FCS football moving forward

[MidlandsPaladin]

Relevant to this thread...from today's New York Times:

NFL Pipeline Drying Up

The player pipeline to the NFL is drying up, with fewer kids playing tackle football. In 2018, there were more than 100,000 fewer kids playing in high school than in 2008, a drop of almost 10%. The decrease in the number of younger children playing tackle football is even greater. After more than a decade of stories about the risk of concussions and head trauma from football, more and more parents say the sport is not appropriate for young people.

Football is still the most popular high school sport by far, but as the number of players shrinks and more of the country’s best athletes choose to play other sports, the quality of the NFL will eventually suffer.

This is a major concern of mine about FCS and lower-division football. Is there a point where we run out of enough players to go around?

[Furmanoid]

I think you’ll start to notice it very soon. There will be enough players, but the skill level is dropping fast. Fewer kids go out so there is less competition for playing time, so the kids don’t work very hard. And if a coach admonishes them for not working hard, he’s likely to get fired.

We have had probably a 30-40% drop in participation. Having a B team is almost unheard of now, and we’ve got 1600 students. Aiken High down the road is just as big and they have trouble getting 30 to play varsity. This has all really become noticeable in the last 5 years or so. I think a lot of things are happening at once but one problem is that we really discourage a huge block of kids from playing because coaches believe them to be unathletic without ever seeing them. Of course, they are welcome to play guard.