Hometown Buffet: Where are These Saints From?

OTAs have started this week. As is customary for me this time of the year, I threw on Aaliyah's "More Than A Woman" (because it's jammin) before having a bit of a dig on the origins of lots of the newer faces. This year, in the spirit of Aaliyah's "Are You That Somebody", I decided I would make a map of where these guys are from. So, I did.

And don't forget about Hawaii! We've got some kama'aina in Unger and Kikaha.

The following are some extra credit (and innocuous) descriptive statistics. Chortle at the geekitude herein, but when some Saints fan somewhere inevitably casually slides into a conversation that the Saints in fact have 2 players from the GLIAC (Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference) in Lelito and Joe Morgan, I will sense that something awesome and pedantic has occurred somewhere.

# of players by position

A most unlucky number of wide receivers and total linebackers: 13. And 9 CBs... And 16 OL. Not sure what the standard OTA breakdown is by position, but there's ample competition in these groups.

40 players on defense, 4 designated special teams, 46 on offense.

States

46% of players are from Texas (15), Florida (10), California (8), North Carolina (5), and Michigan (4).

Alaska, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming are not represented (36%)

Hometowns

Tavaris Barnes is from Jacksonville, FL, while Luke McCown is from Jacksonville, TX. Similarly, John Jenkins is from Meriden, CT, while Kasim Edebali is from Meriden, NH. Stanley Jean-Baptiste and Kenny Phillips are both from Miami, FL. Delvin Breaux and Keenan Lewis, both CBs, are from New Orleans. Bobby Richardson, Brodrick Bunkley, and Orson Charles, are all from Tampa.

All of our safeties are from either central or eastern daylight timezones!

39 payers attended college in the same state where they were born/raised (43%). Every player born/raised in Texas stayed in the Lone Star state for their collegiate ball - except for Brees.

Schools

5 players are from Georgia (Swann, Ellerbee, John Jenkins, Watson, Orson Charles), 3 players are from each of  Florida State (P.J. Williams, Dustin Hopkins, Bunkley), Clemson (Anthony, Tavaris Barnes, Spiller), Oregon State (Lewis, Browner, Cooks) and Virginia Tech (Andrew Miller, Nick Becton, Josh Morgan). Then there are a bunch of 2 school matches - Alabama, Purdue, Washington, Oregon, North Texas, Valdosta State etc.

School Nicknames & Conferences

10 Bulldogs, 5 Tigers (no LSU) and 3 each of Huskies, Hokies, Seminoles, Wildcats, Eagles, and Beavers.

17 players are from the SEC, with 13 from the ACC, 11 from the Pac 12 and 10 from the Big 10.

Takeaways

Good luck in OTAs, everyone. These stats will change dramatically once the final 53 is announced at which point I will attempt, likely in futility, to update this post with new stats and maybe some poorly guesstimated correlations! Also, here's the spreadsheet I made of the Saints roster demographics. Feel free to interpret/add to and program weird macros to the content of all of your various organs.

And, oh yea, before you engage in fierce dialog below as to the merits of conference in player quality or how there's a Notre Dame in  Indiana and a Notre Dame College (Falcons) in Cleveland (Golic and Gombrell - guards) -