Have you ever thought how great it would be if you had an interactive map showing where all players currently on the Cowboys' roster were born? You did!?! Well holy mackerel, Batman, that's exactly what we've got for you here today!
At the latest count, the Cowboys currently have 88 players on their roster, including this year's rookie class and the 21 recently signed undrafted free agents. And these players hail from all over the place. If your browser supports flash animation, the interactive map above shows how many players were born in which state. The darker a state, the more players were born in that state. Move over a state with your mouse and you'll see how many and which players were born there.
Overall, the 88 players on the Dallas Cowboys roster hail from 30 different states in the U.S.A. 3 players were born abroad. Find out more after the break.
If you can't see the map, it’s probably because the map is a flash animation and your browser either does not have a flash plugin (like the Shockwave Flash plugin for Firefox) or flash animations are blocked by programs like Flashblock or some ad filters.
For those of you that can see the map, if you click on a state you will zoom into the state. You can magnify any part of the map by clicking and holding the left mouse button and then dragging the pointer to mark the area you want enlarged. Why would you want to do this? Well, you might find it hard to find where TE Andrew Szczerba was born without magnifying the general area where you suspect Delaware to be.
Here are some random facts about the Cowboys roster:
19 of the 88 players were born in the great state of Texas, making it by far the biggest contributor to the team. California (8), Florida (7), and Louisiana (6) also contributed more than a handful of players. But while Texas is easily the biggest contributor in absolute terms, it is not the largest contributor relative to its population.
Per the 2010 census, Texas has a population of 25,145,561. Texas is represented on the Cowboys roster by 19 players, or one player for every 1,323,451 registered inhabitants. Relative to their populations, Hawaii (680 K), Louisiana (755 K), Delaware (897 K) and Oklahoma (1250 K) contributed more players than Texas.
Thirteen states have have only one player on the Cowboys roster.
Three players were not born in the U.S.: Long-snapper L.P. Ladouceur and rookie DE Tyrone Crawford are both Canadians. Mike Jenkins was born in Germany. His father was stationed there as a Marine, his mother was a computer operator in the U.S. Army. Baby Mike was in Germany for only about a month.
Dallas (Adrian Hamilton, Donovan Kemp, Isaac Madison, Phillip Tanner) and Houston (Orie Lemon, Danny McCray, Brodney Pool, Lionel Smith) are the cities with the most Cowboys players born within their city limits. Outside of Texas, only Atlanta (Hakim Saleem, Dwayne Harris), Baton Rouge (Ronald Leary, Marcus Spears) and Pittsburgh (Barry Church, Sean Lee) have multiple Cowboys representing their city.
If you think the map is missing a famous Wisconsonian, look for that player in California - he was born in San Diego while his father was with the Navy.
So what stands out to you? How many players come from your state and who do you pick to be your state representative?