Honestly, the problem is that there are just more sports to participate in these days.  When I was young, there was football season, basketball/wrestling season, and baseball season.  Today, baseball is year round, basketball is year round, wrestling is year round, soccer has become popular (and year round), lacrosse started in my town.  The football kids that don't start end up going to lacrosse so they can feel like they are starters.  We have hockey, too... but it isn't super popular.  It IS expensive, so few kids do hockey and football both.

I don't think the concussion scare is as much to blame as the competing sports are.  I do think the concussion scare is an easy cop out so parents can say "No" to one more sport for their kid to spend time and money on.

You know my thoughts.

Luckily (for football, anyway), soccer is starting to come under fire for concussions.  They made a big deal out of soccer concussions in my town where soccer is super popular.  That may help football in the future.

I don't think it is concussion related, I would instead suggest that it is a generational problem. And in football, you cannot just roll the ball out and play.

There are many other alternatives to football these days that are:

1. Easier on the parents than lugging Jr. to the field every night in August and 3 nights a week in-season.  Pretty much no other sport requires this level of parent/child commitment during the season at this age.  At least at the non-elite level.

2. Easier on Jr. - football is hard, going to always be hard, and nothing we can do about that.  Almost every other alternative is easier while still allowing a perception of the benefits of an athletic activity.  That appeals to Jr., and it's okay with Mom/Dad.

3. PERCEIVED as safer, whether they are or not.  And regardless of what studies say, football doesn't pass the eye test.  It is by far the most violent mass-participation activity (exempting actual fighting).

4. Easier to coach, which will tend to create better coaching situations, or at least coaches who do less harm.  Football is a coaching intensive sport, and a bad coach can screw up a football team/player more (IMO) than a bad coach will screw up a baseball/soccer/basketball team.

5. Not the subject of mass hysteria caused by movies like Concussion.

And probably more, that's just what immediately occurs to me. 

I don't think it is concussion related, I would instead suggest that it is a generational problem. And in football, you cannot just roll the ball out and play.

You don't think it is concussion rated... like at all???

There are many other alternatives to football these days that are:

1. Easier on the parents than lugging Jr. to the field every night in August and 3 nights a week in-season.  Pretty much no other sport requires this level of parent/child commitment during the season at this age.  At least at the non-elite level.

2. Easier on Jr. - football is hard, going to always be hard, and nothing we can do about that.  Almost every other alternative is easier while still allowing a perception of the benefits of an athletic activity.  That appeals to Jr., and it's okay with Mom/Dad.

3. PERCEIVED as safer, whether they are or not.  And regardless of what studies say, football doesn't pass the eye test.  It is by far the most violent mass-participation activity (exempting actual fighting).

4. Easier to coach, which will tend to create better coaching situations, or at least coaches who do less harm.  Football is a coaching intensive sport, and a bad coach can screw up a football team/player more (IMO) than a bad coach will screw up a baseball/soccer/basketball team.

5. Not the subject of mass hysteria caused by movies like Concussion.

And probably more, that's just what immediately occurs to me.

GREAT POST!  Definitely spot on!!  And, I love your phrase "perceived" safety.  Years ago I was talking with a mom about her son playing youth football (at the time, I think our kids were 8 or 9 yrs old) instead of baseball or soccer.  When she raised the safety issue, I showed her a video of one of my son's games.  She was quite surprised that the hits did not rise to the level of the collisions in an NFL game.  Despite the video evidence, she still didn't change her mind.

I sometimes tell kids, "Hey, I hear you.  You come here day after day after day, and all you do is get better and better and better.  Who can live like that?"

News article for your consideration: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/highschools/the-leading-edge-of-a-much-larger-iceberg-new-jersey-high-school-disbands-football-team/2017/08/22/e13b6516-836e-11e7-82a4-920da1aeb507_story.html?utm_term=.5087a9d82e29

My thoughts:

I've been fairly quiet about this, however; it's been my experience that youth football in my area appears to be on a substantial decline, despite my best efforts.  A handful of years ago there was a Pop Warner program in the 4 towns of my region, with another Pop Warner program about an hour away and an independent up the road about 30 minutes, 6 programs in all.  2 of the programs disappeared off of the map entirely.  2 of those programs switched from Pop Warner to the independent conference leaving only 1 Pop Warner affiliate where there was once 5. 

