The NFL is finally ready for week one, and as the players get set to take the field it's interesting to see where they came from. It won't surprise you to find that the vast majority of NFL players come from the FBS level of football, and that the SEC leads all FBS conferences in terms of NFL talent.
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If you break down all the NFL rosters by college and conference, The SEC leads the way, followed by a tie between the ACC and Big Ten, who are just a few players ahead of the Pac-12. The Big 12 is a considerable step down, followed by the Group of 5 schools and the FBS independents.
(Note: rosters are fluid, so these numbers change daily, but it's still a good indication of each conference as a whole. Rosters include 53-man roster and injured/reserved/suspended players, but not practice squad players.)
Here's how it looks:
The SEC has more than 350 players currently in the NFL, with the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 topping 250 each. The Big 12 has nearly 150 alumni in the league, while the AAC tops 100 players.
Now, that's in terms of total players, which is not an accurate portrayal of each conference. When you adjust it to account for the number of teams in each conference, here's how many NFL players each conference has produced per team in the conference:
As you can see, while the SEC still leads the way averaging more than 25 players per school in the NFL, the Pac-12 (12 teams) leaps the ACC and Big Ten (14 teams each) in terms of average number of NFL players per school (by a close margin, 20.8 to 19.1). FBS independents, too, make a jump, as the four schools have 41 players (although Notre Dame claims most of them).
