Going Pro! Minnesota Among Top States To Become A Professional Athlete

When it comes to turning out athletic talent, Minnesota is one of the top places in the country!

While the odds of going pro in most of the major professional sports aren't extremely high, the team at The Sports Geek determined that Minnesotans have a leg up on the competition.

While it is different from sport to sport, Minnesota ranks in the top 10 among states when it comes to the odds of becoming a professional athlete across the spectrum of sports they analyzed. This included professional soccer and tennis along with leagues like the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL.

Where Minnesota ranks among states that produce the most pro athletes

According to the analysis The Sports Geek did, Minnesotans have a 1 in 4,747 chance of becoming a professional athlete. While those might not sound like phenomenal odds, it does make Minnesota the ninth-best state in the country.

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Ranking 9th out of out 50? That's not too bad! The odds do vary though from sport to sport - and Minnesota is certainly a hotspot for one professional sport over the rest.

Minnesota, by the way, is the only Upper-Midwestern state in the country to make the top 10, with the only other state not on an ocean coastline among the 10 best being Ohio at #10.

Minnesota: A pro sports hotbed?

Minnesota has produced professional athletes across the spectrum of pro sports, including names like these first few that come to mind:

Joe Mauer - MLB baseball player

Adam Thielen - NFL football player

Lindsey Whalen - WNBA basketball player and coach

C.J. Ham - NFL football player

Jack Morris - MLB baseball player

Tom Lehman - PGA golfer

Dave Winfield - MLB baseball player

John Shuster - Olympic Curler

When it comes to the various sports categories, though, becoming a professional hockey player is Minnesota's forte. When it comes to producing professional hockey players, Minnesota leads the pack as the top state in the country.

They don't call us the state of hockey for no reason!

The second sport Minnesota produces a lot of professionals in is tennis, being the 4th best state for turning out pro tennis players. I wouldn't have guessed that!

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Here's a full ranking of the odds of becoming a pro athlete in various sports according to data from The Sports Geek:

• NHL/ Pro Hockey: #1 state in the country - odds of going pro: 1 in 9,495
• Pro Tennis: #4 state in the country - odds of going pro: 1 in 650,467
• NBA/Pro Basketball: #20 state in the country - odds of going pro: 1 in 54,206
• Pro Soccer: #26 state in the country - odds of going pro: 1 in 650,467
• MLB/Pro Baseball: #33 state in the country - odds of going pro: 1 in 34,235
• NFL/Pro Football: #37 state in the country - odds of going pro: 1 in 18,323

You'll notice the odds may be better in something like pro football than pro basketball, even though pro basketball ranks higher among states in the country. This is also due to the overall difficulty of going pro in each individual sport, which varies from sport to sport.

Overall across the country, the odds of going pro in the NFL (1 in 10,243) are better than going pro in something like golf (1 in 279,635), just to give you an idea of what I mean.

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In the end, Minnesota's 9th best ranking overall is pretty cool! For young people with aspirations of going pro, all of those odds are still pretty small and it does require a lot of hard work and dedication. But apparently Minnesota does a pretty decent job of turning out more pro athletes than a lot of other states!