There are a lot of reasons why, in the last quarter-century, no ACC football team in the state of North Carolina has won the conference championship outright.

(Duke shared the title with Virginia in 1989, under a rising gridiron genius named Steve Spurrier.)

Plenty of valid explanations -- mediocre coaching, poor funding, high academic standards, outdated facilities, basketball focus, administrative indifference, etc. -- have belonged in this equation from time to time, but it's impossible to get away from the sheer mathematics of it all.

Here's the bottom line: Take the average number of Division I-A football signees produced annually by a given state, then divide that by the number of I-A programs the state is trying to support. If the number is high, you're the gridiron equivalent of the oil tycoon in Saudi Arabia. If the number is low, you'll always be fighting an uphill battle against the top teams from the states with more healthy ratios.

One week after signing day, we at ACCSports.com have compiled the almost-final numbers from the Class of 2006 for each of the "traditional six" ACC states. (If anyone is looking for an internship and would like that thankless, mind-numbing job next year, we're taking applications.) As always, the numbers -- complete lists are available at ACCSports.com -- painted North Carolina in an unfortunate light.

State -- I-A Signees -- I-A Teams -- Ratio
Georgia -- 143 -- 2 -- 71.5 players/team
Florida -- 341 -- 7 -- 48.7
Maryland -- 51 -- 2 -- 25.5
Virginia -- 45 -- 2 -- 22.5
South Carolina -- 33 -- 2 -- 16.5
North Carolina -- 56 -- 5 -- 11.2

On signing day, while trying to explain the relatively small number of in-state signees in his most recent class, N.C. State coach Chuck Amato made some controversial comments about the level of talent available in North Carolina. Basically, he said there weren't a lot of in-state prospects he wanted this year, and he got some of them, missed others and went elsewhere (mostly Florida) for more desirable options to fill out his class.

From a public-relations standpoint, it wasn't a smart thing for Amato to say. North Carolina's high school coaches can be a finicky bunch -- just ask former UNC coach Dick Crum, who alienated many of them with his preference for Midwest prospects -- and those relationships can mean an awful lot on the recruiting trail when they're needed to land top prospects.

But from an accuracy standpoint, Amato was 100 percent correct. It's one of the great, mostly unspoken realities of high school football in this state: Relatively speaking, it's not very good. More specifically, it just doesn't produce enough top-notch prospects to sustain at a high level five Division I-A programs, three of which (UNC, NCSU, East Carolina) traditionally rely heavily on home-grown talent.

Are there great players from North Carolina? Of course. See Mario Williams (NCSU), Julius Peppers (UNC), Torry Holt (NCSU), Greg Ellis (UNC), David Garrard (ECU), etc. This year, perhaps a dozen in-state prospects commanded the attention of the East Coast's most powerful programs.

But there are far more great players -- every single year -- in Florida, Georgia and several other states. And those states that have talent bases similar to North Carolina's have fewer football teams to support.

In a sport where most prospects like to sign with schools that are within a comfortable driving distance of their homes, and in a game where most of the top teams build their foundations with in-state players, the sheer demographics of the situation aren't doing the North Carolina schools any favors.

This single fact doesn't fully explain 25 years of mostly mediocre football. But anyone who doesn't think it's a significant factor isn't paying attention.