Going National: Western Region

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Since the arrival of Chip Kelly as offensive coordinator in 2007, Duck fans have seen not only a uniquely dominant offense, but they have seen the football program rise to unprecedented heights culminating in the 2012 Rose Bowl win. Along the way, a couple of special players from parts not normally represented on the Duck roster transformed Oregon football into a national brand.

This month, Duck Sports Authority began this series on national recruiting. So far we have taken a look at the Eastern, Midwestern, Southeastern and Plains/Mountain regions. Today we turn our attention to the bread and butter for Duck recruiting, the Western Region. This region is fairly straight forward as it includes Washing, Oregon, California, Idaho and Alaska.

The first thing that we learned when analyzing the regional recruiting for the Ducks is that the Ducks roster now has 25% fewer players from the dominant West Coast Region. Those players are coming from somewhere. The Ducks have certainly taken a few more players from around the nation, that much is sure.

The West coast has long been the dominantly represented region on the Ducks roster. Prior to the successes of Mike Bellotti and Chip Kelly, that was out of pure necessity. Attempting to lure players to Oregon was difficult enough when it was just getting them out of California. Getting them from everywhere else was exponentially more difficult as Oregon did not have a brand name nationally.

Let us take a look now, at how Oregon's presence in its main region has changed during Chip Kelly's tenure. We begin by looking at the scholarship players from the top three states in the region (California, Oregon and Washington) that were on the Oregon roster in 2007 and again in 2012.

Players by State

2007 State Number % CA 45 64.3 OR 5 7.1 WA 3 4.3 All Others 4 5.7 2012 State Number % CA 37 48.1 OR 6 7.8 WA 2 2.6 All Others 6 7.8

After our initial look at this topic, we knew that there would be less representation from this region. What is striking is just how steep the drop is. While the number of players from California is just eight less than five years prior, the reality is that it represents a 16.2% drop in the ratio of scholarship players from the state of California. That kind of drop can be considered...

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