August 25, 2012

The future of high school football

My old high school had a mediocre football team while I was there in 1972-1976, but then hired a brilliant coach a couple of years after I left and has been a powerhouse ever since. This year they have a 6'6" 220 pound quarterback from Claremont, a college town 40 miles away (his parents had to drive 160 miles per day to get him to school) and a tailback who won the California track & field sprint championships for 100 and 200 meters last spring.

Lately, they've been playing a late August game against an out of state power. This year they'll play an Arizona team on August 31 ... in Ireland.

Superstaritis.

In recent years, the Catholic schools and the upscale exurban public schools have dominated high school football. You are starting to see isolated examples of high end prep schools running into trouble getting enough boys to go out for football. I noticed that one wealthy private school that a half decade ago had a football team full of huge fast guys brought in from South Central has dropped down to 8 man football this year. I suspect that schools will increasingly have to choose between going all in or getting out of 11-man football.

27 comments:

Carol said...

So, are the kids juicing?

Dutch Boy said...

Be true to your school - 80 miles away?

Dutch Boy said...

addendum: 40 miles away?

Mr. Anon said...

OT: Apple won a billion dollar settlement against Samsung for patent infringement, both hardware and software patents. Imagine that: a billion dollars will change hands, and Samsung may be barred from selling some of it's products, both here and abroad. And it was all decided by twelve people who, in all liklihood, have never heard of ohm's law or who have ever programmed a single line of code.

Anonymous said...

Heh. Reminds me of when some of us Boston College students visiting Ireland stopped into O'Donoghue's in Dublin for a drink. We were delighted to see on the wall photographs from a 1988 game between Boston College and West Point (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Isle_Classic). Happily, spectators at that game would have learnt the same lesson Marty Maher learnt in John Ford's The Long Gray Line- "Never bet against Holy Mother Church".

Anonymous said...

No problem La County will decline faster in sports than other counties. High unemployment means more white will leave more, currently under 10 years old they are under 20 percent of the kids population. San Diego much smaller but a little cheaper and doing a little better job wise and less Hispanic will produce more of the top player schools. San Diego is growing Hispanic slower than La. Orange in between high cost but more jobs might have a slightly lower white flight but also turning minority will still produce some white players, so bye bye La, Hello the other southern counties that might lose less whites and combine populations have currently more whites if you combine Inland, Orange and San Diego they currently have more whites than La.

Anonymous said...

I wonder how quickly colleges and high schools will move to remove potential sexual predators from their sport programs?

Then, how quickly they will do so from among the ranks of their administration?

The risks would seem to be high now that the first suits are coming in in relation to Penn State.

gummy said...

"And it was all decided by twelve people who, in all liklihood, have never heard of ohm's law or who have ever programmed a single line of code."

That may be, but maybe Korea and China shouldn't be allowed to sell anything in the West because they treat dogs and cats horribly. I know Human Rights don't apply to animals, but all people should be humane to animals. So, there should be the principle of Humane Obligation to Animals, but East Asians are vicious, and Chinese and Koreans are worse than even Japanese, those vile murderers of dolphins and whales.

So, we should say, NO MORE CHINESE or KOREAN made products sold in the US unless they stop torturing and killing poor dogs and cats.

And maybe we should boycott all restaurants that sell pork. Pigs are our friends.

Anonymous said...

We gotta see Washington like it's Hollywood. Politicians are like actors. They are hired and paid for. They are not the real power behind the government. They are not the producers and moguls. They do as they'd told and sold.

So, election years are always like smoke screens. It makes us think we are choosing between real players when we are really choosing between puppets.

Who are the producers and moguls of Washington? Who has the real power.

Voltaire said those with the real power are those we are not allowed to criticize. Who do you think those people are?

Anonymous said...

What the heck is going on at Oaks Christian? According to their web site they have 90% overall sports participation, and 50% two-sports participation, including girls.

Whiskey said...

