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Certainly in football, you have two separate trends impacting participation rates. First, there is the CTE matter which figures to lead to a decline. Then, there is the "Super team" phenomenon. The top players are congregating at fewer schools. This makes those teams who lose those players unable to compete, which is not merely "not fun", but also leads to even more danger for players. A QB or RB trying to play behind an OL that is getting thoroughly mauled is at much greater risk for serious injury, for example. Players who are not good enough to be desired by one of the handful of elite powers are going to start giving up the sport entirely. Now, there is always the option to follow what we see at colleges. There can be "club" type of sports programs. This allows for teamwork and the general benefits of extracurricular activities to still exist, without schools having to invest as much money for things like traveling to away games, more sophisticated resources etc. The other sports already see a significant-typically greater-influence of specialty academies and/or AAU teams. Many college and pro scouts in basketball actually skip over talking to HS coaches and instead seek out the AAU coach and handlers. I think schools, public schools anyway, are going to see the handwriting on the wall and let the specialty sports academies do their thing for aspiring pro athletes. This will allow them to fully focus on academics. And you won't see kids transferring around. They can just sign on to whatever academy independent of where they attend high school.