which two SEC teams won largely off the success of their line-play. In those two games (and dozens of other non-conference match-ups), the single most-visible example of the SEC's speed has been the prominence of fast defensive linemen.

To be clear, this is a specific type of athlete I'm talking about: the mammoth D-lineman with the size of an offensive tackle, but the freakish speed of a middle linebacker. It's specifically this type of hybrid athlete that so clearly affected the last two national championships (Jarvis Moss and Derrick Harvey for Florida, Glenn Dorsey, Tyson Jackson, and Ricky Jean-Francois for LSU).

This goes even back further. UT's 1998 team dominated the lines with Shaun Ellis and Will Overstreet. And, of course, there's the 1992 Crimson Tide with the all-timer duo of John Copeland and Eric Curry.

Here is my hypothesis: more than any other conference, the SEC produces a disproportionate number of super-fast defensive linemen. Some guys are big, and some guys are fast, but the SEC has more speed among its bigger players. And it's this isolated difference that has contributed to the league's success over the years.

To test my hypothesis--and recognizing that the NFL is the nexus of the fastest, most-skilled, and most-athletic D-linemen--I looked at the roster of every NFL team, charting the number of players from every conference, every school, and every state of birth.

As noted, I included players who played at SEC schools, and I also accounted for the rare players from SEC schools who are actually from outside "SEC country" (e.g., Florida alum Jarvis Moss is originally from Texas).

One final note (and this is important): I include some stats regarding players from "SEC country" as a whole, not just SEC schools. For example, North Carolina is as much an SEC recruiting base as anywhere, providing a pipeline to UT, South Carolina, and Georgia (to name just a few). So, Julius Peppers (from NC) is from what I've called "SEC country," even though he attended North Carolina in the ACC. The same goes for Virginia, constantly supplying fast play-makers to SEC programs, like Percy Harvin at Florida.

After scouring every NFL roster, here's what I found:

There are 404 defensive linemen on NFL rosters through June 2008. Of them...
80 are from the SEC (19.8%, or one in 5)
38 are from the Big 12
36 are from the Pac 10
34 are from the Big 10

The SEC produces more than double the defensive line talent of the next-closest conference.

Also, if you include linemen from what I've labeled "SEC country," the numbers get more lopsided:
SEC country accounts for 37.3% of NFL defensive linemen. Also, only three teams don't have a single SEC player on their defensive-line roster.

(Side note: Props to Utah and BYU for sending surprisingly high number of defensive lineman to the league. There's some Hawaii-to-Utah pipeline that I never knew existed and, frankly, still don't understand. Kudos to them.)

My next hypothesis: the more elite the lineman, the higher the likelihood they were from SEC country.

Looking at the number of defensive line starters in the NFL...
29 of the 117 are from the SEC (24.8%). Again, this number is nearly double that of the other conferences.
Also, 45 of the 117 starters are from SEC Country (38.5%).

(Note: These numbers don't necessarily include the 2008 draft class, which have not been added to any team's depth chart yet. For example, this leaves out Glenn Dorsey, Derrick Harvey, etc.)

Perhaps the most amazing statistic of all: only three NFL teams don't have a player from either the SEC or SEC country on their starting defensive line. That's three out of thirty-two.

Still climbing up, I looked at the Pro Bowl rosters from 2005-2008. Of the 59 defensive linemen, 25 are either from the SEC or SEC country. That's 42.4% of the game's best, nearly half in all.

Finally, twenty-six defensive linemen have been inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame. Eleven of them (42.3%) are from either the SEC or its recruiting base.

Now, does this mean that every SEC player is faster than every Big Ten player? Not at all. Does it mean that SEC country produces better athletes than the rest of the nation? Of course not. But it does show--pretty conclusively--that there is a speed difference at this particular position. The last two national championship games alluded to this, in which the speed of one line overwhelmed the other and completely disrupted its game plan. Turns out the evidence supports it.

The fact is, every conference has its hallmarks of talent development and coaching style. The Pac-10 is known for wide open, high octane offenses, so its programs recruit and develop talent that can spread the field on offense. The Big Ten has traditionally valued smash-mouth running games, so big, tough offensive linemen like Joe Thomas have always been plentiful and in high demand. And in the SEC, coaches value (perhaps more than anything) game-breaking speed on defense, swarming to the ball and making big plays. So, it's no coincidence that the SEC's defensive linemen are affecting national championship games with their disproportionate speed in the trenches.

So...is the SEC faster? Maybe, maybe not. But its defensive linemen are, by an overwhelming average, faster than those in other conferences.

Now, does this spill over into the other positions? Does this give the SEC the advantage in all future match-ups? Does this make one conference superior to all the others? And how to prove it?

Yikes. Case closed for now. Let's get some lunch.

Agree? Disagree? Give me a shout, or discuss on the Scout Forums.

Either way, check back this Wednesday for the First Edition of Milam's Monthly Mailbag! Send in questions about any and everything, and I'll be sure to answer them!

Is the SEC Faster? July 18
46 Reasons to Love SEC Football (Part Three), July 7
46 Reasons to Love SEC Football (Part Two), July 3
46 Reasons to Love SEC Football (Part One), July 1