Originally Posted by Raisor
I think we may have seen this effect sooner had teams like UC, Illinois(who isn't very good but Zook has recruited like crazy) and other northern schools been able to crack the wall sooner. I think if you go back to say 2000, Michigan, tOSU, and tPSU were the big three in the Great Lakes region, and there was no true dominant team in the Upper Plains(Kansas, Nebraska, etc.)
So while the SEC teams may have had more local talent, the migration of people started much sooner, there were more SEC(and southern Big 12) schools competing for the talent. You had Florida, Georgia, LSU, Tennessee was still very relevant, Auburn would go undefeated and Texas and Oklahoma were on the western edge of the Sun Belt to scalp off anyone else.
As the decade progressed, schools like Louisville, than UC, and others became much bigger players for local talent, and tOSU and Michigan could no longer reliably pick up any player with talent in it's own region.
This sentence surprised me.It's not just population decreases. In my hometown area of Central Ohio, voters vote down most tax levies. So many districts there have been forced to go with pay-to-play, which has cut the number of kids going out for football. Some once-strong programs there are now struggling to win 3 games a season. There are definitely fewer kids in that area playing football. It must not be that way all over the state.According to the Ohio High School Athletic Association, the number of schools sponsoring football in the past decade effectively stayed steady (720 in 2008-09, up from 708 in 1998-99) but the number of students playing football rose by 30 percent to more than 55,000.
/r/reds
I think it's more of a population shift. The difference you see is that some of the suburban programs have gotten a lot stronger relative to big city/older suburban programs. I think most people with school age kids have either moved out of troubled urban districts or send their kids to the Catholic schools. Those that stay probably do what parents with football-minded kids in Cleveland do, find a way to get their kids into the high school in the district with a strong football program, like Glenville. That leaves the rest of the high schools fighting for leftovers among kids who can afford the pay-to-play programs.
Wear gaudy colors, or avoid display. Lay a million eggs or give birth to one. The fittest shall survive, yet the unfit may live. Be like your ancestors or be different. We must repeat!
I read last night that Massilion HS team in 1940 (Paul Brown coach) drew over 180,000 fans in 10 games and regularly had 2500 people at booster dinners
Massilion HS is an interesting yet sad case. My in-laws live up in that area and we drove by the stadium one night on the way to dinner. To say the least it was impressive not to mention the indoor practice bubble that rivals many college and pro facilities. But what isn't mentioned is their inability of difficulty to pass levies to help with teacher pay and other academic issues. Then you take into consideration that Massilion really has been an afterthought in Ohio HS football over the past decade or so and its even more shocking. They sure do love their Tiger football though.
I wouldn't call Massillon an afterthought. They're a consistent playoff team and every few years they make a deep run. I think they even played in a title game recently. Massillon is still one of the most successful public high school programs in the big school Ohio division. All divisions really. After Coldwater and Marion Local, not many public schools in Ohio have the consistent success of Massillon.
It has more to do with the invention and development of computers and video game systems. In my opinion of course.
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