“Talk to me, so you can see. Oh, what’s going on,
What’s going on. Yeah, what’s going on,
Ah, what’s going on.” — Marvin Gaye, 1971

What a wild ride it’s been this fall in high school football!

The big news this past week was Kelloggsville dropping football, thereby forcing Hopkins to take a week off and accept a forfeit this Friday evening, an interruption of an undefeated season.

Kelloggsville joins Three Oaks River Valley and White Cloud as teams that have dropped football this year as a sport offered at their high schools. This has a lot of people asking if this is “what’s going on” in arguably America’s most popular sport.

The O-K Silver Conference, despite seven members, started the season with just four teams playing football because Wyoming Lee, Calvin Christian and NorthPointe Christian elected instead to play independent schedules. That left just Hopkins, Godwin Heights and Belding to vie for the league title after Kelloggsville made its exit.

The three “independent” football teams’ representatives indicated their exodus was the result of inability to field enough players and to be competitive. NorthPointe is 5-2, Lee is 2-5 and Calvin Christian 1-6 this fall. One former Hopkins coach pointed out that if NorthPointe would have stayed in the Silver, it would at least be in second or third place.

So the remaining Silver squads had to play each other twice, and actually only once against Kelloggsville, which bowed out of its season with an 0-6 record.

Adding fuel to the fire is the increase in the number of eight-man football teams, which now are more than 70 statewide, replacing the customary 11-man squads. Martin is one of the newest eight-man teams, even after qualifying for the playoffs last year. The first team the Clippers beat this season, Bellevue, also qualified for playoffs in 2018.

But now Martin has joined the Southwest Michigan 8 man Football League, which includes Lawrence,
Bridgman, Lake Michigan Catholic, Michigan Lutheran, New Buffalo and Wyoming Tri-Unity Christian. The Clippers have played and defeated all of them except Lutheran, whom they will face Friday evening, so they’re shooting for an outright league championship.

About 10 years ago there were only eight high schools in Michigan playing eight-man football, but that number ballooned to 64 a year ago and even more this fall.

Furthermore, from 2012 to 2016, Michigan lost 57 eleven-player programs, more than any other state. It has been opined that “the changing football landscape reflects a broader reality in much of rural Michigan: Over the past decade, these regions have lost jobs and residents faster than the rest of the state. Inevitably, that trickles down into the size of high schools and their football teams.”

Over the past seven years, the number of Michigan high school students taking part in 11-player football dropped by more than 7,000, or 16 percent.

More than half of the eight-player teams are located in sparsely populated areas of the Upper Peninsula, the Thumb, the northern Lower Peninsula and along the south central border with Indiana.

So, as Marvin Gaye asked, “What’s goin’ on?”

Besides what’s already  been reported here, football is increasingly regarded as a dangerous sport for those who participate, dangers such as concussions and some parents are getting more reluctant to let their sons play. Football is an expensive sport that requires a lot of equipment and stadiums that need upkeep.

I submit there is another reason that’s been overlooked. Too many smaller teams have fallen on hard times in which they believe they are unable to compete year in and year out. All schools go through ups and downs in win-loss fortunes, but when a losing pattern emerges, it can be difficult to overcome.

Lee, Calvin Christian and NorthPointe Christian all mentioned lack of competitive ability as reasons for not playing football in the Silver. Lee went through an awful drought for a spell and it was difficult to get kids to come out to work hard and practice every weekday and then get clobbered.

The spirit d’ecor eventually can become so low that high school age boys come to believe there are better ways to spend their free time than getting their clocks cleaned, embarrassed and even severely injured.

I can hear the toxic masculinity crowd already advising the boys to man up and get tough, play the game. But at some point the patsy has had enough and decides to go home.

It’s not just the Silver. The O-K Gold in football is notorious for being divided into the haves and the have-nots. The haves consistently include Grand Rapids Christian, East Grand Rapids and South Christian. The have-nots, with only occasional exceptions, are Wayland, Wyoming, Forest Hills Eastern and Middleville Thornapple Kellogg.

Making matters even worse, I don’t have a lot of evidence, but suspicions that recruiting is “what’s goin’ on” to tilt the tablesand make the playing field a bit uneven. Taking advantage of the system by using such seemingly benign devices as Schools of Choice can create long-time advantages for certain schools, resulting in their mercenaries being better than what you have.

I agree with those who say football has lost some of its luster in prep sports because of health dangers and I agree with those who insist rural populations have schools that are facing challenges in finding suitable competition.

But don’t underestimate the role of always getting clobbered by teams that always seem to have better personnel, better facilities and better coaches. It sucks to lose, and it sucks even more to lose over and over and over…