Unraveling of college football | Page 2 | The Boneyard

Unraveling of college football

It will be a slow bleed, but sure enough the apex of football is behind us. A circular death cycle - Participation rates will decline, the money will drain, the product will deteriorate. At some point in our lifetime football will resemble the sad state of boxing... a shadowy and depressing sport for the old, and degenerate gamblers.
 
Go back to wearing leather helmets and the game will change.

Or begin Rugby programs in high school to replace football, although it's probably just as bad with concussions. Perhaps Hurling will catch on.

I know a college player who gave up his soccer scholarship after experiencing concussions.
 
My son is a D-1 baseball player. He was out the first part of last season with a concussion after getting drilled in the dome.

His girlfriend is a D-1 soccer player. She was out ALL of this season with a concussion sustained in practice.

Players in all sports are bigger, stronger, and faster and they train year round. As a result, any physical contact is bound to result in more serious injuries than we saw 20 or 30 years ago.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
Affluent towns are going to start dropping football altogether because of concussions, and when they do, pressure will build at other towns to do the same. For example, if Wilton, Westport, Darien, and New Canaan drop football, pressure will build on Shelton to follow suit. And if Shelton drops football, that will take the Naugatuck Valley with it. Imagine this same dynamic happening in 100's of counties around the country.

I think there are many high schools that have hired their last football coach, ever. It is insane to think that college football can maintain its popularity with this dynamic at the youth and high school level.
Expand ...

Darien, New Canaan, Shelton, Ansonia, Southington. What do they all have in common. History of championship football at the high school level. I can't speak for the others, but let me tell you about Southington. The Blue Knights football team is a source of civic pride. Football culture is ingrained in this town & has been for generations. There are two youth leagues to serve as feeder programs. As a former coach in one of them, & parent of two sons who played the sport from age 5 through high school, I can tell you with certainty that protocols are in place to teach safety first in concussion prevention & treatment.
That said, once insurance companies price high school sports coverage too high for town budgets, you may be right about dissolving football at the high school level. However, it may be the less affluent towns that drop the sport first.
 
I had to laugh as i had not looked at the dude or Greg twitters in quite a while. Today's GF, BTM the Longhorn network is dead. Espn says model does not work.

Some things never change.
 
.-.
coachcap said:
Darien, New Canaan, Shelton, Ansonia, Southington. What do they all have in common. History of championship football at the high school level. I can't speak for the others, but let me tell you about Southington. The Blue Knights football team is a source of civic pride. Football culture is ingrained in this town & has been for generations. There are two youth leagues to serve as feeder programs. As a former coach in one of them, & parent of two sons who played the sport from age 5 through high school, I can tell you with certainty that protocols are in place to teach safety first in concussion prevention & treatment.
That said, once insurance companies price high school sports coverage too high for town budgets, you may be right about dissolving football at the high school level. However, it may be the less affluent towns that drop the sport first.
Expand ...

Isn't Southington one of the towns that had to merge its town youth league with surrounding towns because numbers were down?

Civic pride is intangible and is for old people. CTE is tangible and is suffered by the young. Middle class and upper middle class white collar families are holding their kids out of football in bigger and bigger numbers. Darien, New Canaan, Avon or a town like that will be the first to drop it, and when they do, the other affluent towns will tip over quickly. Split towns like Southington or Shelton will be interesting. They have a blue collar core but all their growth in the last 20 years has been from white collar families buying mcmansions along the periphery of the towns. They aspire to be like their more wealthy neighbors, and will likely follow suit soon after the Trumbulls and Farmingtons. Ansonia will hold out longer, although it could become economic for them as I doubt the budget is there for big insurance premiums, and they may have trouble finding teams to play.

I would be surprised if some towns do not already require a separate CTE waiver in order to participate in football.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
Isn't Southington one of the towns that had to merge its town youth league with surrounding towns because numbers were down?

