CLEMSON -- When Mac Jones led Alabama into the 2020 playoff, he was the first starting quarterback from the state of Florida to appear in the CFP over its seven-year history.
That's eye-opening, no?
Join Tigerillustrated.com subscribers on The West Zone message board!
It's been three years since a team advanced to the playoff with a starting quarterback from its own state -- that would be Clemson's Kelly Bryant and Georgia's Jake Fromm in 2017.
The theme of powerful college football programs going far and wide to land high-profile quarterbacks isn't just a storyline for the 2021 and 2022 recruiting classes, as Clemson recently replicated that trend with the addition of Cade Klubnik from Texas.
If you examine the recent history of the playoff, and geographic origins of the quarterbacks who guide teams to it, it's remarkable how few of them are homegrown.