Long Island high school football players are down 30% in a decade. Here's why.

The number of high school football players on Long Island dropped 30% in a decade, a Newsday analysis found, with researchers blaming the decline on parental concerns about long-term head trauma.

Middle school football participation lost an even greater share of players. An athlete pool that eclipsed 5,300 has been nearly cut in half in 10 years, representing what officials called an ominous sign for schools already struggling to field a varsity team.

Three Long Island high schools — Amityville, Port Jefferson and Holy Trinity — canceled their varsity football season this fall because they couldn’t find enough players, sending the remaining athletes  scrambling for other places to play.

The most recent school sports participation numbers show the beginning of what could develop into a crisis for the football faithful: at a time when professional football is thriving, fewer young athletes are donning uniforms, pads and helmets across Long Island. The decline threatens football's place as one of Long Island's premier high school sports while signaling a parental shift to safer alternatives such as flag football.

Long Island’s decline is nearly nine times the rate in high school football participation nationally over the same time frame, according to figures released Sept. 10 by the National Federation of State High School Associations.

"Parents started saying this could screw up my son and maybe he won’t be what he's supposed to be if he keeps accumulating all these hits on his head," said Brian Harmon, of Miller Place, a father of two former youth football players.

Harmon also played in high school and college in the 1980s, so it was an easy decision to sign his son Danny up for youth football "because of my love of the game." But he had second thoughts when he learned about long-term head trauma in the early 2010s and thought about how his son was nicknamed "assassin" and terminator" because of his style of play.

"You get those names for a reason — it's because he liked to hit, and he hit a lot," Harmon said.

His son stopped playing football after his freshman season in 2013, a year after being taken off the field and placed in an ambulance following a big hit. Since then Harmon said he also discouraged his stepson, now a high school senior, from playing football. He hopes his grandson won't play, either.

'Way more awareness now'

Newsday obtained Long Island's participation figures exclusively from the New York State Public High School Athletic Association, which annually surveys schools statewide about the number of students playing each sport. Researchers say Long Island's drop in the number of football players is amplified by a declining overall school enrollment, a changing demographic of residents and rise in youth sports specialization, where athletes focus on playing one sport year-round.

Researchers point to the moment 15 years ago when thousands of former players filed a lawsuit accusing the NFL of deliberately covering up the dangers of head injuries. They say that was the catalyst for parents to begin questioning whether they would allow their children to play the game.

The NFL has paid the former players more than $1.7 billion via an uncapped settlement fund established in 2015. The settlement provides former players and their beneficiaries with monetary awards based on their age and diagnosis, such as ALS, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

"There's just way more awareness now than there used to be with concussions and head injuries, and I think that’s affected all kinds of parents," said Andrew Lindner, a sociology professor at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, near Albany, who has studied football participation.

Through nationwide polling, Lindner found in 2023 that college-educated parents who live in more affluent areas like Long Island "are not only paying closer attention to news about concussions, but they’re also less inclined to let their own kids play tackle football."

Billy Kretz quarterbacked Amityville to a Long Island title in 1999 and returned to coach his alma mater in 2014, calling it "my dream job." But he spent the next eight seasons struggling to build interest in the team. He stopped coaching there after the 2021 season.

"There are certain pockets of communities that are sustaining it and there are others that are really struggling," said Kretz, who now coaches at St. Anthony's in South Huntington. "It sucks to see."

Kretz said he agrees the decline in the number of players isn't about a single issue. Concern over head injuries, falling enrollment, changing demographics and the rise of specialization are contributors, he said.

State records show student enrollment in public schools on Long Island is down 6% in the last decade.

"I hate seeing it," said Pat Pizzarelli, executive director of Nassau County Public High School Athletic Association. "I’ve been involved in football for a very long time. It’s my passion."

Noting that he’s been around the game as a player, coach and administrator for nearly his entire life, Pizzarelli credits lessons he learned from football for instilling a work ethic that keeps him motivated and energized to work at age 71.

Pizzarelli acknowledged there are injury concerns inherent in the game. "I know I got my ... bell rung, and I remember seeing stars many times," he said.

But he said he strongly believes parents do not understand that concussions are an issue in all contact sports, and that football is considerably safer than when he played.

