Is the SEC faster (part 2: The sad truth)

So, on my previous post I looked at population demographics and conference affiliation.  I created a map of recruiting regions, that showed the Big 10 should have a dominant talent advantage due to population (which it clearly doesn't).

Grossly Arbitrary Recruiting Regions

The question that I never really got around to: Do certain recruiting regions have more speed than others?  To figure this out, I added a web ranking of elite HS Sprint times.  Thanks to a poster at Mgoblog for pointing me towards this.   This data set catalogs a list of ~4000 elite HS sprint times by state.  We can cross it with our recruiting regions to get a listing of how "fast" the regions are. 1st, some general observations on this data:

Bigger states generally have more elite runners (shocking - I know), but some states really under perform.  If you look at a ranking of the states by elite time vs. population of 17-18 y/o males, you'd expect a monotonic decrease.  You mostly get that, with a few abnormalities.  New York, should be 3rd for sprint times, but is 10th.  Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Michigan also have far fewer elite sprinters than you'd expect for states of their sizes.  You can pretty quickly see where this is heading...  Kudos to Maryland for being slightly faster than expected:

Why are these states so slow?  Don't have a great answer.  It's not race, the plot of African Americans vs.  speed is less correlated than the plot of total population vs. elite speed:

This is clearly less monotonic than the plot of all males 17-18 vs. speed.  My guess is that these states have a large population of urban poor.  These kids may not have the resources to train properly and reach elite times.  It could also be the weather affecting training time.  Doesn't really matter.  The take away is that the industrial midwest is unexpectedly slow.

Getting back to the task at hand:  Is the SEC faster?

HS Elite Times by recruiting Region

No.  The SEC is not particularly faster than any other conference.  The ACC may actually have more elite speed (depending on how you model Georgia, Florida, and SC).  What you can say is that The Big 10 is Slower.   Don't ask me why, I don't know.  But a region with 22.5% of the population produces 14.4% of elite sprinters.  Every other conference (except the Big East which is the unloved stepchild of recruiting anyway), has more elite sprinters than you'd expect by demographics.

Next time you see some SEC team running circles around OSU, don't think "How Fast are those SEC guys?", you should think "How slow are those Big 10 guys?"

Really slow.