The recruiting map

Bodies vs. blue chips· the 8 biggest of 10 split states

The states where the two maps point at different programs, biggest talent pools first. Only states the blue-chip map actually crowns appear here — where the top two are level, there is no king to name.

Still being fought over· 6 states, 355 blue chips unclaimed

The states the blue-chip map refuses to call — real supply, nobody clear of the field — ranked by how much talent is at stake, how close the race is, and how big the programs fighting over it are.

The raiders· top 10 by out-of-state blue chips

State lines are the wrong unit for a national brand. These are the programs taking the most blue chips out of somebody else's state. Oregon has signed 73 of its 76 from outside OR, most of them out of CA (23). Distance is the tell: Oregon's median blue chip signed from 956 miles away, and 84% of them came from 500+ miles.

The heists· the 10 least likely signatures

Every blue chip signs somewhere. These are the highest-rated ones who signed with the programs that almost never get one — scored by how good the player is and how rarely his program signs players like him. Dante Moore was a 5-star out of Michigan; UCLA signed 9 blue chips in four classes, and he is one of them.

Total control· 6 programs own their state on both counts

The short list of programs that win their state on both counts at once — the most signees and the most blue chips.

Every state· all 51, sorted by blue chips produced

Sorted by how many blue chips the state produced across the 2023–2026 classes. A gray split tag marks a state whose biggest signer is not its blue-chip king. The table scrolls sideways on small screens — state names stay put.

Window

The 2023–2026 signing classes (four classes), from CFBD recruiting profiles. A single class is 20–25 signees per program, which turns most states into a coin flip.

Blue chip

A recruit rated 4 stars or better. Star ratings are a market consensus, not a measurement, but they are the consensus everyone argues with. A summed composite rating was tested and rejected: that scale runs about 0.70–1.00 for everyone who reaches an FBS roster, so summing it just re-counts bodies — on the real data it puts Indiana's biggest-by-headcount signer, who took no blue chips at all, ahead of every program that did. Recruits with no star rating are counted as not blue chips, which can undercount a state but never invent talent.

Who counts

High-school recruits only. A recruit's state in this source is the state of his school, which for a high schooler is the ordinary reading of “a Georgia recruit” but for a junior-college transfer is the state of the JUCO, not of home — Kansas produced more “JUCO recruits” than high schoolers over this window.

Where

The 50 states and DC only. The raw source also carries Australian states, Canadian provinces, U.S. territories and blanks; those are excluded rather than counted as states.

Who's excluded

Army, Navy and Air Force cannot lead a state on either map (see above). They still count toward a state's supply and its stayed-home share, because those are facts about the state rather than about a ranking.

Crowning a state

Headcount alone is not ownership, which is the whole point of the pair of maps above. On the blue-chip map a state is only crowned when it produced at least 8 blue chips in four classes, its leader signed at least 3 of them, and that leader is strictly ahead of the runner-up on blue-chip count — a lead that exists only through a tiebreak is not a crown, and those states are drawn neutral. On the volume map a state is held when one program is strictly ahead and clears 10% of its FBS signees.

Stayed home

Blue chips who signed with a program whose campus is in their own state. Campus location is derived from a program's modal home venue; a program whose campus state does not resolve counts as out-of-state, which can only undercount staying home.

Still being fought over

Open states ranked by heat — the log of the state's blue-chip supply, times how close the top two are on blue-chip count, times the log of how many blue chips those two programs sign nationally. Big pool, tight race, big brands.

The heists

Each rated blue chip is scored by his rating percentile among all blue chips, times one minus his program's percentile by four-class blue-chip haul — the best players at the emptiest trophy cases. A five-star to a blueblood scores zero on the second term and never appears, which is the point.

Distance

Great-circle miles from a program's campus to each blue chip's high school, quoted as a median only for programs with at least eight geocoded blue chips — below that, one boarding-school address swings the number by a thousand miles.