Behind the Clipboard by Clay Kallam
Competing In Football’s
SHADOW Our volleyball team is really good, and our football team is really bad — but all anyone at our school talks about is football. Why don’t kids watch us instead? We’re a lot better. And what really bothers me is that girls don’t support other girls. They all go to the football games, and only a few of our friends come to our volleyball games. G.D., Santa Rosa
T
here’s a lot to unpack in this answer, but let’s start with a simple historical/anthropological fact: Almost every human society and culture that we know about played some kind of sports, and the players were always young males. Maybe that goes back to groups of nine or ten young men going off to hunt, and being cheered when they brought back dinner for 50, or maybe it’s that young males are more competitive than young females, and we’ve gotten so used to that over the tens of thousands of years of human existence that we just assume that’s how it should be. So first, then, humans are wired, one way or another, to watch young males compete. We are, for whatever reason, not as interested in watching young females do so. And then there’s football itself, the quintessential American sport. It’s obviously violent, somewhat dangerous and a very simple game to watch and enjoy. If the ball is moving in the direction your team is going, that’s a good thing; if it’s going the other way, that’s bad — and that’s pretty much all you need to know to cheer at the right times. Volleyball is a good game as well, but it lacks any element of violence or physical contact, which, like it or not, are both attractive to many people (do action movies sell more tickets than romantic comedies?). But volleyball is fun to watch, full of momentum swings and should be, in my opinion, more popular than it is, for both boys and girls. It isn’t, though, and football rules the roost — though that may be changing. Participation in football nationwide has dropped 6.5 percent since its peak in 2009, while the American population has gone up by 9.8 percent. In fact, fewer boys are playing football now than in 1999, even though the population has gone up 17 percent. From another angle, football ticket sales are down as well, especially in the SacJoaquin Section, with last year’s playoffs generating more than $100,000 less than the 10-year average, a 17 percent drop. Much of that loss of participation can be traced to concerns about concussions and safety, but even at the collegiate level, Northern California attendance figures are way down for Cal and Stanford, compared to a generation ago. That trend doesn’t help you much now, though, as it’s still very likely students will flock to football games and only come to volleyball games in exceptional circumstances. And it’s especially sad that girls don’t support other girls by coming to games, but that’s true of all female sports, really. Women would rather watch young men compete than young women compete, which is just one of those brute facts that can’t really be avoided. So your best bet, unfortunately, is just to keep playing well, keep winning matches and do your best to get more students and adults to come to your games. And if the football team continues to struggle, maybe people will start to realize which fall team is really the one worth watching. ✪ Clay Kallam has been an assistant athletic director and has coached numerous sports at a handful of high schools throughout the Bay Area. To submit a question for Behind the Clipboard, email him at claykallam@gmail.com
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SportStars™
September 2019
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