Like many of you I too watched many of the football games on TV over the New Year's holiday's, but I learned something too that I will share in this blog.
You know that, like many, I have been very bored during the Covid-19 pandemic. I am even bored with football. So during each game, I used my computer to look up the rooster of each team. There is a lot of interesting information about the schools and players there. What was the most interesting is where the college players went to high school. In some cases there were more players from out of state than the state that the college was in, but that is not the most significant thing. What stuck out like a sore thumb was the fact that such a small percentage of the players came for our largest cities. Even if there were some, when you calculated the percentage compared to the size of the population of those large cities the picture looked even worse. You all know that I put a lot of weight in what Sir Isaac Newton said in his laws about cause and effect, so why are there so few players from the bigger cities?
What is it about large cities that cause them to produce fewer college football players? When I see some thing like this that stands out so significantly, I want to know why? Don't you? It looks like the chances of being a good football player is higher in small towns in Iowa vs urban New York City. There has to be a reason for this, so what is it? Look at Arron Rogers of the Green Bay Packers. He is from Chico, California, a medium size town in northern California. Chico is not a suburb of some larger city either. It is the biggest city in the area. Where did he go to college his first year? It was in the even smaller city of Durham, California with a population of 5,518 and a small community college where Arron played. How can it be that of all the places in the USA and all the big cities did Arron become the MVP of professional football? Something has to be going on here. I could take another professional quarterback, Tom Brady and the story would be almost the same. Why is that?
If you don't have a theory, well I do. Our big cities are not healthy places for us humans. True, there are rich people there, but there are also most of the poorest people and the homeless. Cities have a function, but as that function is exploited by rural people moving into them, what ever that advantage is or was seems to disappear. Where to many new immigrants end up? Did you ever think about that? It is our largest cities. I think that in the case of New York, 1/3 of the people there were born outside the USA. I know of families in places like Iowa and Indiana whose family originally homesteaded the farm that they live and work on today. Those people have to be different in some way from those in our larger cities who can't find their roots.
What else is different? How many people in these big cities ever shook hands with the Police Chief or know the name of the school principle where their kids go to school? I think that most of you can answer those questions and can start to see where the differences might start. As I was watching TV, I noticed that a lot of service men were being welcomed home by their families. You saw this too, but did you notice the cities or states where these service men came from? If you did, you have to have noticed how few, if any, came from our largest cities where much of our population lives? Again, this is the observation and something is different and it has to have a cause, so what is it?
Have you noticed that states like New York, Illinois and California are actually loosing population? More people are moving out than are moving in? Why is that? Since about 1960, in the case of California, more people who use moving companies are moving out than moving in. Those who move by U-Haul are the ones who are moving in. Like grass growing, over time this has to have an impact. Is there a difference between those who are moving in compared to those who are moving out? Yes! There are still a lot of people moving into California, but now there are a lot more moving out so that the mix of who is left is changing faster than ever.
This all started out with me being bored watching football on TV and it has lead to some very big questions about who we are and what we are doing to our country. In my life time the population of the USA has more than doubles while the percentage of people now living in rural areas has declined significantly. That shift has changed who we are and I, for one, don't like it. Playing football is just one aspect. We could look at the competency of our public school teacher and the answer would be the same. Our bigger cities have the worst school teachers. Why would anyone who has a brain want to teach in one of our larger cities? I wouldn't and I don't think you would either.
The solution is to drink more beer while watching the football games on TV!
