I was going through some older issues of Sports Illustrated today and ran across an interesting article on high school football participation. It was right after Andrew Luck retired so they were looking at how people view the safety of football and how that affects participation numbers.
They looked at it from the context of states that supported Trump in the last election compared to states that supported Clinton. That was kind of interesting as well - Trump states saw participation decline by 6.1% over the last 10 years while Clinton states saw participation decline 15.7%. Overall participation is down 9.5% even though the total population has risen 7.5%.
But the part I thought was really interesting was more on a regional basis. The B1G footprint isn't doing well with participation numbers:
Nebraska - down 21.2%
Iowa - down 21.3%
Minnesota - down 10.8%
Wisconsin - down 24.8%
Illinois - down 24.7%
Michigan - down 25.1%
Indiana - down 12.4%
Ohio - down 28.1%
Pennsylvania - down 5.1%
Maryland - down 21.2%
New Jersey - down 18.4%
That's a lot fewer kids to pick from.
The southern states haven't had nearly as much decline:
Oklahoma - up 15.0%
Texas - up 2.9%
Louisiana - up 56.7%
Mississippi - up 0.6%
Alabama - up 45.2%
Georgia - down 0.9%
Florida - down 0.2%
As if they needed any more help. The full article can be seen here.
They looked at it from the context of states that supported Trump in the last election compared to states that supported Clinton. That was kind of interesting as well - Trump states saw participation decline by 6.1% over the last 10 years while Clinton states saw participation decline 15.7%. Overall participation is down 9.5% even though the total population has risen 7.5%.
But the part I thought was really interesting was more on a regional basis. The B1G footprint isn't doing well with participation numbers:
Nebraska - down 21.2%
Iowa - down 21.3%
Minnesota - down 10.8%
Wisconsin - down 24.8%
Illinois - down 24.7%
Michigan - down 25.1%
Indiana - down 12.4%
Ohio - down 28.1%
Pennsylvania - down 5.1%
Maryland - down 21.2%
New Jersey - down 18.4%
That's a lot fewer kids to pick from.
The southern states haven't had nearly as much decline:
Oklahoma - up 15.0%
Texas - up 2.9%
Louisiana - up 56.7%
Mississippi - up 0.6%
Alabama - up 45.2%
Georgia - down 0.9%
Florida - down 0.2%
As if they needed any more help. The full article can be seen here.
