Cancelling high school football

[Macallan 18]

Division III Whittier College recently announced that it is discontinuing its football team, men’s lacrosse and men’s and women’s golf.

One of the decision factors was the declining participation in high school football.

“According to data from the Aspen Institute and the National Federation of State High School Associations, football is in decline across the United States. From 2008-09 to 2018-19, the total number of youth aged 6 to 18 playing tackle football fell by more than 620,000 participants from about 2.5 million to less than 1.9 million. Over the same decade, attendance at top-level college games declined by almost 10 percent,” said a Whittier statement. “Among higher education, Whittier is not alone in evaluating its football program. Over the past 30 years, 14 California four-year colleges, including [Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference] rivals Occidental and CalTech, have dropped football from their intercollegiate rosters. In addition, there is growing concern around contact sports–lacrosse and football—and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease found in athletes and others with a history of repetitive brain trauma. When it comes to the health of our student-athletes, we must take this concern seriously.”

https://www.whittier.edu/news/tue-11152022-340-pm/whittier-college-makes-changes-poet-athletics

[The Sultan of Semantics]

Division III Whittier College recently announced that it is discontinuing its football team, men’s lacrosse and men’s and women’s golf.

One of the decision factors was the declining participation in high school football.

https://www.whittier.edu/news/tue-11152022-340-pm/whittier-college-makes-changes-poet-athletics

No mention of the fact that they've won five games total over the last ten seasons, and haven't won a single game the last two seasons with a 30+ margin of defeat in all but two games.

[JWags85]

No mention of the fact that they've won five games total over the last ten seasons, and haven't won a single game the last two seasons with a 30+ margin of defeat in all but two games.

Additionally, its a school of under 1500 kids that is more than 50% Hispanic.  Id imagine the football centric student dynamic is limited compared to other sports, especially in SoCal.

[TSmith34, Inc.]

No mention of the fact that they've won five games total over the last ten seasons, and haven't won a single game the last two seasons with a 30+ margin of defeat in all but two games.

They kind of did, but obviously there is no point belaboring how bad the football team is/was:

"Admittedly, the Poet programs sunsetting at this time are disproportionately more expensive to sustain than other sports that have thrived and remained competitive within our SCIAC conference. Our goal is to focus on the athletic teams that can be best supported on campus and via conference play."

Whittier is a pretty good SCIAC team in some sports, football obviously not being one of them. Brown, who is also not competitive in a number of sports in the Ivy, did something similar a year or two ago, cutting a bunch of sports that they sucked in and that were expensive.

[MU82]

No mention of the fact that they've won five games total over the last ten seasons, and haven't won a single game the last two seasons with a 30+ margin of defeat in all but two games.

Anybody can have a bad decade.