Not to go there. He was paid so the agent could represent him once he went pro. That aside, I agree with you that one of the biggest reasons why the SEC is so dominate is the same reason why Texas is so good (usually). HS football is waaaaaaaaaaaay bigger than all other sports. Growing up in Portland I can't think of 1 person who played any sort of youth football. This excludes the suburbs, I know they have youth leagues. Hell, even the best football player to come out of Portland in the past few years, Suh, played soccer until at least middle school.
Yeah, it's a whole different scene down in the southeast. I grew up in it, and while I didn't play football until junior high, it was because I was only interested in basketball growing up. By the time I joined the team though, most of the kids at my junior high had been playing since childhood. Hell, the pee-wee football leagues down here have cheerleaders. I know because my little sister was a cheerleader since she was a little kid, and when I used to go to support her at her games, I saw pee-wee kids being treated by their parents and coaches like they were NFL players. They were very demanding of such young kids playing a contact support.
I just glanced over the LSU roster, and upon that quick glance, I counted only 5 players on the entire roster not from the southeast, two of which were Australian kickers, and there was only one player (Ware) having a real impact on their current team. As far as the kids from the southeast that were from the home state of Louisiana, it seemed like if someone crunched the numbers, you'd see at least 90%, if not more, from the state of Louisiana.
Then I went over to Oregon's roster, and noticed that the roster seemed 25% Oregon, 50% Texas/California, and 25% other.
So does the SEC really "cheat," or is football just more apart of the southeastern culture? From what I've seen, growing up in the southeast, it's the latter.
(And for the record, I'm not an SEC fan. I actively root against them, and now that all of my teams are out of the race, I'm hoping that either Oregon, Notre Dame, K-State, or any other non-SEC team can win a title for parody's sake. So I'm not biased in my opinions... just calling it how I see it.)
