I won't agree that MN football is offering as much opportunity for youths as the south. It isn't even close.
I graduated from a MN high school and have since lived in the FL and volunteered for two youth leagues while I was down there. Didn't live in big communities (30k or so) but they had 300 kids from 10-12 playing in this league split between 4 b teams and 4 A travelling teams. It was insane. The coordinator of the program was the local high school coach and the team coaches were military guys getting their merit badges for community service (not really called that, but basically what it is) and all the high school players were Asst coaches and such.
They played a game every Sat all summer and practiced 4 times per week for 2 hours.
They had a similar program for 12-14 year olds.
The high school and junior highs had spring practice and spring games, camps all summer long in addition to captains practice and fall camp. Plus they could have their conditioning & weight training coach in direct contact all summer long.
We don't have this in MN...not on this scale. And this is one rural community with 30,000 residents. We have this kind of opportunity for hockey and basketball, but not football. That is why we have so many more D-1 hockey and basketball players coming out of this state even though more kids play football than those two sports combined.
I have lived in Texas now for nearly 10 years, in a city of slightly over 100,000 (about the same size as Duluth, where I grew up). I continue to be stunned by how massively popular football is here. To note:
*My son played on a youth football team for several years. There are
two youth FB leagues here in town, each with 6-8 teams. The team on which my son played had 3 divisions (7-8 year olds, 9-10 year olds, 11-12 year olds), each with 40-50 kids. So, that was 120-150 kids
just on our one team, and there were 11-15 other teams in town! Coaching was excellent. Many ex-college players who now have kids. They practiced 2 hrs. per day, 5 days a week, from mid-August until early December, when they played their "Super Bowl." After that, he played on a travel team, which brought the best players from the town together for another month of practice and travel. Gave the top 25 or so players in the town more opportunity to practice and play. Games regularly drew 100-200 fans.
*He is now in middle school. His 7th grade team has 3 levels (A, B, & C), each with 30-40 boys. The town has 5 middle schools, each I'd guess has about the same level of participation. Each team plays a full schedule of 9 games. Average attendance in the stands I'd guess is around 200-300, even for the C & B team games! These are also paying fans ($2-$5 entrance fee, depending on the stadium)!
*One of our local HS teams won the Texas 5AAAAA championship a few years ago. (We have two 5AAAAA teams and one 3AAA team in town.) This team has a system whereby they have their HS coaches scouting the middle school kids. Middle school coaches feed the HS coaches info, mostly on "skill" position players. HS coaches regularly make circuitous contact with these kids, letting them know expectations ("Here's what it will take for you to play at the next level") and without technically requiring it, setting up a system and culture where kids know the type of work they will have to do to advance and play in HS.
The HS coach makes it clear that these are not suggestions, but "what it will take" to play in his system in HS. For the QBs, the MS coaches in town each send up two names in 7th grade, whom the HS head coach contacts and give a "QB manual", which includes a detailed training regimen, a scaled down playbook (they are to memorize this), and the HS practices and summer 7-on-7 tournaments that this budding young QB is expected to "observe" in person, thus soaking up the HS FB culture. By the time a young QB is a freshman, he has already "participated" in two years of the culture of this HS football program. I'm not lauding this but simply describing it to illustrate how insanely serious this whole thing is.
*As GopherinPhilly noted, our program too has off-season captain practices (completely scripted by the coaches), summer camps, summer 7-on-7, and a summer weight/conditioning program which is
twice a day during the entire summer!
*This Friday is our big rivalry game. We will have just under 20,000 ('cause that's all the stadium can seat!) for the game. On TV each Friday night, we have several extended 1 hr. HS football shows with interviews, scores, etc.
I grew up in a pretty serious hockey culture but it didn't rival what I've seen here with football. Each year our small town will produce on average 2-3 D-I players (this year, one player committed to Texas, one to BYU, one to Texas Tech), and a hand full of DII and DIII players. It comes down to a fanatical fan base, a very supportive culture, and a system that is intense and integrated, starting with 7 year old youth football. Really is amazing.
