"Why doesn't Tennessee recruit more local players?" People in this neck of the woods say that same thing every year. "How come UT doesn't sign any East Tennessee boys?"

Year in, year out, same thing.

"There are plenty of good players right here in East Tennessee."

Having heard it once again on my TV show just last week, I thought it was about time someone did some research. And when I couldn't talk anyone else into doing it, I decided to go to the Internet and do a little googlin' on my own.

Just how many big-time college football players DO come out of East Tennessee? And of those, how many do the Vols sign?

First, I had to define East Tennessee. For my purposes, I went with the area North of Georgia, South of Kentucky and Virginia, West of North Carolina and East of Cookeville. That's roughly a 100-125 mile radius.

Then I had to find rosters for the just-completed 2005 season. I used the rosters and hometown information provided by ESPN.com. I included only scholarship players and I did not include players who were redshirting (some schools listed them, some schools did not). So a player like Powell's Baron Huber, who attended Alabama last year as a freshman, but was not listed on their gameday numerical roster, was not counted.

Lastly, I did not feel that Tennessee should be held accountable for taking a pass on players that signed with non-BCS level schools. So I searched only for Tennessee and East Tennessee players that played last season for schools in the BCS conferences (ACC, Big East, Big 10, Big 12, Pac-10, SEC) and Notre Dame (the only independent included in the BCS).

If Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer and crew missed on a top East Tennessee prospect, surely the other 65 BCS schools wouldn't. And if they did, then there was probably a reason. That doesn't make these young men bad football players, but it does make them players that every other BCS school passed on.

Which brings us back to the initial question, "Why doesn't Tennessee recruit more local players?"

Short answer? There aren't many East Tennessee football players that are ready to play in the biggest conferences in America.

In fact, the numbers show that the old, "there are plenty of East Tennessee prospects" belief is really just an urban myth. Or rural myth as the case may be.

Last year, there were only 24 East Tennessee players on the 66 BCS rosters. Of those 24, seven wore UT orange (29 percent). Also, of the 17 East Tennesseans who went elsewhere, only 10 of those were players from the Knoxville area the others came from the Tri-Cities or Chattanooga areas (which I still counted as East Tennessee).

That means there are about six BCS prospects that come out of East Tennessee in a given year. And Tennessee usually signs two or three of them. The schools that land the next most from this area appear to be Vanderbilt and Wake Forest. So are those prospects that the Vols should have gone after?

The East Tennesseans who were on BCS rosters last year were Clemson DB Matt Forbush (Kingsport Dobyns-Bennett), North Carolina OL Garrett Reynolds (Carter), Virginia LB Vince Redd (Elizabethton), Virginia Tech DS Bart McMillin (Bristol, Tenn.), and three at Wake Forest, OG Jarrett Osborne-Revis (Catholic), WR Jonathan Jones (Sequoyah) and WR Willie Idlette (Chattanooga Baylor).

Nebraska SS Daniel Bullocks (Chattanooga Hixson), Oklahoma State WR Adarius Bowman (Chattanooga Notre Dame) and Penn State OL Tommy Schnell (Johnston City Science Hill) also went out of state.

In the SEC, the only East Tennesseans to be on active rosters (other than UT's) in 2005 were Alabama DE Brandon Fanney (Morristown West), Auburn RB Carl Stewart (Maryville), Georgia K Andy Bailey (McMinn County), South Carolina QB Cade Thompson (Maryville), and Vanderbilt RB Jeff Jennings (Jefferson County), RB Cassen Jackson-Garrison (Knoxville Central) and OL Eric Hensley (Clinton).

That's it. Sixteen local boys that Tennessee either didn't sign or didn't try to sign. Hardly the cornucopia of talent that the message boards often claim.

Now ask yourself, how many of the above players would you like to see on the Vols' roster? All of them? Half of them? And who would you subtract to make room for them?

Let's take a wider look and include all of the players from Cookeville to Memphis (by far the single biggest producer of BCS-level talent in the state). Even with Middle and West Tennesseans thrown in, UT continues to account for more than one quarter of all the signees from this state (36 of the 139 Volunteer State players on BCS rosters last year were on the Vols' squad).

After UT's 36 came Ole Miss (15 players from Middle and West Tennessee), Vandy (15), Mississippi State (9 more West Tennesseans), Auburn (8 including 4 from Brentwood), Arkansas (6 West Tennesseans) and Wake Forest (6).

What about the ultimate proving ground - the NFL? The 2004 NFL opening day rosters (for example) included just 33 players who hailed from Tennessee. That was less than New York (34 players), North Carolina (40), Alabama (42), New Jersey (44), Illinois and Michigan (45), Mississippi (48), Virginia (51), South Carolina (53), Pennsylvania (60), Ohio (73), Louisiana (84), Georgia (86), Florida (173), Texas (174) and California (200).

Does all of this mean that East Tennessee is incapable of producing top-flight talent? Of course not. Many go to UT. Some, like Alcoa TE Brandon Warren, are recruited by the Vols, but decide to go elsewhere. He signed with Florida State. Still others, like QB Chad Pennington (Webb), have stellar careers at smaller schools (like Marshall) and then go on to sign nice, big NFL contracts.

But Tennessee isn't the only school that passed on Pennington. Or many others like him.

According to the numbers, UT shouldn't take too much grief for not recruiting more East Tennessee players. Quite simply, there aren't many BCS-level prospects who come out of this area on a yearly basis. And the state of Tennessee in general doesn't produce pro talent like many of the states that surround it.

That's not a knock. It's a fact.

John Pennington hosts The Hall's Salvage Sports Source on Sunday at 11 a.m. on WATE. He also writes a blog at govolsxtra.com.