Civic pride is intangible and is for old people. CTE is tangible and is suffered by the young. Middle class and upper middle class white collar families are holding their kids out of football in bigger and bigger numbers. Darien, New Canaan, Avon or a town like that will be the first to drop it, and when they do, the other affluent towns will tip over quickly. Split towns like Southington or Shelton will be interesting. They have a blue collar core but all their growth in the last 20 years has been from white collar families buying mcmansions along the periphery of the towns. They aspire to be like their more wealthy neighbors, and will likely follow suit soon after the Trumbulls and Farmingtons. Ansonia will hold out longer, although it could become economic for them as I doubt the budget is there for big insurance premiums, and they may have trouble finding teams to play.

I would be surprised if some towns do not already require a separate CTE waiver in order to participate in football.
Expand ...

No, Southington did Not merge either of its 2 youth leagues with other towns. About 20 years ago, Simsbury wanted to start a youth league, but didn't have the numbers of kids coming out.So for a couple of years, they operated under the Southington Midget Football League until they did have enough kids signing up. Then they went on their own. Southington also started a 7th-9th grade travel team for kids who were too heavy for the youth league requirements.
And while you are correct about the McMansions in Southington, you are wrong about the"blue collar core". Because of its connections with I-84 & I-691, it has become a bedroom community for white collar workers who work out of town.
 
coachcap said:
No, Southington did Not merge either of its 2 youth leagues with other towns. About 20 years ago, Simsbury wanted to start a youth league, but didn't have the numbers of kids coming out.So for a couple of years, they operated under the Southington Midget Football League until they did have enough kids signing up. Then they went on their own. Southington also started a 7th-9th grade travel team for kids who were too heavy for the youth league requirements.
And while you are correct about the McMansions in Southington, you are wrong about the"blue collar core". Because of its connections with I-84 & I-691, it has become a bedroom community for white collar workers who work out of town.
Expand ...


Southington Valley Midget Football League

Looks like they combined with Farmington and West Hartford in the last year or two.

I have some friends in Southington. I know the town pretty well.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
Southington Valley Midget Football League

Looks like they combined with Farmington and West Hartford in the last year or two.

I have some friends in Southington. I know the town pretty well.
Expand ...

That's the VALLEY League. In addition to having its autonomous youth league, it also sponsors the travel team for 7th-9th graders that I mentioned. Farmington & West Hartford are just 2 of the towns that team plays. They also play teams from the New Haven area.
 
coachcap said:
Darien, New Canaan, Shelton, Ansonia, Southington. What do they all have in common. History of championship football at the high school level. I can't speak for the others, but let me tell you about Southington. The Blue Knights football team is a source of civic pride. Football culture is ingrained in this town & has been for generations. There are two youth leagues to serve as feeder programs. As a former coach in one of them, & parent of two sons who played the sport from age 5 through high school, I can tell you with certainty that protocols are in place to teach safety first in concussion prevention & treatment.
That said, once insurance companies price high school sports coverage too high for town budgets, you may be right about dissolving football at the high school level. However, it may be the less affluent towns that drop the sport first.
Expand ...
It doesn't matter because even if New England stops playing football, Texas and south won't for a much longer time. As it is NE recruits are terrible and far and few between respective to southern recruits. Losing NE high school football won't change as much as people think.
 
.-.
nelsonmuntz said:
Southington Valley Midget Football League

Looks like they combined with Farmington and West Hartford in the last year or two.

I have some friends in Southington. I know the town pretty well.
Expand ...

That's only one of the two leagues in town.

It was the weaker of the two back in the day.

You can't know Southington better than Coachcap - his family is an institution in the town.

Southington would be one of the last towns to move away from football in my mind.

After Jude Kelly turned the program around it really did become bigger.

It's one of the few towns in the state where high school sports are treated more like the south. The baseball program is taken more seriously than half the DIII college programs in the country.

The high school population is huge and they don't lose many kids to schools like St Paul's anymore. Certainly not any good athletes.
 
Last edited:
shizzle787 said:
I find it odd Plainville doesn't at least have one team in the league. It is a poorer area, but it still has almost 20,000 people.
Expand ...

I grew up right on the Southington/Plainville line.

The difference between Southington and Plainville today versus the 80's is stark.

