State teams drafting local athletes

[Mucrisco]

Please excuse me for the rush of threads that I've started recently. In case you didn't know, I've had health problems and I've had a recent setback. I'm waiting to find out the results and they certainly are taking their time to deliver them to me, so I'm trying to take my mind off things.

Anyway, I've noticed that Jae Crowder was trending on twitter. I clicked on it to see what people were saying. I saw one tweet from Homer saying how the Bucks missed out on another Marquette player. First, it was Matthews, then Butler, now Crowder. Really none of our pro sports teams go for the local kid and I wonder what the reasons are. Jon Lauer was a great success story last year for the Bucks. Mark Tauscher is one of the most beloved Packers ever. Except for the Packers in the last twenty years, it's been tough to get players to come to this state or even stay here. It seems that if a kid chooses to go to school here, it would be easier to keep him here for the long haul given the climate or entertainment options didn't deter him in the first place. We always seem to enjoy one type of athlete here. That is the guy who works his tail off and embraces the community. We are a blue collar town. So why don't we draft our athletes given the chance?

1) Is it because we don't produce that many pros? I don't remember how many chances we've gotten to actually draft a local guy and chose another guy instead. Troy Vincent comes quickly to mind. Didn't we draft Robert Ferguson instead of a local guy too? It was that receiver that played for the Bills.
2) Are our GM's are overcompensating their possible bias by choosing other kids instead of local ones. Maybe they don't trust their instincts since they think they might only favor a local kid since they know more about them. That seems counter intuitive though.
3). Is there is more pressure to take the local kid and the GM wants to stay clear of that added pressure for both himself and the kid? For example, cutting or not playing a local product might anger your fans more.
4) Are there other reasons?

[IWB]

Good question. I know under Ron Wolf it had nothing to do with locals, he wouldn't draft Big 10 players, but other than that I know of no other reason.

[Goose85]

I think we as fans focus more on what happens to the local talent, as we would like to see our favorite players continue to play for the local pro sport teams. GM's, more often than not, don't really have ties locally, so I don't think they care one way or another if a guy is local or not. They don't watch college games like we do and don't have a vested interest in any college team, only players they think can help them win and keep their job.

Last night I actually tuned in to watch some of the Mavs game because I am an MU fan so I wanted to check out Jae. If the Bucks were on, I probably wouldn't have watched any of the game.

My guess is if Leuer on the Bucks would have brought more people to games, the Bucks would think twice about having a local player. It appears a guy like Leuer didn't move the attendance needle so GMs really don't care.

[Gato78]

GMs do not want to become unpopular because they have cut, refused to resign or have traded a local product. Can hamper their ability to make objective evaluations of players. This rule does not count for lottery level picks but does apply for everything below that level.

[MUMac]

I don't know about the other sports, but the Packers at one time refused to draft a UW player because they felt there was too much pressure on them. Pretty sure it was Starr who was GM at the time.