Last season was a banner year for our AYF program, this year numbers are pretty much down across the board.  We even went to "free" to encourage people to sign up.  Our first thought was that some of the families didn't like the level of competition that our AYF conference offered and jumped ship to play for Pop Warner.  That's definitely the case for a handful of families but I've recently discovered that the local Pop Warner program doesn't have strong numbers either.

I've heard some reports from other guys in the general area and it truly seems that football is on the decline.  Thoughts?

I saw that you guys were indeed free on Facebook.

If that doesn't help nothing will.

I posted some stuff in one of Jake's Threads on the subject about our League. I dont have the exacts in front of me but in 10 years we have gone from about 360 teams to about 210 and the decline these past 4 of 5 years had been pretty fast.

Im afraid your deal in your area is commonplace. People like to say...well there is lots of others things to do in Denver for the kids. Yah well.....there have always been lots of other things for the kids to do in Denver.

@JRK All 5 of your points are valid and true but there is nothing new about 1-4 that started in the last 2 years that the game has been in it's steepest decline. Those 4 points have been a part of football, yet kids still played. Point number 5 is the only thing that's new.

Are kids leaving football to play other sports? Or were they going to leave football anyway and the other sports just filled that void.

I used to fish every Friday. My wife hated fishing because she thought if it weren't for fishing, I would be spending those Fridays with her. She was wrong...those days were always going to be spent doing whatever it was I wanted to do. Fishing just happened to be that thing for 15 years.

I saw that you guys were indeed free on Facebook.

If that doesn't help nothing will.

I posted some stuff in one of Jake's Threads on the subject about our League. I dont have the exacts in front of me but in 10 years we have gone from about 360 teams to about 210 and the decline these past 4 of 5 years had been pretty fast.

Im afraid your deal in your area is commonplace. People like to say...well there is lots of others things to do in Denver for the kids. Yah well.....there have always been lots of other things for the kids to do in Denver.

Mike,

Just visited the AYL site yesterday.  They are down to 138 total teams.  No CFC (D3) this year, either.  My old club is down to 10 teams across all age groups (grades 2 through 8).  The only age groups with more that one team are the 7th and 8th grade levels.

I thought maybe Rocky Mountain Pop Warner may be pulling teams.  Not from what I can tell.  Kind of hard to get specifics when their schedules are now user id/password protected.  Some of the PW clubs have only three teams. 

When I was on the AYL football board, the Aurora Spartans were at about 70 teams.  Not even close anymore.  I am also seeing a big drop in the number of teams in Parker.  You would think the way Douglas County is growing, there would be an increase.  Not seeing an increase in Castle Rock, either.  It look like HR is fielding fewer teams.  And that is even after taking on the Mustangs after they were dropped from JMFA.

Kids have a lot of options: fall lacrosse, fall baseball, fall soccer, flag football programs...  The list goes on.  Sad to see, really.

Kent

Are kids leaving football to play other sports? Or were they going to leave football anyway and the other sports just filled that void.

I used to fish every Friday. My wife hated fishing because she thought if it weren't for fishing, I would be spending those Fridays with her. She was wrong...those days were always going to be spent doing whatever it was I wanted to do. Fishing just happened to be that thing for 15 years.

That's on her. What the hell did she think was going to happen when she married someone named Seabass?

I coached way back when, at one of the schools mentioned in the Washington Post article.
Since the school opened in 1977 it has had 4 winning seasons, in 40+ years. I was there for two of them in the 1980s. I also had an 0-10 team there.
During that time it has won several soccer, lacrosse, baseball and basketball State championships.

It has a reputation of being a "soccer" school, the community around the school, as far as youth sports are concerned, is a "soccer" community.
For many seasons, half of the football team was made up from kids cut from the soccer team.

The school's current demographics are not favorable for football. Without trying to be stereotyping, the current school population is more than 40% Asian, and most of these kids are not going to play a contact sport. It's just not part of the culture and is not important to the community.