Producers and moguls don't hold real power in Hollywood either anon. The FT calculated that the total return on assets was around, IIRC, 11% for things like rides and games and toys and general merchandising.

Making money making movies and TV series is so quaintly early Twentieth Century. George Lucas did not build Skywalker ranch out of gross dollar participation for Star Wars. He did it off the ... TOYS!

Toys and games and general licensing is what made Lucas rich.

The real power in Hollywood are the corporate ownership that takes advantage of stories written decades before (some more than 70 years ago) by long dead pulp/comic book writers. That's the School board, and to use the HS analogy Tom Cruise, George Clooney, and Brad Pitt are the BMOC.

The real power in DC is driven by the money of crony capitalism, GE, Universities, Silicon Valley, the usual flock of elites.

Felix said...

Yes Whiskey, the real power in DC is driven by industrial and technology companies. Definitely not finance or mass media, and it's a good thing too, for sure, because IF it was the case that the financial and media industries were influential then perhaps a certain persecuted minority might be suspected. But of course-again-it's not the case. No, it's Jeffrey Immelt and some computer nerds. Whew! Them and that darn WASP-Harvard mafia, of course

Anonymous said...

At 6' 6" he is the average height of a Denver Nugget player from a few years ago but wolframalpha says that he is outside the range of humans just like 6' 2" Theodore Campbell of the 1962 West Moreland Little League Series champions 6' 3" Bradley Smith 6' 2" Shandrick Apostel 6' 0" Kotoro Kiyomagi and Skola Juke.
Yes I have probably spelled some of those names incorrectly but I got the heights (which are outside the range of humans!) correct.
Paul Wight was 6' 2" as a 12 year old and it was claimed that Serena Williams was 5' 8" as a 9 year old. Just 3" off the average height of a WNBA player from a couple of years ago so are outliers more common than normal statistics would allow?

Anonymous said...

Comment on Lakeside in Texas, Texas also has a lot of Mexicans but whites are able to afford to moved away from them, so more whites from La moved to Texas if Mexicans don't bother them since they will be further away since they can afford to move away from them. Maybe, this will saved Texas in the long run and some of Texas Hispanics moved to other states as well.

Anonymous said...

Pony League really doesn't help as much as people think. Boys developed later in sports, so if you start your round football in high school it will not hurt you compared to if you start at 8th grade. Whites beat Hispanics mainly because they are bigger. If its a girl soccer player its different since girls developed about 2 years earlier. Even in swimming Missy Franklin is 17 but most guys were at least Jr's in college on the US Olympic swim team, guys get bigger with age while girls don't as much. Same with Track and field but even women don't develop until their college years or older in Track and field.

BrokenSymmetry said...

"gummy said...
"And it was all decided by twelve people who, in all liklihood, have never heard of ohm's law or who have ever programmed a single line of code."

That may be, but maybe Korea and China shouldn't be allowed to sell anything in the West because they treat dogs and cats horribly. I know Human Rights don't apply to animals, but all people should be humane to animals. So, there should be the principle of Humane Obligation to Animals, but East Asians are vicious, and Chinese and Koreans are worse than even Japanese, those vile murderers of dolphins and whales.

So, we should say, NO MORE CHINESE or KOREAN made products sold in the US unless they stop torturing and killing poor dogs and cats.

And maybe we should boycott all restaurants that sell pork. Pigs are our friends."

Carry on like this and you're gonna fail the Turing test.

Anonymous said...

"OT: Apple won a billion dollar settlement against Samsung for patent infringement, both hardware and software patents. Imagine that: a billion dollars will change hands, and Samsung may be barred from selling some of it's products, both here and abroad. And it was all decided by twelve people who, in all liklihood, have never heard of ohm's law or who have ever programmed a single line of code."

Sat on a jury once - a civil case which included allegations of IP theft. It was a relatively small stakes case where neither side felt obliged to ensure the jurors were stoopid. Still, the amount of chaos in the jury room was frightening. It did not increase my faith in the jury system, needless to say - and all of us were white, and most of us had college degrees.

