My little brother has a part-time job as a high school basketball coach. He's only 23 years old (in his last semester at Dayton), but he says he's witnessed a huge change in high school sports since when he was in high school.

He's noticed that nearly every student in the student section watches the whole game with their smartphone in their hands. During timeouts, rather than chant or cheer, they're all looking at their phones. He says the noise level is down considerably from 5 years ago.

He thought this was odd until he noticed that over half the parent section is the same way. My Mom went to a few games and said it was weird how people sitting right next to you made it clear that they had no desire to speak to you. She described it as walking the line between unfriendly and rude.

This is a public high school of 1100 students in a wealthy older suburb of Cincinnati. High school sports have always been huge in Cincinnati, probably moreso than any other large city in America (it's comparable or greater even than most small towns I've been in). My brother says attendance doesn't seem to be down from 15 years ago (when I was in school), but people are less into the game.

I haven't noticed this trend at Reds, Bearcats, or Purdue games. I think the difference is that these games are televised so if you're only *slightly* interested in the game you'll just stay at home.

Has anyone else noticed this trend? Are smaller, more local sporting events becoming less popular? Are "casual fans" only going to non-televised games? Are competitive sports in general becoming less popular? Or is this all explained away by the conjecture that people are just less interested in the "here and now" in general these days?

(02-20-2014 09:34 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  My little brother has a part-time job as a high school basketball coach. He's only 23 years old (in his last semester at Dayton), but he says he's witnessed a huge change in high school sports since when he was in high school.

He's noticed that nearly every student in the student section watches the whole game with their smartphone in their hands. During timeouts, rather than chant or cheer, they're all looking at their phones. He says the noise level is down considerably from 5 years ago.

He thought this was odd until he noticed that over half the parent section is the same way. My Mom went to a few games and said it was weird how people sitting right next to you made it clear that they had no desire to speak to you. She described it as walking the line between unfriendly and rude.

This is a public high school of 1100 students in a wealthy older suburb of Cincinnati. High school sports have always been huge in Cincinnati, probably moreso than any other large city in America (it's comparable or greater even than most small towns I've been in). My brother says attendance doesn't seem to be down from 15 years ago (when I was in school), but people are less into the game.

I haven't noticed this trend at Reds, Bearcats, or Purdue games. I think the difference is that these games are televised so if you're only *slightly* interested in the game you'll just stay at home.

Has anyone else noticed this trend? Are smaller, more local sporting events becoming less popular? Are "casual fans" only going to non-televised games? Are competitive sports in general becoming less popular? Or is this all explained away by the conjecture that people are just less interested in the "here and now" in general these days?

I don't think that sports are necessarily less popular, but do believe that there's a trend of lower levels of intensity in terms of following teams combined with that it's just so easy to follow sports without actually having to watch any games (whether televised or in person). I get scores instantly on my phone and can follow the action on Twitter, so it's actually easier than ever to just figure out what's a close game worth watching or one that's a blowout. For those of us that aren't Millenials or younger (I'm a little bit older than that group), being a fan means being a diehard follower through thick and thin and watching games everyday whether they win or lose. For those that are younger, though, I can easily see the standard of being a "fan" shifting to being that you select a favorite team on your ESPN ScoreCenter app to keep track of scores and highlights while getting the relevant commentary from Twitter.

And look, I feel myself becoming guilty of this. It's almost impossible for me to watch a sporting event on TV today without being on Twitter at the same time - the conversation is often more compelling than the game itself. It might be a little different when I'm attending a game live, but when I'm at baseball games in particular, I do instinctively whip out my iPhone to check on other news whenever there's a break in the action.

Maybe the best way to put it is that sports as a whole are more popular (there are more ways to watch and follows teams from anywhere in the world and people have been taking advantage of them), but the weight that we give to any single sporting event (outside of the monster ones like the Super Bowl) is lower than before because there's always a way to watch or follow a better game somewhere else at the same time.

I go to HS games as well and have seen some of this. 3 separate thoughtss... 1. Parents want to be able to say they went. They never did really care about the basketball. Now they have options to entertain them while they sit there. 2. Students just stare at cell phone no matter where they are or what they are doing. This part has nothing to do with sports IMO. 3. None of this has slowed down the loudmouth superfan from screaming at the refs after every block/charge.

