RyanChristiansen wrote:No, of course, it’s not calamity. But we’ve experienced nearly a decade of steady decline in participation, which is why I asked for opinions about how things might need to change in recruitment at the pro level decades into the future, after most of us in this forum might already be dead. Thinking long-term. You only have to look at MLB for examples of global reach in search of talent. It’s not unreasonable to expect that the trend line in lessening participation will continue.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobcook/20 ... d48d783d98
The decline at high school is a loss of 1-2 players per program a year -- again, more realistically losing 3th string JV players than losing 1-2 future D1 college players (or any NFL players) per school per year.
The level that sends players to the NFL, college football, has not declined. There's more teams and thus more players (and more importantly, more starters) than the 00's, 90's, 80's, etc. Not a steady decline, not a decline at all. People aren't jumping from HS to NFL, these 'statistics' ignore college football, the level directly funneling players to the NFL. There's more D1/FBS football teams, there's more college football teams, period.
Plus it's national HS participation numbers. Take a state like Florida, huge for HS football and producing talent, and they have more HS football programs and thus more kids playing than any previous generation. Not in a decline from a previous decade, that's increased participation. So when six schools in Vermont cut football, oh well. Three more pop up in Florida with the actual talent that fills up college football rosters and the type of talent that ends up in the NFL.
As for the comparisons to other sports. They don't really make sense. Soccer? Essentially every country in the world plays soccer at some level. Hockey, the most -or second most- popular sport in multiple countries. Baseball, the most popular sport in multiple countries. Football, the most popular sport in what countries? Growing the game internationally is fine and all and decades into the future sure, maybe they'll be a player from this country or that country but it's an American sport. It's not going to be the #1 sport in England. The talent pool will be American for the decades you're talking about and the talent pool isn't declining because two scared kids (or parents scared for them) per team aren't playing HS football anymore. Those aren't the kids that are good enough for college or the NFL anyway, pretty obviously.
Others have speculated with the "declining HS numbers" football could become regional, in terms of producing talent, similar to hockey in the U.S. where the talent comes from Minnesota and the Northeast with a player from Arizona and two from Washington and players here and there scattered around the country but primarily if you watch HS hockey in MN you're seeing the American players that will be in the NHL. For football, they speculate that it would be in the south, La., FL., AL., TX., Ga., etc. Which is where a lot of talent already comes from so not much would change in regards to the makeup of major college football rosters and NFL rosters. Though everywhere would still have HS football, and college football (again, which has increased, not declined), because good luck getting rid of HS football in the Trinity League, or my hometown in WA where HS football is all that matters, or HS football in Ohio, or PA, or Michigan, etc.
Losing 1-2 kids, a majority who aren't really playing football and are just on the team to be on the team and never play, per HS isn't a big deal. And neither are the other reasons for less HS players, primarily specialization. Whatever kid currently in HS that is "LeBron James" isn't playing HS football like LeBron did, he's playing basketball year round in this generation.
Here in WA, one of the best football programs last year had a Fr. QB who was/is very good. Stopped playing football this year before his So. year because he's a 6'8" dominant basketball player who's going to play D1 college basketball in 3 years. So now he's playing in an 'elite' basketball league in the fall instead of playing HS football. Decreasing numbers in football? Or kids choosing their sport at an earlier age than previous generations? Exactly. And that's also large part of so-called decreasing numbers, basketball players and baseball players who also used to play football in HS in previous era's are much less likely to be multi-sport athletes now.
However, that is not a decrease in the future football players talent pool. it doesn't mean the pool of football players has decreased, because football players are still playing football. The loss is athletes who are good at other sports and no longer playing their 2nd or 3rd best sport (football) and including the players that aren't good that used to just make up the numbers of a HS football program (backup Fr. team players) does not mean the talent pool is shallower. Basketball players are basketball players. Football players are football players. Kids that aren't good at football but were allowed to suit up and stand on the sideline, there's a couple less of them now. So we can hypothesize about decades from now but for the foreseeable future I see no evidence that anything has really changed in terms of the overall pool of football players for colleges to choose from and then the NFL to choose from those colleges. If anything, it hasn't declined, because more HS football players get to play in college now so there's actually more opportunities to get seen by the NFL.