Anonymous said...

This is another red versus blue that prove Sailer's theory. Marin high income only has 64 percent home ownership while middle class Riverside 70 percent. Los Angeles has very low home owership at 48 percent while low income Frenso has 55 percent. If affordability in the Blue areas, then they would become slightly less blue and LA would almost be purple even with the high Hispanic population.

Pat Boyle said...

I don't know if it's still true but when I went to a Catholic High School, we dominated HS football every year. This was Washington DC and even then the big public schools were all black. You would think we could never win.

We won year after year simply because we gave athletic scholarships. The public schools could draw from whatever was their catchment area while we drew from the city, northern Virginia and southern Maryland. Catholic families wanted their kid to go to Catholic school but the tuition was pretty stiff.

Tuition was waived for good players. Bingo. Instant football dominance.

Albertosaurus

Pat Boyle said...

Apple is going down.

Microsoft was turned around single handedly by Bill Gates in his famous "The Internet is a tidal wave" speech. The whole company had missed the Internet. Gates redirected them.

Then Gates retired and Microsoft went into a decade of stasis and drift.

Apple fired Jobs and hired that Pepsi guy. They went into a period of stasis and drift. They rehired Jobs and Apple roared to the top.

But Jobs died. There is a new technological opportunity every two or three years. Apple without Jobs will likely miss the next one.

Albertosaurus

Anonymous said...

"Voltaire said those with the real power are those we are not allowed to criticize. Who do you think those people are?"

Jews.

Anonymous said...

Apple fired Jobs as he was a distraction and Sculley saw an increase of the share price by 50%.
Apple then did as Apple did and rested on their laurels wasting money designing new operating systems and cancelling them because that was Apple being Apple. Sculley had successfully delayed bankruptcy on his watch and the guys who followed him were not.
NeXT was bought to bring Apple a new modern operating system and in 2001 it was delivered.

Anonymous said...

I can't see why public schools should offer competitive football, or any sports for that matter. In Japan, IIRC, the schools have no sports. Kiddie/teen sports leagues are run by corporate sponsors instead.

Anonymous said...

Well, California population is aging faster than Texas, except for sports like beach volleyball or water polo, I see the rise of Texas over California in a lot of kids sports. Both are getting more Hispanic but Texas is still a little more white and younger. If one looks at the US Census even in the recession white folks are moving to somewhere else. Sports do best in suburbia, so cheaper housing give the edge to Texas. Texas Universities usually spent more money on college sports as well.

Anonymous said...

Voltaire said those with the real power are those we are not allowed to criticize. Who do you think those people are?

Jocks, tards, and every possible combination of both.

Evin Demirel said...

"I suspect that schools will increasingly have to choose between going all in or getting out of 11-man football."

YES. And this causes rifts in which the football-crazed contingent creates its own "academy" dedicated to the sport. The kids take classes online and convene in person only for the sake of the sport.

Here's a glimpse into this future:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/magazine/08/22/high-school-football-virtual-powerhouse/index.html

Anonymous said...

Again not on football but Sailer's housing. The Counties in Ca that vote more Republican than the large counties in Texas have more home ownership. Orange at 60.8 and Riverside at 70.0 and tiny Placer County 72.9 percent. In Texas, there is high ownership in very poor hispanic counties which I will not count. The Democratic Counties of Texas have the following home ownership 57.8 for Harris county a lot of Hispanics and blacks. Dallas County 54.7 percent home ownership Travis home of liberal Austin only 52.7 percent. Also, San Diego in California more white non hispanic than Orange County at 48 percent versus 43.5 has less home ownership at 55. This explains how San Diego less minority than the OC is becoming a purple county faster than Orange County. So, if Chuck Devore tells people to moved to Texas because Republicans ruled then you should check the home ownership. For a Riverside or Orange County person that would be a county like Collins Texas over 70 percent ownership not any of the big city counties that actually have home ownership below Riverside or Orange County.