(02-20-2014 10:20 AM)uccheese Wrote:  I go to HS games as well and have seen some of this. 3 separate thoughtss... 1. Parents want to be able to say they went. They never did really care about the basketball. Now they have options to entertain them while they sit there. 2. Students just stare at cell phone no matter where they are or what they are doing. This part has nothing to do with sports IMO. 3. None of this has slowed down the loudmouth superfan from screaming at the refs after every block/charge.

Have you gone to a restaurant lately? Everyone is sitting together staring at their phone. I find after we have ordered, my wife is checking her e-mail (or sometimes playing candy crush) and my kids are on their hand held electronics playing games. Kind of reminds me of that Star Trek Next Generation episode where they were all addicted to playing a game.

(02-20-2014 10:26 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(02-20-2014 10:20 AM)uccheese Wrote:  I go to HS games as well and have seen some of this. 3 separate thoughtss... 1. Parents want to be able to say they went. They never did really care about the basketball. Now they have options to entertain them while they sit there. 2. Students just stare at cell phone no matter where they are or what they are doing. This part has nothing to do with sports IMO. 3. None of this has slowed down the loudmouth superfan from screaming at the refs after every block/charge.

Have you gone to a restaurant lately? Everyone is sitting together staring at their phone. I find after we have ordered, my wife is checking her e-mail (or sometimes playing candy crush) and my kids are on their hand held electronics playing games. Kind of reminds me of that Star Trek Next Generation episode where they were all addicted to playing a game.

Good reference, bullet! It's amazing how engrossed in smartphones everyone has become. Even aging curmudgeons like myself have become more and more prone to checking their phones constantly. I do tend to use my phone sparingly at restaurants, and definitely at sporting events (although long commercial timeouts do test my patience - but I never have my phone in my face during game action).

Now I didn't see any cell phones out this past weekend when I went to a bunch of kids rec league basketball games (3rd-8th grade). Everyone was watching their kids or friends play. Of course, if you weren't paying attention you were liable to be hit by badly missed shot or pass. And everyone erupted when a kid who hadn't scored in something like 4 years of playing hit a key basket to give his team the lead late in the championship game.

Regarding pro sports, I can see why you can get distracted. TV timeouts have killed the ebb and flow of the big four leagues, as well as the college game. High school is a bit different, who knows what's going on now. Ask the guys at 21 Jump Street to infiltrate a school and find out why students are on their phones at games.

It is beginning to be like that at a lot of places. I am 22 and I grew up at the very end of the era before social media blew up. I did stats for my football team as recently as 2009 and none of the TV stations had Twitter presences, and they barely used Facebook. 2009 was IMO the last year before social media blew up. Facebook was popular in 2008 and 2009, but only among the younger tech-savvy people.

You had to call the score in to the TV stations and the newspaper, otherwise you had to be at the game or call somebody to get the score, or wait for the high school scoreboard show on radio or television and see if your game came up.

Now, you can get any score from almost any game you want on Twitter. At games, there's still a student presence, but it is not like what it was. It's like that even at the college level. People look at their phones during the game like it's no big deal. The freshmen at these games now were born in 1995. They can't remember a time without some type of technology.

(02-20-2014 10:26 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(02-20-2014 10:20 AM)uccheese Wrote:  I go to HS games as well and have seen some of this. 3 separate thoughtss... 1. Parents want to be able to say they went. They never did really care about the basketball. Now they have options to entertain them while they sit there. 2. Students just stare at cell phone no matter where they are or what they are doing. This part has nothing to do with sports IMO. 3. None of this has slowed down the loudmouth superfan from screaming at the refs after every block/charge.

Have you gone to a restaurant lately? Everyone is sitting together staring at their phone. I find after we have ordered, my wife is checking her e-mail (or sometimes playing candy crush) and my kids are on their hand held electronics playing games. Kind of reminds me of that Star Trek Next Generation episode where they were all addicted to playing a game.

It doesn't remind me of that episode, it is like that episode.

I'm pretty sure 90% of these posts are from Smart phones while at work, Restaurants or while watching TV. BTW the Auto Correct is killing quick response after these Android upgrades. You spend more time having to rewrite everything.

(02-21-2014 06:51 AM)CardFan1 Wrote:  I'm pretty sure 90% of these posts are from Smart phones while at work, Restaurants or while watching TV. BTW the Auto Correct is killing quick response after these Android upgrades. You spend more time having to rewrite everything.

