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Football coaches across New Jersey, which has packed lineups with N.F.L. stars for decades, are asking the same question this fall: Where have all the players gone?

Rich Hansen, the football coach and athletic director for 31 years at perennial power St. Peter’s Prep in Jersey City, began listing off the schools he knew of that had struggled to field a team in a state that has long been a college recruiting hotbed.

“Glen Ridge, Marist, Montclair Immaculate, Montclair Kimberley, Morris Catholic, Dickinson — it’s an epidemic,” Hansen said.

The latest active participation numbers, which were released in August, showed a drastic statewide decline for the second consecutive year: The 2017 high school football season featured nearly 1,700 fewer players than the year before, a downturn of 6.8 percent.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/29/spor ... ation.html

And so it begins...

Texas too:

But if high school football really is that important, then Texans have cause for concern: The share of high school students who play the game has been sliding for years, according to records maintained by the University Interscholastic League (UIL), the state governing body for public school extracurricular activities. Between the 2000 and 2016 seasons the sport’s annual participation rate fell off by one quarter. Last year, just under 11 percent of high schoolers in the state—167,428 students—played UIL-sanctioned football and six-man football in Texas. That’s a big drop from 2000, when the number stood at 14.5 percent.

And the trend seems to have hit younger players as well. In the Central Texas Pop Warner youth football league, participation is “down all over the place,” says administrator Charles Simpson. Five years ago there were forty teams in the league. Today, there are only eighteen—an enormous drop that suggests that we’ll be seeing even fewer high school players in a few years.

Why the decline? Amid the steady drip of revelations about harmful effects of concussions and sub-concussive hits, many parents are keeping their sons away from tackle football as a safety precaution. In September, Boston University’s Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center released a particularly scary study that found playing tackle football before age 12 doubled the risk of behavioral problems and tripled the risk of depression later in life.

Yup, the future is bleak for the sport, hard to argue otherwise, until they can come up with a solution for this.

Flaggy, buy stock in Velcro waistbands and orange flags! Also, mangina wipes!!

GannonFan wrote:Yup, the future is bleak for the sport, hard to argue otherwise, until they can come up with a solution for this.

Agreed,
If it was all speculation and hyperbole then one would have reason to criticize the parents
But the data is in... too many hits to the melon and you go senile at 35 yrs old
and suicidal at 40 yrs old

No parent can be blamed for pulling their kids out of that scenario

Chizzang wrote:

GannonFan wrote:Yup, the future is bleak for the sport, hard to argue otherwise, until they can come up with a solution for this.

Agreed,
If it was all speculation and hyperbole then one would have reason to criticize the parents
But the data is in... too many hits to the melon and you go senile at 35 yrs old
and suicidal at 40 yrs old

No parent can be blamed for pulling their kids out of that scenario

Same should happen with parents of women soccer players. Shame on them trying to get easy college tuition money through a kid that is marginally athletic.

Chizzang wrote:

GannonFan wrote:Yup, the future is bleak for the sport, hard to argue otherwise, until they can come up with a solution for this.

Agreed,
If it was all speculation and hyperbole then one would have reason to criticize the parents
But the data is in... too many hits to the melon and you go senile at 35 yrs old
and suicidal at 40 yrs old

No parent can be blamed for pulling their kids out of that scenario

Yes good old fashion CTE will do that to you strangely enough ESPN talks about NJ High School Football on Saturday mornings from 8-9.

Kids are soft these days. Parents even softer.


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andy7171 wrote:Kids are soft these days. Parents even softer.


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Ever had CTE it's not pleasant ask Junior Seau!!!!!!

andy7171 wrote:Kids are soft these days. Parents even softer.


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I had a friend from high school, played basketball with him in school, who played both ways on the line in high school. Got his bell rung quite a bit back then. Had a stroke when he was 30. Firmly believes it was football related. He's generally okay now but will have lingering issues for the rest of his life. All because he played about 8-9 years of football as a kid. They have to find a way to fix this or football will just wither and die. I love watching football, it's a great game, but I would never feel comfortable letting my boys take that risk.

My oldest son has zero interest, which is good because his motor skills are terrible due to his ASD. My youngest son, however, can't get enough of football. He wants to be a TE. He's tall and beefy, has great hands, but isn't a speed demon, so it would be a good fit.

He played his second year of Pop Warner this year. He's only in 5th grade. I do have concerns about CTE and I've actually discussed it with him a few times. I've made sure he knows that it is not my expectation of him to play football or to try to become dad's proud brag story. That's about all I can do. I am not going to prevent him from doing what he wants to do. We'll continue to have discussions as the kids get bigger, faster, and stronger.

As far as the games, this year was eye opening. The coach of his team was the QB's dad, and the team mom was the QB's mom. Back in September, we played last year's Pop Warner Super Bowl Champions, Berlin (MD), and to say they routed us would be an understatement. It was 34-0 at halftime. Their kids appeared to be a foot taller than ours at every position across the line. When we were on offense, they blew up our line so badly that we were having problems just getting the ball handed off.

Anyway, QB mom and dad were irate that sonny boy was getting the business, so they forfeited the game at halftime. I didn't have a problem with that, just to end that day's humiliation. However, I did have a problem when they held a team meeting the following Tuesday to say we had a choice to forfeit the season or go on without their all-world son. I voted for the latter, but I was in the minority. I thought it was a terrible message to send the kids. It's a developmental league and they all just lost that.

Chizzang wrote:

GannonFan wrote:Yup, the future is bleak for the sport, hard to argue otherwise, until they can come up with a solution for this.

Agreed,
If it was all speculation and hyperbole then one would have reason to criticize the parents
But the data is in... too many hits to the melon and you go senile at 35 yrs old
and suicidal at 40 yrs old

No parent can be blamed for pulling their kids out of that scenario

Football is such a perfect team game. You need to find guys with strength, size, speed, skill, and then get it to all work together. I can sit down and watch ANY football game anywhere, anytime. And like anything that good, it's bad for you.

JoltinJoe wrote:

Chizzang wrote:
Agreed,
If it was all speculation and hyperbole then one would have reason to criticize the parents
But the data is in... too many hits to the melon and you go senile at 35 yrs old
and suicidal at 40 yrs old

No parent can be blamed for pulling their kids out of that scenario

Football is such a perfect team game. You need to find guys with strength, size, speed, skill, and then get it to all work together. I can sit down and watch ANY football game anywhere, anytime. And like anything that good, it's bad for you.

Agreed,
It's just about the perfect team sport