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Why High School Football Is Dying A Slow Death (It's Not Just Concussions)

This article is more than 5 years old.

When he spoke to the assembled crowd at the Atlantic Coast Conference football media day, North Carolina head coach Larry Fedora channeled every coach's recent freakout over signs that not as many kids play football (or watch it) as they used to:

Well, I hate to break this to Coach Fedora, but it appears America is sinking. By any measure in the National Federation of High School Associations' athletic participation survey -- the most comprehensive annual study of youth sports participation in the United States -- football is nearing a decade of decline. A few numbers from the 2017-18 NFHS survey, released in August (numbers are aggregated after they are reported by NFHS' state athletic association members that oversee high school sports):

  • The number of 11-player football participants is down 6.5 percent from its peak in 2009-10 -- to 1,039,079 at 14,079 schools during the 2017-18 season from a top of 1,110,527 at 14,226 schools. The number of girls in 11-player football has nearly doubled during that time, but that's only to 2,237 players, not nearly enough to make up for 72,436 fewer boys.
  • That 2017 participation number also is down 1.9 percent from 2016-17.
  • The average number of participants at each school in 11-player football has dropped to 74 per team in 2017, from 78 in 2009. That includes freshman, junior varsity and varsity ball.
  • Outdoor track passed football as the most popular participatory sport in 2016-17, and remains No. 1 even though overall participation in that sport fell by 6,000. Outdoor track in 2017-18 had 1,088,689 participants (600,097 boys and 494,477 girls) -- which is more than the 1,068,870 participants in 6-player, 8-player, 9-player and 11-player football.

The easy answer to why football continues to decline is concussion fears, what with the continually mounting evidence that despite the sport's increased focused on safety, the risk of permanent brain damage is high. Merely pointing that out gets people like Fedora thinking you're part of the war on football.

But I would posit that while concussion fears are a major factor in football's participation decline, there are a few other factors as well that are knocking the sport off of its high perch:

Declining enrollment in rural schools (or urban and suburban schools poached by charters and private vouchers)

The one growth area in football is 8-player participation, which is at an all-time high of 19,662 players on 847 teams (it was 16,132 players on 749 teams when 11-player participation peaked in 2009-10). However, this growth is reflective of schools dropping 11-player football as their enrollment falls, and trying desperately to hold onto some version of football. The 8-player model is the most popular version of reduced-player, available now in 31 states, with more adding it every year. The 6-player model, popular mostly in Texas, also has seen growth, up 60 teams and 500 players year-over-year. But, again, this is reflective of schools with declining enrollment trying to hold onto football -- not a true source of growth.

Early sports specialization increasing as pressure to start youth football at a later age increases

The debate over whether children are pressured at too early an age to specialize in one sport is an issue across all sports. What is unique to football is that with the concussion issue resulting in calls for kids to start the sport later to reduce risk, the sport could end up losing some kids because by the time they may get around to football, they've already committed to another sport. The flip side of this is that as football itself demands more time, and even adopts a pseudo-national academy model that's happening in other sports, even kids who start early drop out when it's clear they aren't going to be elite -- and that's a problem in all sports.

A decline in school-aged children

In 2015, the latest U.S. Census information available, there were 10.6 million males ages 15 to 19 -- down from 11.3 million in the 2010 Census. The age groups younger than 15-19 have even lower numbers. Football, which in most places is a no-cut sports, relies on a large supply on raw material to fill out its depth, and that raw material is getting harder to find.

Players running a cost-benefit analysis and finding football isn't worth their time

There was a time when being a football player was practically a ticket to high school popularity and stardom. Not that football players aren't still popular people, but certainly in my kids' time the hero-worship toward football players -- from students and the community -- is far below what it was when I went to high school in the 1980s. Plus, you could end up practicing long hours, and never playing, for coaches who scream at you and try to make you feel bad about playing Fortnite. Or you could spend that time getting a job. The bottom line is, if you're not playing, it's pretty easy to find something else to do, and not lose any reflected glory.

White families choosing lacrosse as a social-climbing sport

Lacrosse has 210,217 combined participants (113,313 boys, 96,904 girls), and it's been on an upward run longer than football's participation decline. Concussion safety isn't a reason to choose lacrosse -- it's concussion rate is lower than football's, but still relatively high compared with most sports. But lacrosse has much more of a social cache, a means of moving into that big Wall Street job some day.

Football is a long way from dead, but there is no doubt that its peak has past as Generation Concussion Awareness makes its way through the high school system. But if there is a war on football, the battle is on many, many fronts, beyond the concussion issue.