“You always want to be careful calling something a ‘peak,’” Pielke said. Though Pielke is careful about ascribing direct causation, he notes that the biggest drops occurred after the 2012 suicide of Hall of Fame linebacker Junior Seau (who was later found to have C.T.E., the degenerative disease linked to repeated blows to the head) and the release of the movie “ Concussion” in 2015. The sport drew 1.03 million participants in 2017.

But since 2009, when a record 1.14 million athletes participated in 11-player high school football, interest has fallen. That aligns with national data collected by Roger Pielke Jr., director of the Sports Governance Center at the University of Colorado, who has been studying the decline in football participation.įootball remains the nation’s most popular sport for boys ages 14 to 17. The primary reason New Jersey’s proud high school football tradition is plunging toward irrelevancy is the growing concern about head injuries, many coaches and administrators said.

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