This interactive map of where current FBS coaches were born is full of surprises
Youngstown, Ohio gets a lot of credit in the coaching community as the birthplace of a number of quality college head football coaches, including the Stoops brothers.
Thanks to an interactive map from Hero Sports that details the birth places of all 130 FBS head coaches, we can now see some of the other hotbeds of college football's leaders, and there are also some surprises to be found, like:
- Among the most well represented states are Texas (13), California (10), Ohio (10) and Pennsylvania (6),
- 3 current head coaches hail from Madison, WI (Paul Chryst - Wisconsin, Jay Norvell - Nevada and Rod Carey - Northern Illinois)
- The Dallas-Fort Worth area is also ripe with coaching talent, including Memphis' Mike Norvell, Tulsa's Philip Montgomery, Rice's David Bailiff, Arizona State's Todd Graham, Kansas' David Beaty, Gus Malzahn of Auburn, and SMU's Chad Morris
- Only 10 cities produced multiple coaches
- Boston's 1 coach represented (Brian Kelly of Notre Dame) is the same as the entire state of Maine (Old Dominion's Bobby Wilder).
- Washington, Nevada, New Mexico, Wyoming, Colorado, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire are all among states without a representative this year
- Hawaii stakes claim to two coaches (Syracuse's Dino Babers and Navy's Ken Niumatalolo), which is more than Tennessee (1 - New Mexico State's Doug Martin), and one less than Mississippi (Southern Miss' Jay Hopson, Louisiana Lafayette's Mark Hudspeth and Ole Miss' Hugh Freeze)
- Florida is the hometown of just 3 FBS head coaches - Mike MacIntyre of Colorado, Willie Taggart of Oregon, and Clay Helton of USC
- Together, Idaho - 2 (Bryan Harsin of Boise State and Mike Riley's Nebraska) - and Montana - 3 (Paul Petrino of Idaho, Jim McElwain of Florida, and Bobby Petrino of Louisville) - have 5 coaches represented
- The Chicagoland area is also a hot area, with Pat Fitzgerald of Northwestern, Chuck Martin of Miami (OH), Rich Rod of Arizona, Tim Lester of Western Michigan, and PJ Fleck of Minnesota all being represented.
- One coach's hometown you'll have to zoom out quite a bit to see is BYU's Kalani Sitake, who hails from Nuku'alofa, Tonga (located east of Australia).
Take a look at the interactive map below for yourself. Lots of interesting nuggets to be found.
