My premise - I feel in around 20 years most American high schools will drop there sponsorship of football teams. High School football will still be there but be run by private clubs.
Here are my reasons:
The concussion issue. I’m seeing a growing trend in many schools where fewer and fewer boys are going out for football as the risks of concussion are more widely published. The liability is growing for the schools.
The growth of private leagues. Right now private leagues are becoming dominate in soccer and baseball and is growing in basketball. In football private leagues tend to end around 8th grade but are making end roads at the high school level. I see that in private football clinics and camps.
The growth of lacrosse and soccer. Soccer keeps growing strong and lacrosse is beginning to fill the void needed for more of a rough and tumble sport. Plus lacrosse has a lower risk of injury.
HS football does have a stronghold in many areas; is it part of the school culture in ways like no other sport have been able achieve. Not saying it can’t happen, but it’s beyond a sport in many schools.
In Minnesota high schools have ice rinks and there own school hockey teams.
However here in Kansas they have high school hockey but its thru a club and unrelated to any school.
So maybe in Texas they will keep high school football at a particular school but in other areas HS football will be thru clubs. In New York City football is run thru the city not the high schools.
Already in many small towns they have to combine with another town to have enough players for a team and often that team is actually run by a booster club more than the school.
I think you’re grossly underestimating the time frame for this transition. Double your two decade guess though I’m I’m pretty much in agreement with you.
One big factor in the slow transition is the nature of the hugely profitable business of collegiate football. Most colleges of any size have a soccer team but it has not yet developed to the point where it has become a similar scale of revenue source as football and basketball. Until the colleges figure out how to make more money from their soccer teams, they’ll still need a constant influx of football (and basketball) players and they’ll need high schools to churn them out. I just don’t see private leagues filling this need.
I am guessing as well that your timeframe is off. Maybe 40-60 years but not 20. Some places I know, even some areas of PA, HS football is almost a religion and games are covered on multiple TV and radio stations. Ages ago downtown Danville caught fire during an Ironmen home game. One building was fully engulfed before anyone noticed. And three involved before anyone got around to responding. The whole town had basically closed at 4:30 and there was just no one to notice the smoke or flames.
I think within 10 years it will be mostly associated with being low class/poor. After that, I can’t really guess how long it will take to die completely.
It may well be that HS football will begin dying out, but it won’t be because of private leagues. Schools provide the very expensive equipment and pay the coaches. Not to mention the insurance costs. Put those costs onto a private club and they will cost a fortune. Most of the best players come from underprivileged backgrounds and wouldn’t be able to afford it. The reason they exist in soccer and basketball is due to coaching and competition. There just aren’t that many really good soccer players in this country, so getting top competition in HS is almost impossible. It takes five or six schools to make up a high level soccer team. If you’re a seven footer, playing against teams that rarely have anyone over 6’5" is no way to get better. Baseball has always had summer leagues that were better than HS ball (American Legion.)
It’s already associated with rape, and that’s nothing new. The football players at my high school did the same thing the Steubenville football players did, and that was 35 years ago. No, there wasn’t social media, but there were Polaroids, and everyone knew about it. I found out about it from a girl I worked with who ran with that crowd and attended those parties. At the time, we didn’t realize just how wrong something like that really is.
They invited girls from the special ed classes, who were too happy to party with them.
Well, maybe 20 or 30 years ago, Minnesota HS Hockey was like Texas HS football.
When my cousins were in high school, the hockey team had practice time from 1am-3am at a nearby ice rink, and parents took turns carpooling team members to the rink.
But that has seriously changed. Schools are finding they don’t have enough kids interested to form a team, and have to team up with other nearby schools. I know of 2 or 3 publicly owned ice rinks that are being abandoned, because they aren’t used enough to pay for the operating costs, much less the renovations that are now needed. They’re looking for another use for them, but can’t find anyone willing to take on the buildings.
So even here in Minnesota, home of the Hockey Hall of Fame, the sport has had its’ day and is on the decline now. I can see the same happening to football here.
According to the NFHS high school football participation increasedin the 2013-2014 school year, breaking a four-year trend of declining numbers. Part of this could be attributed to sheer numbers – the number of high school age children is about equal to that of the Boomers from 40 years ago, but the sport shows a tenacious ability to attract young males to it. As has been noted earlier, nobody gets the attention that a football player does during the season.
Moms may be having different ideas, however. According to ESPN, Pop Warner participation dropped almost 10% between 2010-2012.
Malcolm Gladwell advanced the “ghettoization” theory a few years back, suggesting that it won’t be long before only less risk-adverse poor kids play football (sorta similar to boxing) but, in light of its other hypocrisies, I don’t see football-crazy fans, the real drivers of all this, being very worried about this if it happens.
I listened to a Radiolab podcast recently that addressed this. All the sports people they talked to blamed it on video games saying today’s kids can’t handle losing. They’d rather do something where they can just hit “start over” when things don’t go well.
Well that depends. Hockey is also very expensive but players afford it. My son played in a private football league from grades 1-6 and my costs as a parent were actually less than or equal to that of others sports like baseball. Plus on coaching every youth sport is expensive at the upper levels. At least its not as expensive as gymnastics.
You want real expense try horseback riding and dance.
It also depends upon the support of the NFL. Already they have been known to give money and support to youth football programs.
Minnesota hockey is down? Now thats news to me. In other areas hockey is growing. Sioux Falls South Dakota just opened a big double rink arena.
On ice rinks in many ways they are more profitable than roller rinks because they can also be used for figure skating, curling, broom ball, and general ice skating. But yeah, I suppose big rinks with the additional seating and infrastructure could be hurting.