Geography and Athletic Dominance

The relative success of athletic programs is also influenced by geography. Power in sports has tended to shift over time in accordance with larger economic, social, and demographic changes. National dominance in American intercollegiate football has shifted from the Frostbelt to the Sunbelt over the past half-century. Analysis of the results of football-championship polls conducted annually by The Associated Press illustrates the extent to which power in this sport has shifted southward. During the period between the inception of The Associated Press poll in 1936 and the end of the 1940s.

Frostbelt teams garnered half of the total rating points and included four of the five most successful programs—Notre Dame, Michigan, Army, and Minnesota. By the 1980s, however, the Sunbelt received 60.2 percent of the total votes. Nine of the decade's most successful programs—Miami, Oklahoma, Auburn, Florida State, UCLA, Georgia, Clemson, Alabama, and Southern California—came from the Sunbelt. Only Nebraska, Penn State, and Michigan bucked the overall trend of Sunbelt success.

Several factors account for this regional power shift. First, of course, the American population shifted southward and westward over this time period. Along with this population shift came the establishment of strong athletic programs at many Sunbelt universities. Arizona State was a small teachers' training college at the end of World War II. Florida State was a women's college, and the University of Houston was a small college supported by the state of Texas to provide higher education to the Houston area. Only after World War II did these universities establish intercollegiate athletic programs. By the 1980s, all were regularly achieving national recognition for success in football and other sports.

The civil rights movement of the 1960s must also be credited with the rise of intercollegiate sports in the Sunbelt. Prior to the civil rights movement, minority students were not permitted to enroll at whites-only universities in the South. African-American students who wished to compete in intercollegiate athletics could enroll only at predominately African-American colleges and universities or migrate to the North. Many Southern-born African-Americans accepted athletic scholarships at Northern universities. By the 1970s, however, racial barriers to intercollegiate competition in the South had bro- ken down. African-American athletes from the South now played for universities in their home or nearby states.

The domination of the Sunbelt in American athletics extends also to baseball. Sunbelt states have produced a disproportionate share of major-league baseball players in recent years. Over one-third of those players who appeared in at least one major-league game during the 1989 season were from California, Texas, or Florida. This pattern is due, in part, to environmental factors.

Baseball is a warm-weather, outdoor game. The mild climate of southern California and Florida allows residents of these areas to play baseball all year. This gives talented players the opportunity to increase their skills at earlier ages while being exposed to higher levels of competition. The dominance of the Sunbelt is also illustrated by the fact that only one team from outside the Sunbelt, Wichita State University, has won the national collegiate championship in baseball since the mid-1960s.

The dominance of the South and West in producing major-league baseball players is recognized by major-league teams. Each team employs a large staff of scouts who are paid to observe amateur baseball games in an effort to spot high-quality baseball talent. Recognizing the concentration of talent in the Sunbelt, major-league teams emphasize this region in scouting prospective players.

The Texas Rangers baseball team, whose minor-league organization was ranked as the most successful in baseball in 1989 and 1990, maintained a staff of thirty-one strategically based scouts during the 1991 season. Eleven were assigned to just the Sunbelt. Eleven others scouted in the North, Midwest and West, with the remaining nine assigned outside the United States.

The fact that so many scouts are assigned to watch talent outside the United States points out the importance of foreign-born players in American baseball. In 1989, 113 of the 988 players who appeared in major-league baseball games grew up outside the United States. Of these, 98 came from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, or Venezuela. The small city of San Pedro de Macon's in the Dominican Republic is especially known as a hotbed of professional baseball players. The other 15 originated in Canada, Mexico, Panama, Australia, Nicaragua, the Virgin Islands, and Curacao.