The City of Miami welcomes you...to bow before its NFL supremacy.
That's according to amateur body USA Football -- not, obviously, the Dolphins -- who released some stats this week concerning the provenance of NFL players. As usual, no place grows NFL talent like Miami (where they're grown properly, like Seamonkeys).
Carol City Senior High came in tied for second behind Maryland's DeMatha Catholic, with five players currently in the league: Santana Moss ('97, Redskins), Sinorice Moss ('02, Giants), Kenny Phillips ('04, Giants), Ricky Jean-Francoise ('04, Niners), and Rashad Jeanty ('01, Bengals).
(The New Times notes that since Carol City also lost six students in a single class to homicide, it's nice that at least they don't suck at football. No arguments here.)
Santana Moss credits recently retired Chiefs coach Walt Frazier for his and the program's success:
[Carol City] had a lot of great athletes, but he was able to instill discipline in us, which allowed us to play at any level...He made sure we were in school. Actually, he made us come to school early to watch film so we were there even before the school day started. It is a place that is blessed with athletic talent, kids who are willing to sacrifice, a community that supports the program and good people at the top.
Carol City, though, is just one cog in the Friday night wheel that runs the pipeline out of Dade County: the City of Miami is the no. 1-ranked NFL hometown, with a whopping 31 professional players hailing from its limits.
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Houston is a distant second with 23, followed by Detroit with 15 and Dallas with 12.
That puts the state of Florida and its 176 players in the no. 3 spot overall behind California and Texas. And if the study considered colleges, it would find the University of Miami is tied with LSU at the top of the college heap with 41 players each in the NFL.
That's a lot of win for the MIA. Now if we could figure out how to feed those prospects directly into aqua and orange uniforms, we'd really have something here.