That Southington used to play Plainville on Thanksgiving in competitive games seems like a lifetime ago.
 
coachcap said:
That's the VALLEY League. In addition to having its autonomous youth league, it also sponsors the travel team for 7th-9th graders that I mentioned. Farmington & West Hartford are just 2 of the towns that team plays. They also play teams from the New Haven area.
Expand ...


I know you are an expert on Southington youth football, but the travel team is not in that league. It plays in a different league against mostly new haven County opponents, like you said.

Youth Sport Leagues - Southington, CT

The Valley league is the town league, and the numbers are way down, to the point that they had to join up with Farmington and West Hartford. I know one of the other youth sports directors in town, and I have had this conversation with him.

There aren't more football teams, where if you go back just a few years, Southington had enough interest in football to have a 4 or 6 team town league plus a travel team for each grade.
 
Kolumbo said:
Go back to wearing leather helmets and the game will change.

Or begin Rugby programs in high school to replace football, although it's probably just as bad with concussions. Perhaps Hurling will catch on.

I know a college player who gave up his soccer scholarship after experiencing concussions.
Expand ...

Hurling has always been popular among college students. I know I participated more than a few times that I remember and probably a few times that I don't.
 
mrhandyman said:
Hurling has always been popular among college students. I know I participated more than a few times that I remember and probably a few times that I don't.
Expand ...

I know that any time my "team" partook in Jager we all were champions at hurling.
 
coachcap said:
Darien, New Canaan, Shelton, Ansonia, Southington. What do they all have in common. History of championship football at the high school level. I can't speak for the others, but let me tell you about Southington. The Blue Knights football team is a source of civic pride. Football culture is ingrained in this town & has been for generations. There are two youth leagues to serve as feeder programs. As a former coach in one of them, & parent of two sons who played the sport from age 5 through high school, I can tell you with certainty that protocols are in place to teach safety first in concussion prevention & treatment.
That said, once insurance companies price high school sports coverage too high for town budgets, you may be right about dissolving football at the high school level. However, it may be the less affluent towns that drop the sport first.
Expand ...
Not to rain on your parade, but I grew up in FL and can tell you the nights our football team (St Thomas Aquinas Raiders) played, houses emptied, bleachers were over-crowded and the fence around the track was 10 people deep. I have heard the same in TX. I would love the best high-school football team in CT play the best team in FL. Outcome, it would be Kennedy verses the Patriots... and a hush came over the CT High School coaches except for their whining of the opposition running up the score.
 
.-.
Stray_Dog said:
Not to rain on your parade, but I grew up in FL and can tell you the nights our football team (St Thomas Aquinas Raiders) played, houses emptied, bleachers were over-crowded and the fence around the track was 10 people deep. I have heard the same in TX. I would love the best high-school football team in CT play the best team in FL. Outcome, it would be Kennedy verses the Patriots.. and a hush came over the CT High School coaches except for their whining of the opposition running up the score.
Expand ...

Not really. In 2007 Naples beat Greenwich in what was a tough fought game until Naples broke it open in the second half and won 31-12. Both won state titles that year. Reality was that Naples team had some jets and Greenwich had some beef. Speed won, Naples broke a couple big runs, but it was a very respectable showing by Greenwich. I knew a couple of Naples assistants at the time and they said Greenwich was the hardest hitting team they played all year.
 
They're already consolidating football programs all over the state in smaller towns. It'll begin happening in the bigger ones soon enough. Ans then the biggest ones... and then and then.
 
Hoophound said:
Not really. In 2007 Naples beat Greenwich in what was a tough fought game until Naples broke it open in the second half and won 31-12. Both won state titles that year. Reality was that Naples team had some jets and Greenwich had some beef. Speed won, Naples broke a couple big runs, but it was a very respectable showing by Greenwich. I knew a couple of Naples assistants at the time and they said Greenwich was the hardest hitting team they played all year.
Expand ...


Naples won the state championship in 3A that year and were very good for their size...the big boys were the schools playing in the 6a, 5a, and 4a playoffs.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Forum statistics

Threads
168,349
Messages
4,566,521
Members
10,469
Latest member
xxBlueChips


Top Bottom