I am a day behind on podcasts therefore I just heard the arguments about soccer vs football. While I will always fully admit football is king, trying to compare attendance of the sports in the high school setting is flawed.
Football starts in September and ends by November pending one doesn't make the state playoffs.
Football is played on Friday nights at a prominent field on campus.
Soccer, however, started late November (from when I played high school soccer in Mississippi) and ran into February. We had games in which ice formed on cleats. I have been away from Mississippi and out of high school now for the better part of 15 years. The weather for the North Mississippi schools was awful for high school soccer.
Additionally, soccer was never played on a routine schedule with games occurring a varying day of the week and competing with basketball, it was difficult for people to possibly know when the games were being played.
Finally, soccer fields for high school games varied in location due to most campuses not having a dedicated soccer field and football coaches refusing to use their field as a multipurpose field to allow soccer to have dedicated space. We would play home games in a few different locations because of the lack of a dedicated field.
As a result of terrible weather(rain and cold), and varying nights of games to include competing with basketball games, Jeffrey's attempt to compare the attendance of a high school football game versus the high school soccer game is invalid, well, flawed to be more accurate.
If the games were played on the same day do I think the soccer crowd would rival the football crowd? Not at all, however, as more and more parents prefer soccer to football and more and more graduates have had exposure to and buy into soccer in the community, the attendance will rise.
Thoughts?
Football starts in September and ends by November pending one doesn't make the state playoffs.
Football is played on Friday nights at a prominent field on campus.
Soccer, however, started late November (from when I played high school soccer in Mississippi) and ran into February. We had games in which ice formed on cleats. I have been away from Mississippi and out of high school now for the better part of 15 years. The weather for the North Mississippi schools was awful for high school soccer.
Additionally, soccer was never played on a routine schedule with games occurring a varying day of the week and competing with basketball, it was difficult for people to possibly know when the games were being played.
Finally, soccer fields for high school games varied in location due to most campuses not having a dedicated soccer field and football coaches refusing to use their field as a multipurpose field to allow soccer to have dedicated space. We would play home games in a few different locations because of the lack of a dedicated field.
As a result of terrible weather(rain and cold), and varying nights of games to include competing with basketball games, Jeffrey's attempt to compare the attendance of a high school football game versus the high school soccer game is invalid, well, flawed to be more accurate.
If the games were played on the same day do I think the soccer crowd would rival the football crowd? Not at all, however, as more and more parents prefer soccer to football and more and more graduates have had exposure to and buy into soccer in the community, the attendance will rise.
Thoughts?
