(note: this isn’t an article about if we should value football this much. I played HS football — played being a relative term and and some people wouldn’t call what I was doing football either, but I do like football and think it gives kids work ethic, builds character and confidence. I don’t personally think we should value it that much, but that’s a separate conversation).

The point is — we like football in Dallas and we want to be good at. Jamal Adams (one of those top picks from Lewisville) said this week:

if I had a perfect place to die, I would die on the field.

That’s how much we care about football. So if you’re a young player here and show a penchant for football talent, we will find you. And we will nurture that talent. If you have an ability to play football, it’s far better to be born in DFW than in London.

I learned about this concept at the Momentous Institute’s Changing the Odds conference a few years ago where Malcolm Gladwell talked about capitalization:

the rate at which a given community capitalizes on the human potential…what percentage of those who are capable of achieving something actually achieve it

In other words, how much raw potential does a society turn into actual talent? Canada has a very high capitalization rate with hockey. If you have even an inkling of talent in hockey there, Canada will find you and make you into the best player you can be. Kenya is the same for marathoning, but not very good for something like physics. There are probably a lot of people in Kenya that would make good physicists but the country is not very good at nurturing that talent.

Sports and Meritocracy

But if we take a closer look at capitalization rates…are we turning out as much talent as we could be?

In Outliers, Gladwell looked at hockey in Canada and found that the closer your birthdate was to January 1st, the better your chance to becoming a pro hockey player. The system was looking at bigger kids (those that are slightly older tend to be bigger at that young of an age) and thinking they had more talent than other kids, when in fact, they were just bigger. So they nurtured those talents — they gave them better access to coaching, training and other talent. They were taking a tiny advantage and turning it into a huge one…these tiny advantages matter. Small things matter. Things that are nearly invisible to us.

If something as small as what month you were born can lead to that big of a difference, then imagine how much difference money can make.

In 2013, New York Times writer Seth Stephens-Davidowitz analyzed the backgrounds of NBA players and found:

[LeBron] James was born poor to a 16-year-old single mother in Akron, Ohio. The conventional wisdom is that his background is typical for an N.B.A. player. A majority of Americans, Google consumer survey data show, think that the N.B.A. is composed mostly of men like Mr. James. But it isn’t — Growing up in a wealthier neighborhood is a major, positive predictor of reaching the N.B.A. for both black and white men.

You don’t have to be rich to get a basketball and start playing. Yet the wealthier you are the better chance you have of making it to the NBA.

DFW and Football

Now, let’s take a closer look at the 3 players that were selected in the top 6. Myles Garrett is from Arlington Martin High School (26.77 % poor) Solomon Thomas is from Coppell High School (8.27 % poor), and Jamal Adams is from Hebron High School in Lewisville (16.91 % poor). Compare those poverty rates to some DISD High Schools — Samuell (98.6% poor), Madison (98% poor) and South Oak Cliff (92.5).

If you take a look at where the top 100 players come from, you should notice that they are almost exclusively from the suburbs. There is 1 only kid from DISD…from Kimball High School (80% poor).

Dallas ISD has 17% of the black population of the major Dallas area 4 counties and that 1 kid makes up only 2% of the class from the area. DISD has about 7200 African American high schoolers. Cedar Hill has about 1200 and DeSoto has about 1500. Yet in those top 100 rankings, Cedar Hill has 5 players and DeSoto has 6! (compared to DISD’s 1).

DISD has FAR more African American males than DeSoto and Cedar Hill, but is not producing as much football talent. You have to look closer to see what’s happening.

DISD actually has about the same number of non-poor African American males than those two districts. DISD only has about 100 non-poor Black males in each grade. That’s about the same for Cedar Hill + DeSoto. And sure enough, if you average the past 5 years of the top 100 recruits in Texas, Cedar Hill + DeSoto have 23 players and DISD has….23. The correlation between the number of non-poor African American males and number of kids on these football recruiting lists is striking.