Last Updated on March 7, 2022 by Pittalks
October 24, 2015
As the pit crews evolves so do the athletes that pit. That being said, the influx of college athletes to pit road has been a huge topic of conversation over the last few years. Getting the exact names and numbers of the guys on pit road is an extremely hard stat to get. The turnover is high so no stat is going to be 100% correct, but we’ve done our best to get dam close. So here ya go…the most in-depth article you’ll find on ex college athletes on pit road circa Fall of 2015.
The best way to start this is to give some basic facts. We based our stats off of 39 full time running Cup teams. That gives us a total of 234 total crewmen on pit road. Out of those 234 total crewmen, 62 of them played college ball. That’s a total of 26%. That number might seem low for what you were thinking, but we think it’s right on track. If we were to do that same stat for developmental crewmen then we’re guessing it would be more into the 80% range.
Taking those 62 pit crew members and breaking them down into what position they pit looks like this. Leading the way is the Carriers with 21 at (34%), followed by Jackmen 16 (26%), Gasmen at 16 (26%), and Changers with only 9 representing 15%. The interesting thing about this is that your Changers are the most important position on pit road and they have the least amount of college athletes. Not a good or bad thing, just an interesting stat.
Looking into these stats even more we find that 49 (79%) played football followed by Baseball with 8 (13%). Basketball, Wrestling, and Soccer make up the remaining 8%.
As far as where these athletes pit, the breakdowns look like this. HMS leads the way with 16 (26%) followed by JGR with 8 (13%). The next two companies with the most would be SHR and MWR with 5 each representing (8%) for each company. Take into consideration we are comparing some 4 car teams to those with 2 or 3 cars so the stats might look a little skewed but the numbers are what they are.
So now that we know about what position, what sport, and what company these athletes are at, we might want to know what schools they came from…..We got that as well. Leading the way is Wake Forest with 5 (8%) followed by App State and Nebraska with 4 each (6%). Rounding out the top 6 schools are Lenoir Rhyne and ECU with 3 (5%) each. A total of 40 college and universities are currently represented on pit road and you can see the full list at the bottom of the article.
The last stat we’ll give you is this. Out of the 16 teams that started the Chase this year, 33 (53%) of the pit crew members were college athletes. That’s more than double the rate of pit road as a whole which was 26%.
Hope everyone enjoyed our evaluation of college athletes on pit road and we will try and update our stats as often as possible. For full list of everything discussed above, check out the charts we have below. Enjoy.
