Grinnell College in Iowa just cancelled the rest of their football season

dagdaj said:
High school participation in football is down 17% in Iowa, from a high in 2007. It's not due to school consolidation.
If the trend continues....football will have to look very different in a decade.
A traditional 4A inner suburban St. Louis school last their team a few years back.
Parway South...one of the largest hugh schools (if not largest) in St. Louis County just forfeited a game in the 4th because of injuries and not enough players. Granted, it has never been a contender in football, but it is a no cut varsity team. Most are around here. Unheard of when I was in school. Just saw that an exclusive private school that is a sometime contender in the lower classes and actively recruits...has just 30 on their varsity team. Down from a usual of 60.

Grinnelk is just on the leading edge of this. We wills see more of it in smaller schools. This will help the higher divisions hold on for awhile, but football is going to have to change.

The game will have to radically change as we know it, or it will end. It sucks. But it's the reality. The paradigm had shifted with parents. The impact is just starting.
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Yea, there may be attrition, but let's be real. It's not just going to continue to go down 17% EVERY year. Like most other things, it will hit a plateau and level off at some point. Yea, the Grinnell's and maybe Concordia's may be gone, but the Central (Pella) and Wartburg's will still be here.
 
cincyhawk said:
It's simple, really. Take the hitting out of the game. Two-hand touch. Blockers cannot use their hands or lower their shoulders. No crackbacks. Dline rushers cannot tackle blockers by lowering their shoulders. Dline rushers cannot use their hands.

First downs are now 20 yards. Field goalposts are now 3 yards apart.

It would be a weird game.
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Dude, I ain't paying $80 a ticket to watch that shit!
 
It's too bad. Injuries in football is just a part of it. They obviously hurt smaller schools that much more. I don't know much about the #s dropping in participation and all that. But it's not at all what it used to be that's for sure. I mean my hometown had like 20ish guys playing HS football and they played 11 man. The 70s was a good time for HS football. I didn't pay any attention to what the larger schools were doing or what that was like. Just didn't care or have a reason to follow it. But NW Iowa small town HS football was awesome.
 
Hawkfnntn said:
It's too bad. Injuries in football is just a part of it. They obviously hurt smaller schools that much more. I don't know much about the #s dropping in participation and all that. But it's not at all what it used to be that's for sure. I mean my hometown had like 20ish guys playing HS football and they played 11 man. The 70s was a good time for HS football. I didn't pay any attention to what the larger schools were doing or what that was like. Just didn't care or have a reason to follow it. But NW Iowa small town HS football was awesome.
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Same here. NE Iowa. My class was I think 60 kids. Always had the perfect amount of kids for sports. No tryouts. Just went and got your damn jersey and started playing. It was great!

Weird when I think about it. Nobody was cut but always seemed to have the perfect amount of players for all sports. 10-12 for basketball, 12-15 for baseball, 30 or so for football.
 
MelroseHawkins said:
Same here. NE Iowa. My class was I think 60 kids. Always had the perfect amount of kids for sports. No tryouts. Just went and got your damn jersey and started playing. It was great!

Weird when I think about it. Nobody was cut but always seemed to have the perfect amount of players for all sports. 10-12 for basketball, 12-15 for baseball, 30 or so for football.
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Exactly. We barely had enough but that was just perfect. I think we had 8 guys in basketball in jr high and 12 when we got to HS. Football we mostly 180ish lb lineman. Our biggest kid was pretty big he was about 250ish but he was it. Our QB was 5'11 150 tops. My brother was a FB and LB he was bigger by his jr yr he was 6'1 215ish. He was a load in the wing T everyone seemed to run back then.
 
Fryowa said:
There was a time when boxing was the most popular sport in America. But eventually (along with other factors) people realized that when you were done with your career you were probably going to be doing the hippie hippie shake and getting spoon fed in a nursing home by age 45. So it's now totally irrelevant to American sports fans. MMA will be next (it's already on the way down), and football will be after that.

