Mode's Benn Stancil did the lord's work recently, taking ESPN college football players data for hometowns, matching those to counties using Google Maps' API and putting together a list of football teams ranked by geography.
The resulting interactive map shows where all of the roughly 25,000 Division-I college football players come from, sortable by position and school.
While most of the learnings are well-known (South Florida is a hotbed, most schools recruit locally), it's interesting to see that New York ends up being one of the better recruiting areas in the nation. So much for that narrative.
So without further ado, here is a map showing where all of the Syracuse Orange players come from...
As a frame of reference, here's what Boston College's map looks like...
As well as Pitt's...
Based on this, Syracuse is way more diverse in terms of locations than both Northeastern rivals. I don't know if that really means anything, but it's interesting nonetheless.
Here's what ACC pacesetter and National Champ FSU's map looks like...
It should be noted FSU has one of the least-diverse set of player hometowns in the nation (219th of 251). They're so good at recruiting locally, and the talent there is so good, they don't need to look elsewhere.
And here's the ACC as a whole...
Makes sense. Check out the full map here.