Column: Brunswick in elite company with three players on NFL rosters

The views of the author are not necessarily the views of AllOnGeorgia.

This summer,  I wrote a story about the three Brunswick High football players in the pros.

In case you aren’t already informed, Darius Slay and Tracy Walker both play for the Detroit Lions and Justin Coleman plays for the Seattle Seahawks.

All three players used to wear the Blue and Gold colors of the Brunswick Pirates and now are making money playing in the NFL.

In a phone conversation I had with a friend several weeks back, we talked about how neat it was to see three former BHS players presently playing professional football. We also wondered how many high schools across the country had three or more players in the NFL at the same time.

I was planning on doing the research to see, but guess what? Before I could get around to it, the NFL did it for me, saving me lots of time and energy while giving me the answers I would have been looking for while scrolling through the team rosters.

Following the opening weekend of the season, the NFL Communications office released the results of a study the league conducted internally to see which high schools had the most former players on NFL rosters.

Based on the numbers released by the league, Brunswick is one of 48 schools with three former players currently playing in the NFL.

St. Thomas Aquinas (Fla.) tops the list with 15 players currently on NFL rosters. Some of the most noteworthy players are Geno Atkins (Cincinnati), Rashad Greene (Jax.) and James White (New England).

The No. 2 team is Long Beach Poly (Calif.) which presently has seven players in the NFL. Among them are DeSean Jackson (Tampa Bay) and JuJu Smith-Schuster (Pittsburgh).

Two teams are tied for third overall with six players each. One is Norcross (Ga.) and the other is Serra High (Calif.). Two of the Norcross players in the league are Lorenzo Carter, who played at Georgia last year and was drafted by the New York Giants, and Alvin Kamara, a running back for the New Orleans Saints.

Four schools all share the fifth spot in the rankings with five players each on NFL rosters. Those are Glenville (Ohio), Lakewood (Fla.), Miami Central (Fla.) and Miami Norland (Fla.)

Following those four are 12 schools that all have four players each currently in the NFL. One school in that grouping is Lowndes (Ga.).

Then comes the large group that includes Brunswick with three players each.

All in all, Brunswick is in pretty elite company with its three players currently representing the school in pro football. If you do the math, only 20 schools in the country have more players on NFL rosters than Brunswick. And only two schools in Georgia have more players in the league than Brunswick, and both of those are in the state’s largest classification.

For the record, 182 other schools have two players on NFL rosters and 1,082 high schools currently have one player on a league roster.

As for the states with the most players in the league, Florida tops the list with 211, California is second with 185, Texas is third with 175 and Georgia follows in fourth with 123. Ohio rounds out the top five with 76 players.

As for cities with the most players in the NFL, Miami leads the way with 24, Houston is second with 20, Fort Lauderdale is third with 16, Cincinnati is fourth with 15 and New Orleans is fifth with 14.

Thank you NFL for getting to the bottom of this and helping us figure out where your players got their start.

Of course, we already knew that three got their start right here in The Wick.

But now we also know how special that is for us.