For the last few years — it only seems like forever — sports writers, assorted pundits and sordid sports bloggers have been trashing any and all aspects of football in the Midwest.
In their haste to elevate the SEC, they repeatedly and consistently have dumped on the Big Ten generally and Chicago-area football specifically, blathering on in particular about the purported lack of speedy and, more broadly, talented players in the region who play skill positions such as running back.
All that corn and all that pork ostensibly render Big Ten/Chicago running backs unable to make the grade, certainly not at the NFL level.
Not so fast.
If serial SEC-o-philes were even marginally susceptible to empirical evidence, they might be impressed or at least surprised that three of the leading rushers in the NFL at the midpoint of the 2009 season — Michael Turner, Rashard Mendenhall and Pierre Thomas — all hail from the Chicago area, two from the same, ahem, Big Ten school: Illinois.
Turner, from North Chicago High School and Northern Illinois University, ranks seventh in the league in rushing for the Falcons, while former Illinois stars Mendenhall (Niles West) of the Steelers and Thomas (Thornton Fractional South) of the Saints rank 12th and 21st, respectively.
Just to be snide, we might include Giants bruiser Brandon Jacobs, the league’s No.11 rusher, who, though from Louisiana, had the good sense to transfer from an SEC school (Auburn) to that cradle of running backs, Southern Illinois.
Now, I’m obviously being a bit over-the-top in my defense of Big Ten/Chicago-area talent. The SEC is a great conference, and the South, where I’ve lived pretty much full time for the past 30 years, by and large is football country. But players in the Big Ten and Chicago also “got game,” to which the midseason rushing stats of Turner, Mendenhall and Thomas readily attest.
These three might not be the speediest backs in the NFL, but their average yards per carry — 5.04, 5.39 and 5.23, respectively — are far higher than the averages of the leading rushers from the SEC: Ronnie Brown (4.41), Knowshon Moreno (3.94), Joseph Addai (3.49), Cadillac Williams (3.94), Jamal Lewis (3.56) and Glen Coffee (2.64). And the only running back from the fabled SEC among the top 15 rushers in the league is Brown, who ranks 10th.
Maybe these guys from the SEC should try eating more corn and pork.