It used to be that the mush brainers got kept out of the public eye and nobody really knew about it. Their handlers sent them quietly to assisted living facilities to live out the rest of their sadly miserable lives out of sight so people would remember them at their primes. I often think back to when I was a kid my dad and uncle talking about how sad it was that Ali got "Parkinson's." lol, that guy didn't get Parkinson's, he got his fuckin brain smashed in for decades and it didn't work no more. Gerald McClellan is blind, deaf, and can't comprehend when people talk to him. Freddy Roach is more scrambled than a Denver omelette and he still trains boxers. Georges St. Pierre cries randomly, speaks 3-4 words at a time before he has to pause, and talks about aliens. Matt Hughes has 3 restraining orders against him because he choked his wife, destroyed a tractor his 15 year old nephew was driving, and threatened to kill the nephew. Chuck Liddell...I used to love watching the guy but he sounds like hes had a shot of Novocaine in his tongue and downed a bottle of Tylenol PM. Ask any of those dudes how much of their purses they'd pay back to be able to remember their names and recognize their kids in 10 years.

Kosar, McMahon, Favre, a bazillion other guys are gonna be in nursing homes within 15 years. And that's not the ones who weren't able to hang on like Sash, Seau, Belcher, and on and on. It's why I wished in the other thread that TJ would take his moeny and run. Not because I want to tell him what to do, but I don't want the dude ending up like Sash someday.

Football ain't here for the long haul, folks. And yes, I'm hypocritical for watching it and spending my money on it.
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I truly believe that pay-per-view killed boxing as far as fandom followers. Back in the day high profile bouts used to be on Saturdays on Wild World of Sports. I could probably name a dozen boxers which would include the champions in each wt class and most contenders. ESPN would have nice fights on Thursday night.

People knew the names of the fighters, then pay-per-view came. They wanted their $$$$$$ and they got their $$$$$$, but the average fan lost interest over time because they couldn't connect with the boxers then eventually didn't even know who they were.

IMO, MMA is on this path as all the high-profile fights will be pay-per-view. It will solidify my theory if in 10-20 years it turns out like boxing where most aren't following who don't want to piss around with PPV. They will get paid though.
 
Hawkfnntn said:
Exactly. We barely had enough but that was just perfect. I think we had 8 guys in basketball in jr high and 12 when we got to HS. Football we mostly 180ish lb lineman. Our biggest kid was pretty big he was about 250ish but he was it. Our QB was 5'11 150 tops. My brother was a FB and LB he was bigger by his jr yr he was 6'1 215ish. He was a load in the wing T everyone seemed to run back then.
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This is because in Jr High a school would have a 7th grade team and separate 8th grade team. In my HS, JV was a combination of 9th & 10th grades and varsity was a combination of 11th and 12th, so that makes sense.

You must be talking about in the 1970's the wing T option. The evolved to the Power "I" that I mostly ran when played in the 1980's.
 
MelroseHawkins said:
I truly believe that pay-per-view killed boxing as far as fandom followers. Back in the day high profile bouts used to be on Saturdays on Wild World of Sports. I could probably name a dozen boxers which would include the champions in each wt class and most contenders. ESPN would have nice fights on Thursday night.

People knew the names of the fighters, then pay-per-view came. They wanted their $$$$$$ and they got their $$$$$$, but the average fan lost interest over time because they couldn't connect with the boxers then eventually didn't even know who they were.

IMO, MMA is on this path as all the high-profile fights will be pay-per-view. It will solidify my theory if in 10-20 years it turns out like boxing where most aren't following who don't want to piss around with PPV. They will get paid though.
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PPV is still popular for boxing. Do you know any Mexicans? I'll bet some of them will have or know someone who has that boxing PPV channel because that is the only way to watch Canelo. But boxing's popularity tanked because there is no main stream star. There's no Ali or Tyson carrying the heavyweight division. Watching Mayweather dance for 12 rounds doesn't appeal to most people with $100 to drop on a PPV event. They want to see someone like Tyson shorten some guy's life span.
 
okeefe4prez said:
PPV is still popular for boxing. Do you know any Mexicans? I'll bet some of them will have or know someone who has that boxing PPV channel because that is the only way to watch Canelo. But boxing's popularity tanked because there is no main stream star. There's no Ali or Tyson carrying the heavyweight division. Watching Mayweather dance for 12 rounds doesn't appeal to most people with $100 to drop on a PPV event. They want to see someone like Tyson shorten some guy's life span.
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I realize there is still PPV, that is not the point. The point is that most are not paying for the PPV so their fandom for the sport went by the wayside. People lost touch with the sport and eventually didn't even know who the competitors were/are which kind of plays into what you are stating. There are main stream stars, it's just that nobody knows who they are because they are only on PPV for the high end bouts. Nobody cares to follow a boxer up to that point only to not pay for the PPV and watch the title bouts. They say screw it, I'm not even going to follow the sport anymore.
 
