If the scores don’t substantiate it, some are turning to the eye test with their concern that high school football could soon be following the example of competitiveness in high school baseball. Like baseball, are there enough athletes for seven divisions…of anything?
The numbers don’t lie. Or in this case, the scores.
A scan of last Friday’s football scoreboard posted on Press Pros tells the dirty little secret about the diminishing competitiveness in high school football in Ohio. And if you dig you’ll find others who express the same fact about football across the nation. The scores are increasingly lopsided.
But are they lopsided because “there aren’t enough athletes to make seven divisions of football competitive?” This from a Scioto County reader in a weekend text who questioned in the MAC Conference, alone, four of the five contests from last Friday night were decided by margins of 28 points, or more.
Publisher Sonny Fulks writes OHSAA and Ohio State sports for Press Pros Magazine.com.
Taking a deeper dive, considering the MAC, the Miami Valley League, the Three Rivers Conference, the Western Ohio Athletic Conference, and the Central Buckeye Conference,” he added: “Did you know that 16 of the 25 games posted were determined by margins of four touchdowns, or more?. And ten of the 16 were five touchdowns or more.
“It’s ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. And the teams in the middle finish 5-5, and still make the playoffs. What has happened to football?”
Fair question. The National Federation of High School Sports recently reported that the overall numbers of football participation are up, nationally.
“But how can that be?” a former OHSAA representative recently shared with me. “Who’s doing the counting, and what are they counting?”
“Look at the number of schools that used to dress fifty and now dress thirty kids for football,” writes Dan Burcham, an avid Ohio high school football follower for forty years. “And look at the number of schools that no longer have enough kids to play JV games on Saturday morning.”
It’s an issue that’s been a decade or more (2013) in the making, when the OHSAA expanded from six to seven divisions…along with concerns that high school football is swimming upstream in regards to questions about cost, safety, and changing cultural priorities.
“Football is a mindset. You have to have it, and it’s hard to get it back once you lose it.” – Al Hetrick
“What happens when people don’t care enough to teach the values of playing football?” the late Al Hetrick, from Versailles, said to me after the expansion to seven divisions. “What happens when you lose that invincibility on Friday nights? Football is a mindset, and you have to have that mindset. And once it’s gone it’s awful hard to get it back.”
Hetrick won 334 games and six OHSAA state titles during his three decades as head coach of the Versailles Tigers, a program he built into one of the most dominant and respected football schools in the state – his tenure the genesis of the term ‘Tigerball’. Hetrick retired in 2005, and not until 2021 did the Tigers again win a state title under current coach Ryan Jones…a span of 16 years and four head coaches. In Hetrick’s words – it is hard to get it back.
Regarding the ‘haves’, in Ironton, home of the 2024 Division V champions, that school dropped out its Ohio Valley Conference affiliation last year for lack of competition. “We just couldn’t get where we wanted to be playing the people in our conference,” said coach Trevon Pendleton.
The Tigers turned to four teams from out of the state of Ohio, along with select in-state programs (including three local teams) to make up their new independent schedule. They then proceeded to win their third OHSAA football title, defeating Liberty Center in the Division V Final.
But football isn’t alone, and those concerned can look as close as diminished profile of high school baseball, the issues creating its demise, and the concerns of many (including this writer) over whether amateur baseball will ever close its own gaps between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. Those willing to speak on that topic, like Hetrick in football, point to leadership in the communities where baseball presently struggles to fill uniforms.
“It takes men that are committed to baseball,” says former Shelby County coach and umpire, Steve Partington, now retired and living in Florida. “You look at what baseball used to be in the Miami Valley when you had men like Jim Hardman and Rick Gold (Piqua), Bruce Cahill (Tipp City), Tim Engleka (Centerville), Lou Brunswick (Coldwater), Bill Sturwold (Fort Loramie), Dave King (Sidney), Frosty Brown (Bethel), Tom Randall (Kenton Ridge), and Bob Davis (Tecumseh). How many others do you want me to name? Every one of them is a hall of famer. When those men were gone what happened to baseball at those schools…in those communities? When was the last time anyone ever mentioned baseball and Tecumseh High School in the same breath?”
“You have to have dads in the home to spend early time imprinting boys with baseball before there’s competition to do other things that are easier. It’s grass roots stuff.” – Mark Brunswick
“And it takes dads,” says now retired hall of fame Bellefontaine and Marysville coach – son of the legendary Lou Brunswick – Mark Brunswick. “And some schools are always going to have that advantage where they’ve maintained a community expectation.
“You have to have dads to spend early time imprinting boys with baseball before the point where there’s competition to do other things that are easier. It’s grass roots stuff. We don’t have as many dads now that played sports and share that experience with their kids.”
Along with leaders committed to support the profile of amateur sports above cell phones, video games, and the internet.
“You have to have the Chuck Ashers, Dave Haines, Steve Nolans, Bob Heils, Bill Neeses and Charlie Burgbachers,” says Partington. who maintains that each of them benefited from fewer divisions of football in their day.
And better football, by the looks of more noncompetitive scores, running clocks, and questions over telling the truth about participation.
It can all happen to a school near you…if it hasn’t happened already.
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