Is The Sport of Football Truly Dying?
Mates,
Like a number of other Mgobloggers, I coach football. Sign up for the football leagues up north is set to close on Friday for this upcoming season. The numbers of kids signing up for football all over the NW part of the lower peninsula are way, way down. In our area, in the last 5 years we have gone from fielding something like 18 teams to fielding possibly 6 this year. That is an incredible drop in participation and if it is seen across the country does not bode well for our favorite sport.
As one who played football until late in life I think it would be a shame to see the demise of such an exceptional game. Perhaps it is inevitable though. Please share your experiences and insights on this topic. I am hoping for good news from you all.
XM
Yes, if you have something compelling to offer - an expensive scholarship or pro $$ - you are always going to be able to get candidates to choose from. Those candidates may need a lot more development that they did in the past, but you'll still be able to get them.
But unless the safety is improved and the perceived risks go down, you will have a lot less people playing it recreationally or as a school activity.
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Here in the Northeast, high school student populations are steadily dwindling as I suspect is the case in many Michigan districts. With football requiring by far the largest team rosters, it is more difficult for a school to compete with the students they have.
I'm 57 and I have seen the sport decline at least here in Mich with kids.
Most kids don't want to put the work in anymore or they all want to be the QB. I played on the O and D lines for 10 years of football and never cared about touching the ball.
Most Moms these days don't want the kids playing. Before the head injuries it was other injuries. In the old days the Moms were fine with football.
I wish I were in a football state like TX. My old friend lives in Katy, TX and the Tigers have a high school stadium that holds 10k to 12k fans. Now that is how football should be.
The game of football today is quite different than it was in the late 1800's and early 1900's. And most of that difference was driven by changes to improve safety.
Football has evolved, and will continue to evolve to survive.
It will look different 50, 100 years from now, just like it looks different than it did in the past. But it will still retain some element of downs and distance and moving the ball down the field toward the end zone. But the way you do that may look different due to safety reasons.
There are elements of Rugby and 7 on 7's that can give some hints as to what this could be.
Challenge to MGoBloggers: Design a version of football that is substantially safer, yet still retains the characteristics of football - line of scrimmage, downs, distance to gain, end zone, etc. In addition, it has to be compelling to watch. Flag football is quite safe, but 100,000 people are probably not going to line up to watch it.
It's dying to a lesser degree in the inner city, but it's dying nonetheless. I coached youth football for 7 years in Chicago and Lansing's inner city and participation has declined there for sure. I've done hella grad research on this subject as well. Another factor is these kids are soft these days, and that's the truth. It's just a different time than when we would play in the street. Now I coach at one of Michigan's best high schools (inner city) in football and basketball and we only have a JV (barely) and a Varsity football team. Some of this can definitely be attributed to overall population decline, but football has less appeal than when I was young (c/o '98, LSA '14, M.A. 2015).
HOWEVER, our program has instilled the "Seahawks" rugby tackling technique, which Ohino uses along with the Seahawks (shoutout Big Frank! #55) and a few other teams. Ohino sucked ass in tackling two season ago, and last year really improved in that regard after switching to this style. It takes the head out of tackling and makes for a surer, less physical if you will, tackle. It could revolutionize the game again just as the forward pass and other changes did back when Teddy Roosevelt, Yost, and others gave it CPR. Hopefully it does.
Oh, and "Ohino." Really?
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A lot of people in this thread have mentioned soccer as a safer alternative to football because there are supposedly fewer concussions and many studies disprove this showing that they occur at similar rates in both sports. Some organizations have even suggested that the act of heading the ball should be disallowed as it can be dangerous long term. A quick google search turned this up. https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/soccer.html
Concussions in soccer certainly should be a concern for anyone whose kids are playing. Soccer, however, doesn't have the huge number of subconcussive collisions that football has. From what I've read, those subconcussive hits, from things ike linemen bumping helmets, seem to be as much of a trigger for CTE as diagnosed concussions.
It's also hard to see how football, as it's currently played, eliminates those collisions.
seems like such an obvious place to start.
My nine year old is in the middle of football camp this week. Hundreds of kids are participating......in West Michigan
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The concussion issue could be something to do with it...moms may be steering their boys into other sports like baseball or soccer due to concerns over this.
Guessing you're a single guy?
Hate to break the news but momma rules the roust when it comes to the kids. When mom's not happy nobody's happy.
Hopefully the kids are at least playing hockey!
