Football has long reigned as king in Texas, but a new analysis from The Washington Post found that high school football participation in the state went down 14% over the past decade when adjusted for the growing number of students.
While there are still far more high school football players in Texas than in any other state, participation is dropping significantly, with many parents citing concerns about chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
Dave Sheinin, a sports feature writer for The Washington Post, covered this shift in his series “The Divided States of Football.” He joined Texas Standard to share his findings.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: You report on a Washington Post analysis that shows a 12% drop in participation over the past decade. Are we talking just Texas here, high school football, or something else?
Dave Sheinin: Well, no, we’re talking nationwide. But the point of the series that we did is essentially that the rates of decline are not the same all over the country and that there are places where it’s declining more rapidly. And there are some places that are surprising in their declines. And one of those was Texas, where people think football is part of the DNA of the communities. And to some extent, it still is.
But on an individual family basis, families are starting to decide to turn away from football. And I believe the correct number is that there is a 14% decline per capita in Texas. So while the population is growing pretty rapidly, and the football participation stays relatively the same, per capita basis it’s down 14%.
I think a lot of Texans take it for granted, but I wonder how long has Texas been considered football’s epicenter? Where does that come from? It surely goes back to before the TV show “Friday Night Lights.”
It must go back before the TV show because I think that’s why the TV show was set there, because it was the beating heart – and to a large extent still is the beating heart of high school football in America. But, nothing lasts forever. And there are signs of a decline, even in Texas.
So what do these numbers say about the shift in feelings on football? What’s happening?
I spent about a week reporting in Abilene for that piece. The impression that I was left with – overwhelmingly so, and it was confirmed by a lot of people I talked to – is that while high school football remains the king in Texas, and while it still is the one thing that brings communities together and it’s still basically a religion, on individual bases and on family levels, more and more families are turning away from it, and it doesn’t hold the sway it used to on an individual basis.
And partly that’s due to the CTE crisis in football. Many families are deciding that the risk-reward calculus no longer points toward playing the sport.
It also has to do with some demographic changes, different communities moving into the state and different communities moving out. It has to do with universal functions such as kids’ smartphone use and the explosion of activities that are available now. Twenty years ago, every school didn’t have lacrosse, a golf team, a tennis team or soccer. The rise of soccer – you can’t overlook that.
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I know a lot of parents firsthand who have said, “no, my son’s not going to play football.” And they’ve cited brain damage and some of the research that’s been done around that as a result of hard tackles in football and then injuries and that sort of thing. Could you say more about CTE and what the latest is on that front?
The CTE crisis arose around 2010, 2011, 2012. That’s when the first studies came out linking football to CTE. Junior Seau killed himself, and that was a very pivotal moment in 2012. Some of the lawsuits started to happen where ex-players were suing the NFL.
So that coincides more or less with when this decline either started or accelerated depending on how you read the data. But that was a time when football started declining in participation. And you’re right: It’s families weighing the risks and rewards of football and deciding it’s no longer to their benefit to keep playing.
CTE – people associate it with concussions, and concussions are terrible and everything else, but CTE also occurs from just the normal average play-by-play hitting that takes place on every play. And it can build up through these subconcussive hits over time.
What science has determined is that the longer you play, the more at risk you are. And that’s why you’re seeing a lot of families not letting their kids play until they turn 14 or reach high school.
We’ve seen lots of Texas high schools investing millions of dollars in stadiums. What’s happening there? Are they trying to keep audiences coming for football, or is this just part of the progression of football as Texans have known it?
Yeah, you can sum that up by saying that’s America, right? I mean that’s that’s what we do. We build it bigger than the other people. But it’s a self-preservation thing as well. If there’s a dwindling number of players out there, you want to do everything you can as an institution, as a school, to attract those players, those athletes.
And so if the town next to you has a multimillion-dollar stadium with fancy bells and whistles and video boards, you’re going to need to do the same thing to keep pace or to go one beyond. So I think it’s a dwindling number of participants, teams and schools doing more and more to try to attract those athletes.