I just use a laptop. I used to get about 120 wpm on the keyboard. You'll notice I have to edit most of my posts. The reason is whole words, if not just letters, magically get omitted and that makes the posts tough to read. So it's not just the Android upgrades. But still I can see how it would really be frustrating using a Smart phone.

(02-21-2014 08:45 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-21-2014 06:51 AM)CardFan1 Wrote:  I'm pretty sure 90% of these posts are from Smart phones while at work, Restaurants or while watching TV. BTW the Auto Correct is killing quick response after these Android upgrades. You spend more time having to rewrite everything.

I just use a laptop. I used to get about 120 wpm on the keyboard. You'll notice I have to edit most of my posts. The reason is whole words, if not just letters, magically get omitted and that makes the posts tough to read. So it's not just the Android upgrades. But still I can see how it would really be frustrating using a Smart phone.

I thought DVORAK keyboards would replace QWERTY, which were specifically designed to slow typists down. But kids hunt and peck on their smart phones pretty fast. And it will go to voice recognition. I use it on most of my smart phone e-mails and texts-and auto-correct is REALLY annoying when I am trying to correct the phone's interpretation.

(02-20-2014 09:34 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  My little brother has a part-time job as a high school basketball coach. He's only 23 years old (in his last semester at Dayton), but he says he's witnessed a huge change in high school sports since when he was in high school.

He's noticed that nearly every student in the student section watches the whole game with their smartphone in their hands. During timeouts, rather than chant or cheer, they're all looking at their phones. He says the noise level is down considerably from 5 years ago.

He thought this was odd until he noticed that over half the parent section is the same way. My Mom went to a few games and said it was weird how people sitting right next to you made it clear that they had no desire to speak to you. She described it as walking the line between unfriendly and rude.

This is a public high school of 1100 students in a wealthy older suburb of Cincinnati. High school sports have always been huge in Cincinnati, probably moreso than any other large city in America (it's comparable or greater even than most small towns I've been in). My brother says attendance doesn't seem to be down from 15 years ago (when I was in school), but people are less into the game.

I haven't noticed this trend at Reds, Bearcats, or Purdue games. I think the difference is that these games are televised so if you're only *slightly* interested in the game you'll just stay at home.

Has anyone else noticed this trend? Are smaller, more local sporting events becoming less popular? Are "casual fans" only going to non-televised games? Are competitive sports in general becoming less popular? Or is this all explained away by the conjecture that people are just less interested in the "here and now" in general these days?

First, I want to acknowledge that the southern Ohio/northern Kentucky area has long been an area that was pretty rabid about sports. The small college in went to in south Mississippi even recruited the greater Cincinnati area heavily for baseball and several of those guys were good in multiple sports. I hate to hear that there may be a possible downturn in interest there.

As far as high school sports here, I haven't noticed any lack of enthusiasm. Since I work in sporting goods, our business success is directly related to player participation and fan support and business has been good. Sales of fan shirts in support of schools is good here and outstanding at the local screen print shops. Nothing I have seen in participation numbers from youth sports, high school or travel teams indicates that interest has waned in south Mississippi.

Fast food, carbonated sugar drinks, air-conditioning, smart-phones and over-stimulating video games and movies tend to make American youth fat, soft, dull and ignorant.

(02-24-2014 10:50 AM)Gray Avenger Wrote:  Fast food, carbonated sugar drinks, air-conditioning, smart-phones and over-stimulating video games and movies tend to make American youth fat, soft, dull and ignorant.

Ageist!!! We old guys can be just as fat, soft, dull and ignorant! In fact, I'd say we have provided the example on how it's done.

(02-24-2014 10:50 AM)Gray Avenger Wrote:  Fast food, carbonated sugar drinks, air-conditioning, smart-phones and over-stimulating video games and movies tend to make American youth fat, soft, dull and ignorant.

And then when they grow up to earn less they vote in block to tax the productive more while blaming them for all of their problems. It reminds me of my favorite mantra which I carefully taught to my daughters. Stay away from stupid people. Stupid people get you killed. Unfortunately the nation can not stay away from that which comprises it. Have a nice day.

(02-21-2014 06:51 AM)CardFan1 Wrote:  BTW the Auto Correct is killing quick response after these Android upgrades.

Get the SwiftKey keyboard, https://play.google.com/store/apps/detai...rial&hl=en . You'll like it much better than the stock Android keyboard.