Are the Houston Texans Turning Into a Conglomerate of SEC Players?
By Hayden Winks
Five out of the last eight NCAA National Champions have came from the Southeastern Conference. Alabama and Auburn in particular have dominated college football recently and have generated some elite talent into the NFL. The SEC is widely considered the best conference in the nation and I was curious to see how many Houston Texans played in it and if it was the most of any conference. Here were the results based on the roster from HoustonTexans.com : SEC (20 players), Big Ten (14), Pac-12 (11), ACC (7), American (6), Sun Belt (6), Mid American (3), Big 12 (2), Conference USA (1), Independent (1), and Mountain West (1).
Not surprisingly the SEC led the way by a large margin. Leading the way was Alabama and Texas A & M, who each have four players rostered. Georgia, Auburn, and LSU each had multiple players as well. The powerhouses in college football seem to be distributed quite evenly throughout the Texans roster. But the most players coming from one university is from another conference…
The Michigan State Spartans are the clubhouse leaders in alumni for the Houston Texans. They have produced five players (Brian Hoyer, Max Bullough, Kurtis Drummond, Keshawn Martin, and Keith Mumphery). Clearly, this roster is not the projected 53 man roster but once that is announced I will redo this article. I expect more players from the Big 10 being drafted in the near future because of Bill O’Brien’s coaching history in the conference. For example, C.J. Fiederowicz was drafted under Bill O’Brien and he graduated from Iowa, a Big Ten school.
The biggest surprise to me was how few players are from the Big 12. Baylor, Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Kansas, Kansas State, TCU, and Texas Tech are all very big football schools but only Jon Weeks (the long snapper) and Justin Tuggle competed in the Big 12. Just a weird coincidence.