why is oklahoma hs football not well attended?

[kwash]

i been in oklahoma for 10 years and when i first moved here, you would see tons of coverage on the local news and of course ksbi and cox televise games all the way thru the playoffs. but here in the last 3 yrs or so ive notice a lack of news coverage and once the playoffs come, their is no tv? Also what seems to be the problem in the okc area with attendance, i see tons of games with little or no crowds. i watched pcn/pco one night and their was no one in the stands, norman north vs southmoore and same thing norman north has little ot no one in the stands. it seems to be like this across the board. where is the support for hs football in okc not only with fan attendace but also news coverage?

[mugofbeer]

OKC public schools provide vastly inferior funding for HS sports. Its been this way for 40 years. Public schools in other districts and in rural areas are far better funded than in OKC. This issue includes pay for coaches. While I am not sure I can justify $80 -100K salaries that some coaches get in TX for football, neither can $25 - 30K salaries here in some schools. Equipment, training facilities and overall administrative support in OKC schools lacks for athletics. The other thing that lacks severely in OKC is the ease of availablity of football teams for younger kids. Where in most places they can easily find a team with middle schools, recreation districts or sports clubs, those are much harder to find here. I can give the example of NW CLassen who hasn't won more than 3 games (I believe) in any season for close to 40 years.

[Wambo36]

As far as the TV coverage of the playoffs, this is what I've heard. Approx. 3 years ago Fox SW or FSOK got the OSSAA bid for the playoffs. They decided they wouldn't televise anything but championship games and tried to sell the rights to the other playoff games to KSBI or Cox. They attached a lot of stipulations as to selling advertising that made it not economically feasible for them to buy the rights.
In the end it has hurt the average fan who would have been able to watch or record the games they couldn't attend. Hopefully OSSAA learned something and won't do this again.
The attendance in smaller communities is usually better than in the more urban areas. While my son plays for a team in a suburban school district, I know if the wife and I get to the game any less than 15 min. early, we usually have a hard time finding a seat.

[bluedogok]

There just isn't as much interest in it as there used to be, I think the Jenks/Union domination in the large class has had something to do with it.

When I was growing up it was the other way around. It would be hard to get into PC Stadium when PC-PC West were playing and Taft Stadium when they played each other for the state championship. I think Edmond-Moore, Midwest City-Del City and Moore-Norman were highly attended games as well. Splitting the schools up had much to do with eroding the fan base.

It isn't just OKC, the schools in Austin have just as poor of attendance, the only ones that get good crowds are schools just like Jenks/Union. Large suburban districts that play for championships like Lake Travis (going on a three year winning streak) and Westlake. The smaller towns always draw better because that is central to the towns identity, my wife is from Monahans out near Midland/Odessa, it is a 3A (small division) school and they tend to get more people at home games than most of the Midland schools, when she goes back it is like a high school reunion on Friday nights. Schools like Midland (High and Lee) and Odessa (High and Permian) tend to get higher attendance than most schools in the DFW, Houston, Austin or San Antonio areas. It just isn't that important in the cities because many have no connection to the local high schools, their loyalties are elsewhere.

[rcjunkie]

I think it's mainly a problem in the bigger classes, 4A, 5A, 6A, these schols for the most part are located in bigger towns/cities where there's more options that compete for your dollar. I know in your smaller schools/towns, chances are the almost everyone knows someone that's either playing, a cheerleader, coach, etc;, and tend to support their schools because of those relationships, even after they move away. Teams like Newcastle, Blanchard, Tuttle (go Tigers) fill the stands every game and have a huge following that go to most away games.

[ewoodard]

I would have to disagree with you rcjunkie. Most 5A and 4A schools are not in bigger towns or cities. In 5a you have 8 of 32 teams from Tulsa itself and only 3 from OKC. The rest are from the surrounding areas. Now that Shawnee and Bixby are 6A, you have some of the towns that have shown major growth over the last couple of years moving up.

Next year the 5A districts look like this
5A-1
Ada
Carl Albert (MWC)
Deer Creek (Edmond)
Guthrie
Noble
Southeast
Western Heights

5A-2
Altus
Ardmore
Capital Hill
Chickasha
Duncan
Durant
Lawton MacArthur
Northwest Classen

5A-3
Collinsville
McAlester
Tulsa rogers
Tulsa Kelley (Private)
Tulsa Washington (Booker T.)
Tulsa Memorial
Tulsa Hale
Skiatook

5a-4
Claremore
Coweta
Grove
Pryor
Tahlequah
Tulsa Central
Tulsa East Central
Tulsa Edison

Not all of those towns listed are exactly small but they do generate a large following with the community, because they are the community school. The schools from Tulsa and OKC don't follow as much, because there is no connection to the school or teams.
I know many 4a schools that the town follows the team bus to away games. In 2007 when Guthrie played at Carl Albert for the district championship game on COX the Guthrie stands were full before the teams came out for warm up and BOTH sides were standing room only.

[ewoodard]

As far as the televised playoff games, I heard that FSOK did not make it known that the other two stations could show those games, and when they found out, the restrictions were too costly. My main complaint is the fact that not all championships games are televised. Only the top classes were televised this year. In 2007, the Guthrie/Bixby game was not televised because Jenks/Union were playing in Tulsa on the same night. Why didn't they let COX or KSBI televise the game?

[LIL_WAYNE_2012_PREZIDENT]

OKLhomA IS A BASKETBALL STATE

[bombermwc]

Well that's completely wrong Lil Wayne, but whatever.

Also, the broadcasters just plainly didn't contact the OSSAA. The contract was very clear on what could be done to broadcast a game. It's really just a matter that the stations didn't put fourth the effort to do it last year. They were better about it this year. The cost to broadcast was clear, and the station had to decide if they could get enough support to do that. I believe there was something in the contract about ad revenue as well....you can find it on the OSSAA site if you want to read up on it.

Basically though, I think people are getting more and more lazy. If they can watch games on TV, why go to one? Whether the team sucks or not doesn't seem to mean anything. Look at Midwest City....they have had a good many years of success (especially in the last few), but the stands aren't half full at any game. It wasn't that long ago that the place would have been completely packed all season long (think 94-97). The district hasn't added any schools, so that arguement doesn't really apply here. Now that Del City has started to come back, hopefully that game will fill the stands better as well. Del City's stadium isn't very big so it's always packed for that game, but MWC's is much larger...but you look over the visitor's side (which IS the same size) and it's not nearly as full as the DC visitor's side when MWC comes to play.

[aintaokie]

High School football in Oklahoma?????? "How's about them OU Sooners?" "Go Pokes!" "Did you watch the OU-Texas game last week?" That's all you hear about in Oklahoma. Bring up high school football and the conversation turns to what player will be recruited from Texas by the OU/OSU programs. It's a sorry deal...support you local school sports programs. The kid's need to know we're there for them.....

[soonerfan_in_okc]

tv deal is all fox sports fault. hopefully the ossaa realizes this and wont renew their contract with them. keeping it local with cox or ksbi seems better, because the announcers actually know the back stories to the games.

[Jethrol]

I haven't been into HS sports since I left HS. For some reason it has never appealed to me to go back and watch the old HS players go at it.