The Panthers roster may contain more players from a local conference – and a local Carolina school – than you may think.
As Carolina Panthers fans many of us are also heavily invested in college football. College football rivalries persist among competing schools and their fans year round, but so do the rivalries across conferences.
Generally speaking, the SEC is the self-appointed king of college football and would like to reinforce that notion by limiting as many non-SEC teams as possible from competing against them in the College Football Playoffs. The Big Ten has a small number of elite schools (Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, and newcomer Oregon) plus a handful of good-but-not-great programs.
The Big 12 consistently churns out a rotating cast of solid teams ranked from No. 10-25, but can’t consistently manufacture legitimate national championship contenders. The ACC, bless its heart, can hang its hat on Clemson’s somewhat recent national titles (2016 and 2018) as the conference continues to come apart at the seams.
When looking at the Carolina Panthers through the college football lens, the team currently has 92 players listed on its roster. Here’s the overview of the conference representation in Carolina:
SEC – 26 players (28%)
ACC – 18 players (20%)
Big Ten – 13 players (14%)
Big 12 – 11 players (12%)
Notre Dame – 3 players (3%)
Non-Power 4 – 21 players (23%)
Conference bragging rights
Not surprisingly, the SEC is the conference with the highest representation on the Panthers current roster. What is surprising, though, is which SEC team has produced the most Panthers players: The South Carolina Gamecocks with five – Rico Dowdle, Jaycee Horn, Xavier Legette, Bam Martin-Scott, and D.J. Wonnum. South Carolina has produced more current Panthers players than any other university.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is the ACC has the second highest representation with 18 current Panthers. The ACC players hail from a smattering of schools that produced one or two players each with the exception of Virginia Tech with four players – Amare Barno, Raheem Blackshear, James Mitchell, and Yosh Nijman.
While the Big Ten likes to link itself to the SEC as the “Power Two”, the conference’s representation on the Panthers roster doesn’t reflect that with 13 players. No Big Ten team has produced more than two current Panthers.
The Big 12, which in full disclosure is “my conference” as a BYU fan, narrowly trails the Big Ten with 11 players. TCU has the highest representation with four current Panthers – Emani Bailey, JaTravis Broughton, Andy Dalton, and Tre’von Moehrig.
Interestingly, 21 players – nearly one-fourth of the Panthers roster – comes from non-Power Four conferences. These 21 players come from 21 different schools, including one from the Carolinas in Appalachian State’s Sam Martin.
While we as Carolina fans are united in our support of the Panthers, our college football passions are always bubbling just beneath the surface. Nothing helps drum up NFL offseason engagement quite like poking the bear of college football loyalties, so feel free to have at it in the comments.