If true, I'm wondering what sports kids are turning to. Baseball isn't as popular anymore, at least in my area. So is everyone playing soccer? Or are fewer kids playing sports altogether?
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You're right. My son, who plays baseball, is also an avid gamer and spends a good amount of time watching gaming championships on Youtube. I get the fun of gaming but watching someone else game? That's like a double passive.
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But we may be reaching the point of diminishing returns on it's TV marketing.
I want my son to play but I screwed it up for him and I don't think he will want to play again. He has always been taller and bigger than most of the other kids his age so I signed him up at 5 years old to play pop warner tackle. The kids were 5 to 7 and he was physically competitive but not mentally ready. He played for three years and was a very good lineman but he didn't love it and wanted to play basketball year round. My mistake was having him play at such a young age. He loves basketball and is a good player so that's cool but I do kind of wish he was playing football. I feel better now that I've come clean on my bad parenting.
The decrease is for several reasons:
1. The obvious elephant in the room is the concussion and head trauma issue. That's scaring a lot of parents away, especially at a youth (pre-HS) level. I'm not sure that's a better or worse approach. I get less impacts, but pre-HS the speed of the game is pretty slow, the impacts aren't that hard. Combined with decreasing the number of full contact days, the only time a lot of HS kids are seeing full contact for the first time pretty much in games. That seems dangerous, because technique is important.
2. The variety of sports and activities keeps on expanding. Not just soccer, but basketball, baseball, lacrosse, hockey, that Harry Potter sport, math club, etc. There are tons of activity options out there, and while there have always been a lot, the other activities are becoming more excepted, and the number of sports options are only increasing as well.
3. Kids are getting funneled at an earlier age. A lot of this is from parents who want their kids to be really good in something. So a kid doesn't participate in band and football, just band. A kid doesn't participate in soccer, basketball, baseball, track, lacrosse, and football, just soccer. And so you have this regimented structure where parents use camps as daycare (seriously, there are three year olds going to soccer camps) and then they stick with that sport because there parents feel good about it.
I have nothing against soccer or band or math club. I was in band in middle school. I played soccer my whole life. I just also played football, basketball, track, baseball and did whatever else allowed me to be competitive. I tore my ACL and PCL playing soccer. I injured my back playing soccer. I broke my finger playing dodgeball. Injuries happen, and I know those aren't head injuries (I'm lucky enough to, I believe, never had a serious head injury), but they happen and they have happened for years and years and for the vast majority of people, they've turned out fine. The benefits have far outweighed the negatives.
But unfortunately, I think it all leads to a decline in football in the long run. I don't think it'll go away, it's a ticket out for too many poor kids for it to completely go away (and because teams provide equipment, it's cheaper than hockey or baseball is today), but the numbers will continue to decline. The first high school I coached at failed to field a JV team, despite having about 1300 students. It's a shame in my opinion, but it is what it is.
I like your point about youth football being slower, therefore less head trauma injuries. I had a few concussions playing Varsity, and my parents never let me play until 7th grade. IMO I wont let my son play until then because of the crazy parents/coaches at the youth level around here. No need for my boy to be exposed to that nonsense.
Parents encouraging their kids to focus on one sport enrages me. How else will you know what you are good at? I played 5 different organized sports growing up and was a 3 sport athlete in HS, great times, great friendships, exposure to more coaching theories/strong influential adults. And it didnt stop me one bit from being recruited by D3 and D2 schools in my best sport, which I didnt even play in college. I did my second best sport in college because I loved it more.
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It's highly unscientific, but my eyeball test sees a precipitous drop in multi-sport players. For example, not that long ago (10-15 years), a school would have a solid girls' basketball team just because just because it could field 12 athletically minded girls. Now, several of them specialize in ONLY soccer or ONLY softball 12 months a year and it's possible that the best players play on private/travel teams v. school. That's too bad as the vast majority of us aren't making a living off of playing sports and the specialization limits the fun and friendship that being on a team brings.
It also seems to be the case that the elite club sports can be played at a much, much higher level than high school sports. I know about half of the older kids at the elite levels of my sons' soccer club don't play high school soccer because of a belief that it doesn't challenge them, that the coaching is much worse than the professional coaching that they get at the club, and that it's more dangerous because of the unskilled players and poor referreeing. I know the club encourages this as well.
I think soccer's a bit extreme in this regard, largely because coaches looking to advance are funneled into clubs rather than high schools, but it's undoubtable that club sports structure the youth sports landscape far, far more than they did 10-15 years ago.
