High school football in Western Pa. is endangered

… is 7 or 8 man football on the horizon? 

In September, Mike White, who leads the high school sports coverage for the Post-Gazette, wrote a story entitled "Endangered species" about high school football in Western Pa., which used to be one of the hotbeds of the sport back in the 1970s and 80s.

Back in those years, look at the great NFL QBs who had come out of the area: Dan Marino, Jim Kelly, Joe Montana, all NFL Hall of Famers.

Add in Jeff Hostetler, who led the New York Giants to a Super Bowl victory in relief of Phil Simms, and the future seemed endless.

Thirty years later, White points out that the premier high school football conference in the state, the WPIAL, may be declining. His story about endangered species had a subtitle: "Freshman football in Western Pa. fading."

White points out that just 18 WPIAL programs -- out of 122 -- have a freshman team, once thought of as a chief developmental building block for high school teams.

White quotes WPIAL Executive Director Tim O'Malley as saying that the elimination of the freshman programs is "alarming."

The story notes that the WPIAL had 34 freshman programs three years ago, 89 in 2003, a drop of 80 percent in that time.

White notes that "the main reason for the abolition of ninth-grade teams is declining participation. It is hard to field a team when the number of freshmen players barely reaches double digits."

Why is this taking place? "And everyone from coaches to athletic directors will tell you one of the main reasons for declining participation in football at all levels is fear of concussions. According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, there were 29,000 fewer high school players last year than 2008," White notes.

Declining population

The change can be seen not so much through the prism of concussions than through that of bodies. After growing significantly through the first half of the 20th Century, the population of the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area has been declining since the 1970s, due in large part to the demise of steel and ultimately coal.

In just the past six years, the Pittsburgh Metro area has declined from the 22nd largest in the country to the 26th based on numbers released in March.

That is a major part of the equation in Western Pa.

First, the drop in population for Pittsburgh was minor back in 1980, but over the years, it has been consistently decreasing.

To understand this on a statewide scale, a breakdown of school enrollment in Pa. over the past nine years indicates that in eight of the nine areas of the state, enrollment has declined. Only in metropolitan Philadelphia has it seen an increase.

Overall, the decline in enrollment in public schools in Pa. has reached almost three percent in less than a decade. For our area of central Pa., including Cambria, Blair, Somerset, Bedford, Centre, Clearfield, Fulton, Huntingdon, Juniata, and Mifflin counties, that decline is 6.5 percent.

Eight man football?

However, some states have dealt with the reduction in numbers in other ways. For instance, Nebraska has an 8-man football program that lists approximately 104 high schools in it.

Is that where Pa. is headed over the next ten years? Is that where the WPIAL is headed over the next 20 years?

2016 Area Public School Preseason Rosters on MaxPreps

Ferndale 32

Blacklick Valley 24

Conemaugh Valley 26

Windber 34

Shade 30

Portage 40

Link

Decline in enrollment

https://pennbpc.org/sites/pennbpc.org/files/Public-School-Enrollment-by-Region.pdf