He said coaches now run practices in ways that reduce the head injury risk and teach tackling by leading with your shoulder. "Your head should not be involved," he said. "See, when I played, your head was involved in everything."

'A complicated issue'

But researchers said the challenge facing football is that many parents have already made up their mind and pushed their children to other sports.

"It seems to me that increasing awareness of the health risks of football, including widespread sharing of recommendations from pediatricians to eliminate tackle football for kids under the age of 13, is really encouraging a decline," said Chris Knoester, a sociology professor at The Ohio State University who also has studied participation trends.

He said declining football participation is "a complicated issue" influenced by parental opinions and interests that run down cultural, political and socioeconomic lines. But the debate typically begins with head injuries, he said.

High school football coaches and administrators said they believe issues beyond head injury concerns also are impacting participation.

Pizzarelli said he believes Long Island’s changing cultural demographics is a big reason for the decline. Long Island residents with connections to Central and South America, where American football is less popular than soccer, have risen by about 100,000 between 2014 and 2024, according to U.S. Census estimates.

The coaches say the pressure on high school athletes to prioritize one sport has left football without many athletes who in previous generations would have donned pads and helmets in the fall before playing other sports the rest of the school year. 

Christopher Bjork, an education professor at Vassar College in upstate Poughkeepsie, wrote a book about youth sports titled, "More Than Just a Game." He described specialization as a "huge" issue that has negatively impacted all high school sports, not just football.

While he believes high school football participation's downward trend stems from long-term head-injury concerns, Bjork noted that private leagues have removed some cachet from high school athletics.

"The status of high school sports has gone down as these travel programs have become more popular," he said.

'Less popular individually'

Long Island’s steady drop in football players also comes at a time when the NFL has not only survived its concussion crisis, but has become the most popular sports league in the country.

Television ratings are surging. Nielsen said NFL games ranked as 46 of the 50 most-watched programs on television last year. Team valuations are skyrocketing. Forbes values NFL teams between $8 and $17 billion. And the league has become a global affair, scheduling regular-season games from Madrid to Australia.

And yet, fewer athletes on Long Island play the game.

"It doesn’t seem like a sport should be becoming more popular socially and less popular individually, that doesn't even seem possible in a sense," said author Chuck Klosterman, whose work focuses on American culture. "But that is what's happening."

Participation in tackle football in high school is down 3.5% nationwide in the last decade, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.

Klosterman wrote a nonfiction book released this year titled, "Football," that explores how the game became engrained in American culture. He said he views football nowadays "more as a television show than a sport."

It doesn’t seem like a sport should be becoming more popular socially and less popular individually ... but that is what's happening.

— Chuck Klosterman, author

He said he believes the seemingly one-time omnipresent conversation about whether parents should allow their children to play the game impacted participation.

Klosterman questions whether football could one day become the next horse racing or boxing — sports that once were ultrapopular before losing some of its cultural relevance.

That is an awful thought for Buddy Krumenacker, the 78-year-old coach of Farmingdale’s football team. He has spent his entire life around the game on Long Island and is adamant that it’s the sport best suited to set up teenagers for success in life.

"I believe it's all about work ethic," Krumenacker said, noting how a football team spends far more time working together in practice than  playing in a game.

Krumenacker is retiring after this season after 58 years as a high school football coach on Long Island. He said seeing the number of athletes on opponents’ sidelines dwindle over the years saddens him. He said he believes the game best prepares a teenager to become a hard-working adult,

"Football’s a man maker for one reason, and not because you hit people," Krumenacker said. "Football's a man maker because you’ve got to work all week to finally get to game day, just like you’ve got to work all week to get paid."

Paul Mastronardi, the first-year coach at Amityville hired before the season was canceled a month ago, has coached high school and college football across Long Island since the 1980s.

He said he has spent this season recruiting students to join the junior varsity football team. "I'm talking to anyone who can walk and chew gum," he said, while adding that he works one day a week with the middle school team.

Mastronardi said he is confident varsity football will return to the South Shore school district.

"It would've been very easy to say we don't have the numbers and to just get rid of it," he said. "That's not what's happening here."