MelroseHawkins said:
I realize there is still PPV, that is not the point. The point is that most are not paying for the PPV so their fandom for the sport went by the wayside. People lost touch with the sport and eventually didn't even know who the competitors were/are which kind of plays into what you are stating. There are main stream stars, it's just that nobody knows who they are because they are only on PPV for the high end bouts. Nobody cares to follow a boxer up to that point only to not pay for the PPV and watch the title bouts. They say screw it, I'm not even going to follow the sport anymore.
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Tyson was on HBO or PPV all the time and everyone knew who he was. Yeah, PPV depresses the number of fans, but without giant paydays that PPV allows, I'm not sure a lot of these guys would be willing to knock themselves senseless.
 
MelroseHawkins said:
This is because in Jr High a school would have a 7th grade team and separate 8th grade team. In my HS, JV was a combination of 9th & 10th grades and varsity was a combination of 11th and 12th, so that makes sense.

You must be talking about in the 1970's the wing T option. The evolved to the Power "I" that I mostly ran when played in the 1980's.
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Yeah our 7th and 8th yrs were separate just like your saying. Our HS had like 4 kids doubling up playing both JV and Varsity though. The classes below me were pretty small and didn't have enough. And they'd suit up Varsity but never really play.

Yup that Wing T was interesting. We weren't all that great at it but we had fun.
 
There must be a way to make the game safer for the players, but I certainly am not intelligent enough to tell you what it is.

I rode on an airplane last year with a guy who is developing a new helmet. I believe he lives in Ames. He said that the helmet would significantly cut down on concussions in football. He did say that the helmet is very expensive to build, which translates into a high price. He also said that it is hard to compete with the current helmet manufacturers.

One of the big problems with the NFL and Power 5 college football is that nobody wants anything to change.....there is too much money at stake.

I really believe that football can't continue in its current form. They have to start protecting the players and they simply are not doing it.

Hock is such a great kid and a great player....a few more concussions like the one he suffered recently and it will really affect his future. Shouldn't the first obligation be to make the game safer for the kids who play the game??
 
ChosenChildren said:
He said that the helmet would significantly cut down on concussions in football.
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Doubtful. The overwhelming majority of football concussions aren't the result of an impact on the outside of the skull, they are the result of the brain bouncing against the inside of the skull. The brain is moving, the skull stops. Similar to what happened to Dale Jr. when he had his career ending concussion a few years ago.
 
cincyhawk said:
Let's say that 280 lbs guy could run a 5.5 second 40 15 years ago.

At today's speed, that guy can hit you with 8296.1317005 N•m/s. 15 years ago he could hit you with 6938.597140999999 N•M/s. That's nearly 1000 ft - lbs / s more. That's 2 F150s per second worth of power more.
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My man with the physics conversions :) I'm afraid most people have no idea what a Newton meter is though. They probably only know that Drago averages 1850 lbs, and that the results are quite obvious.
 
okeefe4prez said:
Tyson was on HBO or PPV all the time and everyone knew who he was. Yeah, PPV depresses the number of fans, but without giant paydays that PPV allows, I'm not sure a lot of these guys would be willing to knock themselves senseless.
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Actually he was one involved right at that transition. Some of his earlier bouts were non PPV and by the time he was done were PPV. He was probably the very last fighter that everybody in the US and World would have known if showed a picture and asked who is this? He was the very last one.

This pretty much says it all after a short search. https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1176221-five-reasons-why-pay-per-views-are-hurting-boxing
 
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Ree4 said:
My man with the physics conversions :) I'm afraid most people have no idea what a Newton meter is though. They probably only know that Drago averages 1850 lbs, and that the results are quite obvious.
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They know what an F150 is, though. It hurts when they hit you. A lot.
 
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