You see this phenomenon in the Big 10 and the Big 12 north more than anywhere else.  Programs that used to have lines twenty men deep, just cannot dominate they way they used to.  They cannot get to the QB as fast and their LB's just cannot cover the sill players when needed.  If they cannot stack the line, they cannot stop the run, this never used to be a problem.

Nebraska, Notre Dame, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Penn State and Illinois are among the most affected,but other teams have had to go away from the run to continue or resurrect their success.  USC, Oklahoma, Texas, and Penn State, all once great power running programs, have had to switch to spread offenses to retain the top spots on their totem poles. Can youthink of any team that just runs the ball that is a year in and out that is a contender anymore?  Even Notre Dame, Nebraska, Ohio State and Michigan have switched to the spread.

I am definitely part of the problem, I was raised in the country of eastern Oklahoma, My parents both grew up in the western part of the state and both grew up up on farms. While I lived in the country my whole childhood, I spent my days exploring the woods, fishing, catching insects, tarantulas and scorpions and making them fight one another. Nothing I spent my days doing really made me tougher and stronger. They were just ways to kill the boredom. While I was always a strong kid, all my strength was inherited and nothing about my lifestyle built upon it. 

My parents were brought up on farms, they spent their childhoods picking cotton, bailing hay, and rustling animals that were much bigger and stronger than them everday.  You can workout all you want, train three times a day and take supliments galore, but nothing compares to working outside bailing hay from dawn till dusk all day everyday for a month straight. 

Growing up on a farm makes you both strong and somewhat mean. Trying to get stubborn animals four times your size and pure muscle to do what you need it to is not easy and you get a mean streak dealing with them day in and day out.  You have to learn to impose your will on something that weighs half a ton or more. After doing so your whole life doing the same thing to someone your size or smaller is nothing for you.

Farming is a hard life. If mother nature is not kind to you, you starve both financially and physically.  Almost everyone who has based their lively hood solely on farming knowstrue hunger. They all have spent atleast one winter eating the bare minimum to survive and praying to God for more rain the next spring.

So, what farms sow as farm as human capital is men that are extremely hard and strong and can be as mean as they need to be, when neccesary.   

That is exactly what is missing from midwest football they have lost these farmboys and with them there edge.  They still have kids that are big and strong but not in the numbers before.

Most of these kids are still big & strong because of their genetics. Their parents were farmers and they gave them a head start physically but usually their families have sold the farm and moved to the city.  The farmer's that are left usually push their kids somewhere else, they see there is no future in farming and want something better for their children.

So, what we are seeing in college football is the decline in teams from rural states and programs close to urban centers are thriving.  Rural towns still have great players but it is just as likely to be a skill players coming from a small town than a big ugly lineman. 

More and more families are moving to cities, so the closer you are to urban populations the better you are.  You see this both in the Big 12 and Big 10.  Teams that have multiple or major urban areas to recruit from are rising Missouri, Ohio State, Texas, Penn State and Oklahoma. You see it all across the country as well, USC, LSU, Florida, Boston College, Georgia, and Rutgers are all programs on the upswing that have major cities to recruit.  

The historic programs that struggle the most are the ones that have relied on finding rural gems because they do not have a major recruiting city that mostly belongs to them.  Nebraska, Notre Dame, Iowa, and Minnesota are the best examples all once great programs that are having trouble trying to compete. They all used to dominate with line play and just cant do it anymore. Whether in or out of conference, they still struggle.

The pacific Islanders seem to be the strongest now.  The west coast teams, mostly USC, BYU and Utah, have long known this secret and been recruiting them for years.  The sumo cultures of the pacific islands seem to be producing the biggest and strongest kids for now.  Just look at what Utah did to Alabama that game was won at the line on both sides of the ball.

My guess is they are also seeing a decline in culture and this pipeline will begin to decline in number of lineman produced as well but for now it seems alive and well and I wonder if it is under recruited or not. 

For the Midwest teams, I do notknow if there is an easy answer or solution. Most are switching to the spread offense to compete, but will it be enough to resurrect them to glory?  Will the decline in farming culture put them at a disadvantage for ever?

I certainly hope not.  The Midwest is the most historical area of the country for college football and college football is better when both the Big 10 and Notre Dame are good and the Big 12 needs the north to step up and be more competitive if it wants to keep continuing to get better.

So, next season when your tailgaiting with your buddies outside your favorite stadium,  Pour one out or have a toast, for one of college football's greatest losses, the farmboy lineman that made the game so great for its first 90 years.