Apologies for the lack of posting today. Real life, meetings, things not requiring an intricate knowledge of the Hayden Fry coaching tree…you understand, no?

One thing, though, to tide you over.

–Brian capped off our lengthy discussion on recruiting and scholarship offers in fine form a few days ago on MGoBlog. The discrepancy between Big Ten schools and SEC schools isn’t as huge as previously thought, but it’s there: that’s a given all parties in the discussion accept. (All parties being Brian and us.) But SEC schools consistently offer more scholarships than they have room for, and we think there’s a really, really simpul e-z ansur to this qwestshun.

One important factor left out of the discussion is the Cletus factor: the Southeastern United States is, to put it kindly, the largest contiguous group of “school-hostile” states in the nation. Put less kindly: we don’t educate our children, and they fail academically. Don’t believe me, believe my lawyaz at the United States Chamber of Commerce:

Don’t gloat either, Texas. That shining paragon of mediocrity in the dumb belt gets failing grades for truthiness in grade reporting, meaning they may look better, but only because they’re making it up. Take a place that’s offering more letters of intent than it has scholarships, and we will show you a Cletus state with a football team.

In fact, there seems to be a pretty solid correlation between college football fan intensity and lack of academic performance. Not a one-to-one, mind you, but damn close if you’re peeking hard enough. Ironically enough, to be a fan of college football, it helps if your chances at actually attending college are lower than the national average. We so wish this weren’t true, but that’s not the sport we’re talking about if we want to discuss the intersection of sport and high academic achievement.

From the looks of this map, that would be lacrosse.