BleedGopher
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per Texas Monthly:
Are Texans losing faith in football? That might be a heretical question in the land of Friday Night Lights. In pretty much every little town between Waskom and Dalhart, the state’s ardor for the sport has run so deep, for so long, folks only half-joke when they talk about football as the unofficial religion of Texas.
And fervent Texans do pay their tithes: taxpayers lavish as much as $72 million on high school stadiums that put many university facilities to shame. What might seem like outlandish excess to outsiders doesn’t faze hometown fans who see their high school team as an extension of their community’s unity and grit. In rural areas, especially, the town and team are synonymous, explains author Gray Levy in his 2015 book, Big and Bright: Deep in the Heart of Texas High School Football. “In Texas, it’s still accepted wisdom that football builds boys into men and can lift a school and community in ways no other activity can.”
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.
“I think the concussions have concerned a lot of mamas, especially,” says coach D.W. Rutledge, who built a dynasty at Converse Judson in the 1980s and 1990s, coaching in seven state championship games and winning four of them. “The media can scare mamas to death.” But Rutledge, Rutledge, who is now the executive director of the Texas High School Coaches Association, thinks the fears are overblown. “I really believe football is safer now than it’s ever been,” he says.
UIL Director Charles Breithaupt is skeptical, though not dismissive, of the notion that health concerns are responsible for the decline. “I’m not hearing from parents around the state saying they’re afraid for their children to play,” he says. “But maybe they’re speaking with their feet and not showing up.”
https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/texas-high-school-football/
Go Gophers!!
Are Texans losing faith in football? That might be a heretical question in the land of Friday Night Lights. In pretty much every little town between Waskom and Dalhart, the state’s ardor for the sport has run so deep, for so long, folks only half-joke when they talk about football as the unofficial religion of Texas.
And fervent Texans do pay their tithes: taxpayers lavish as much as $72 million on high school stadiums that put many university facilities to shame. What might seem like outlandish excess to outsiders doesn’t faze hometown fans who see their high school team as an extension of their community’s unity and grit. In rural areas, especially, the town and team are synonymous, explains author Gray Levy in his 2015 book, Big and Bright: Deep in the Heart of Texas High School Football. “In Texas, it’s still accepted wisdom that football builds boys into men and can lift a school and community in ways no other activity can.”
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.
“I think the concussions have concerned a lot of mamas, especially,” says coach D.W. Rutledge, who built a dynasty at Converse Judson in the 1980s and 1990s, coaching in seven state championship games and winning four of them. “The media can scare mamas to death.” But Rutledge, Rutledge, who is now the executive director of the Texas High School Coaches Association, thinks the fears are overblown. “I really believe football is safer now than it’s ever been,” he says.
UIL Director Charles Breithaupt is skeptical, though not dismissive, of the notion that health concerns are responsible for the decline. “I’m not hearing from parents around the state saying they’re afraid for their children to play,” he says. “But maybe they’re speaking with their feet and not showing up.”
https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/texas-high-school-football/
Go Gophers!!