Why are so many high school football teams canceling games?

Game cancellations happen in high school sports for a variety of reasons. Nearly all are swiftly handled by the schools without help from the MIAA.

In recent weeks, however, MIAA executive director Bob Baldwin couldn’t help but notice the rash of football forfeits.

“When you have some pretty high-level schools that have some [large] populations that are having to cancel games,” he said, “that is something that you have to take note of.”

Here is the “who” and “what” of the matter:

In the weeks leading up to the playoffs – the brackets for which were released Sunday – both large, suburban Lexington High and tiny, rural Quabbin Regional each forfeited a pair of contests, including Quabbin’s homecoming game. Saugus canceled against Gloucester, Southbridge against Keefe Tech, and Millis against Bellingham. Manchester-Essex also dropped a game against Malden, which would have been its senior night.

As for the “why” … that’s a bit more nuanced.

Player safety was the catch-all term the schools used. They had too many injured players, or too few healthy ones, to field competitive teams. At the times of their cancellations, those seven schools were a combined 2-32-1, and five of them were winless.

One athletic director cited parental backlash as the reason they didn’t want to talk on the record. Their program had 17 healthy players, the majority of whom were freshmen. Some of the missing regulars had long-term injuries, a few were hurt the previous week, and others had quit playing.

“I’ve seen teams take intentional bye weeks just to get healthy,” the athletic director said, assessing the state of things. “You wouldn’t have seen that 15 years ago.”

Another one of the ADs pointed to declining school enrollment, which is at a 30-year-low in the state, and mirrors a declining birthrate; a lack of a football feeder system in their town; and a greater indifference, post-COVID, on behalf of students toward sports they won’t continue to play after high school.

That AD, who has more than 20 years’ experience, said they have never seen such a gap between the haves and have nots in Massachusetts football.

We do still have robust football communities, where attending the weekly games is a sacred ritual, preseason tryouts are jam-packed, and the Thanksgiving smack talk is already flying.

Those places are fewer and farther between.

In Massachusetts, the football-playing population is down nearly 16 percent since 2008, which is double the national average (a 7 percent loss). We are seeing former Turkey Day rivals, like Littleton and Ayer-Shirley, join forces as co-ops just to stay alive. Other programs have considered shifting to eight-player football. Schools of all sizes and towns of all types are struggling to find football players.

Other sports don’t seem to have these issues. Massachusetts ranks fourth nationally in extracurricular sports participation among children ages 6 to 17, with 68.2 percent of kids on a team or taking lessons.

The elephant in the room is concussions. New research from Boston University last week showed in grave detail the prevalence of the devastating neurodegenerative disease known as CTE in former NFL players. You may know parents who, on behalf of their children, just say no to contact sports.

These days in Massachusetts, someone who says, “I would never let my kid play football” seems far more likely to hear in response, “Neither would I” than “What? Why?”

In a phone interview about the place of football in our high schools, Baldwin acknowledged the situation, but he believes football still sets the tone. “If you want to have a great year in your high school, you need to have a successful fall season,” he said. “At the forefront of that is your football program.”

Baldwin also seemed reluctant to overstate the impact of concussion fears on the student-athlete population.

“As a parent, my guess would be that has to be one of those thoughts, right?” he said. “[Concussion research] is known, and in the past it wasn’t known. My guess would be in certain communities, there might be some parents who make some conscious decisions that say you’re doing this, you’re not doing that. I don’t have any real data on that, but it’s certainly much more. [Awareness is greater], for all the right reasons.

“I would say it’s one of the many many factors that could be a part of this. But I wouldn’t categorize it as the biggest factor by any means.”

He suggested several other issues that were playing a role in the downturn, including:

• A decrease in coaches who also teach on campus, and thus can both recruit athletes and become a strong presence in their lives.

• An increase in school choice, including the rise of private, charter, and vocational schools, that lowers public enrollment. Baldwin said administrators can no longer expect that middle-schoolers in town will attend the public high school.

“We all have to show our worth and our value,” he said, “because individuals are making choices on what’s best for them, and some of those choices are not football or sports.”

• A need for better leadership: “I’ve seen some programs in the past that are on life support and barely making it,” he said, “and then all of a sudden there’s a change in the leadership of the program or how the program is put together, and now there’s 60 to 80 kids on the team.

“So the leaders are out there, and they need to step forward and keep leading.”

Baldwin has faith that football can thrive here, even with reduced volume. He mentioned an eight-man division as a possible solution for some. “If our football committee feels that’s something we can do to sustain ‘Friday night lights’ for all those right reasons, let’s not [dissolve] a program,” Baldwin said. “Let’s find a way to adapt to the times.”

He offered a flat “no” when asked if football’s time as the premier varsity sport in Massachusetts has passed. There are too many strong teams, he reasoned.

But nothing is promised, even to the elite.

“If you really want it to stick, you’ve got to build everything, man,” Baldwin said. “You’ve got to keep fighting and selling everything that you want to grow. You can’t get complacent – and I’m not saying anybody is getting complacent, but it’s hard. It’s different than it was.”