This happens in hockey too. Although a lot of the hockey, like basketball, becomes not just playing for club over high school, but changing schools altogether.
Around here in suburban Chicago, travel/club coaches often sell their programs by telling parents of pre-teens, "Stick with me and you'll get your kid a full ride scholarship." So the goals are quite individualistic, and that's fine; not my place to judge. On the other hand, I grew up in an era where the community was important and school teams were one way of pulling the community together, in a way like M football pulls us together here, even though we're a diverse group. I have my opinion on which approach is better longterm for a kid, but it applies only to the two I have.
Given the limited scholarships that NCAA soccer teams have, particularly for men's soccer where most scholarships are fractional, those coaches are flat out lying to the parents. Fortunately haven't seen that at my kids' club. They have had kids go onto the U-15 and U-17 national teams in recent years, and they certainly sell that, though in a relatively low key way (it's probably enough to say "we have 2 former players on national teams").
I agree about the community thing, particularly in small town/suburban areas, where high school sports form so much of a community's broader identity. That's the world I grew up in. My kids are growing up in the city (NYC) and that aspect is obviously totally absent from our daily lives, it probably only heightens the power of club sports.
Yeah, I also grew up in a world where the results of the big High School football game were front page of the paper . . . not the sports section, but the entire paper.
It seems so quaint now. My kids will never see any of that kind of thing. There is no real community bond where we live unless we have a big snow storm.
...and as a coach in the know, parents who hear that shit need to know that 90% of the time a coach says that s/he is full of shit.
For the other 10%, there's the sticker shock of when their kid does get aid-in-kind, it's 50%. Since there are only 12 schollys available, most of the time they are split.
Coaches who do get their kids in college generally don't need to brag about it.
In my experience, club soccer isn't generally superior to HS soccer. Why club soccer gets more attention is because of recruiting and economics.
There are a lot more tourneys in club soccer than HS. More tourneys = more games in a consolidated location = more opportunities to scout easily. <- that's where the "economics" part comes in. A recruiter can see more for less.
Oh, there is a significant hit everywhere I suspect. In our town, when my now 18 year old was in 3rd grade, we had 12 city teams, this year it is 4. School enrollment is essentially the same.
but as the father of a 6' 250 lb 13 year old that can leg press the entire stack for reps, size 15 shoes and an lower body like Algae Crumpler (sp?), I have no desire to see him strap on a helmet and deal with all the knee and consussion issues i dealt with as a mere bench warmer through high school. He plays the 5 on the hoops team and i am cool with that although every youth football coach in the county knows him by name and calls every summer before camp.
Here is where it gets interesting . . . when he hits a certain age and physical development, if he gets a chance to get into an elite school that he mey not otherwise get into, on scholarship no less, if he agrees to play football . . . would he do it? Would you be OK with it?
I think you will see more and more of this scenario. Less kids are playing youth football and football in schools. There is a smaller pool of talent to choose from. You will see more football coaches that learn to identify talent from success and physical development in non-football sports. They will rely on their ability to develop raw non-football talent.
When some compelling doors open up ito you if you agree to play football, will kids decide to play it even with the perceived risks and the fact that they have no experience in it?
you were talking about European football and my answer would be GOD I hope so - hate that sport
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Football may be dying some as a participation sport, but it's not dying as a spectator sport.
There are a lot of sports in this country with a high level of participation but not many people watch them - swimming, bowling, bicyling, skiing, etc.
Conversely, there are sports with relatively low levels of participation among the populace, yet a lot of people watch them - boxing, MMA, auto racing, etc. You're not going to find these sports played in high schools throughout the country, yet they are still popular.
A sport does not have to be a big participation sport for it to be a popular spectator sport. If it is a big enough spectacle and people are interested in the outcome, they will watch.
Football may (probably will) die off some as a participation sport. It will be played by less people in less places. But NFL and big time college football will be just fine.
Bringing up the spectator sport and participation sport is a great dichotomy. Some sports just don't translate to TV well. Some do. Those that do will be just fine for the forseeable future because dolla dolla bills y'all.
This is what really killed boxing. It was not the brain damage, it was that the best athletes no longer boxed, they played football. As of now, the places seeing the greatest decrease in participation are generally not producing a lot of D1 talent.
On another note, I would note to many posters in this thread that concussions are only a very small part of footballs problem. The biggest issue is the head contact many players make on every play that does not result in a concussion, but does do damage. So yes, other sports do have as many concussions but not nearly as much head trauma.