High School Football in Tampa area is a JOKE

[181pl]

* NO effort to reschedule the dozens of games cancelled. Our AD should be fired. The administrators don't care to try to make games up because they are too lazy to work on Saturdays and too cheap to provide buses on a non-school day. Pathetic, lazy, cheap, and mediocre people running the show. That's the bottom line. 

 

* Last year at this time, we had our two traditional newspapers competing for readers and each Saturday the prep sports section was 3-5 pages in each paper and most of the games were covered. There were also statewide scores listed and area stats leaders and standings were listed.

 

* The Tampa Tribune was purchased by the leftist St. Pete Times to eliminate competition. Their coverage is non-existent. They devote 1/2 page to prep football on Saturday. The entire paper is a real piece of crap and I can't believe the 3 million + people served by this piece of garbage in our area are stuck with this thing as our only option.

 

A very sad state of affairs locally. These are are black days in the Tampa area for this sport. HS Football won't be around in a few years IMO.

[Joshua Wilson]

High School Football will be around.

 

However, if you all are not happy about how athletics are handled in the county, then you all need to go to a school board meeting and express your thoughts. 

 

As for coverage, this is why a site like this one exists. It's transitioning to an online thing now.

 

I personally hate to say it, but I eventually see newspapers eventually cutting prep sports out of their coverage plans down the road or shift to being online only with the coverage. But I see the first coming since doing the second means they still have to have a budget for it. 

[DisabledAccount]

High School Football will be around.

 

However, if you all are not happy about how athletics are handled in the county, then you all need to go to a school board meeting and express your thoughts.

 

As for coverage, this is why a site like this one exists. It's transitioning to an online thing now.

 

I personally hate to say it, but I eventually see newspapers eventually cutting prep sports out of their coverage plans down the road or shift to being online only with the coverage. But I see the first coming since doing the second means they still have to have a budget for it.

Small areas will still keep coverage but bigger cities will begin dropping it

[Joshua Wilson]

Columbia I agree with that.

[Zoe Boy]

I don't think Miami herald , sun sentinel will be dropping their's anytime soon.... These lefties love their hs coverage down here 181 lol!!! What the hell lefties gotta do with it... Y'all be alright in Tampa... Maybe Theifing Rick Scott got something to do with it 😉

[Proseteye]

I don't think that Scott has anything to do with what newspapers print or don't print. If you remember, the so-called mainstream news media is a propaganda organ for the so-called leftists. They print derogatory made up stuff about Scott because he is not a leftist. 

 

Also, most newspapers now charge for a full subscription to the newspaper although you only want the on line content. As Joshua indicated, we now get our HS football info mostly from this sight only. 

[Joshua Wilson]

Let's not get political here...let's keep that out of this.

 

I am not the only site out there. However, the times have changed and that is just that. I still get the newspaper dropped each morning, however, what the newspaper is now is not what it was compared to 15 years ago when I was in high school and that has literally changed almost 360 degrees X 2. 

 

There use to be special tabs on weekends in some of the papers that would have tons of game recaps from the high school games while looking ahead to the college games and pro games for the rest of the weekend on Saturday's. That is not the case anymore. 

 

Would I like to do more to get more coverage of every single team on this site? Yes, I would - However, that is going to take money, but I am not going to ask for fans to pay for it, especially when a lot of you are either coaches, parents, etc. That support is going to have to come from sponsors that care about this stuff. 

 

I am looking for ways to expand the reach this site has now, but with all good things, it takes time. 

[Sharkbait]

Years ago thats all we had was newspapers for prep football.  I always waited with anticipation for the football preview issue to come out in August. The Tampa Tribune always had a good one. The only problem was the limited amount of detailed info available, sites like Floridahsfootball.com have much better coverage. Joshua and crew do a great job and I am thankful for the service provided.  I enjoy the boards and although I only joined in the spring I have followed them for quite a while. The boards are a great way to get local insight on teams in other areas, most members give fairly unbiased assessments and that is such a great resource for those of us who love the game.

[gwdrum75]

I have to agree with the sentiment that the landscape has just changed over time. When I am looking for sports stories, I'm not waiting until the next day to read them in a physical newspaper. I'm on whatever site is covering it.

 

The landscape of prep football coverage has changed as well. If you look at newspapers back in the 50's & 60's, many of them would cover some of the bigger games state-wide. The St. Pete Times used to regularly cover the Lakeland games and Manatee games, since they were big games in the state, even though those areas had their own newspaper coverage.

 

In my opinion, there are positives and negatives to the change in coverage. High school football used to be a community event, where most games were packed. The average person in the community that is not "connected" to any specific high school is not out searching the web for coverage. That is where I think the decline in newspaper coverage has hurt high school football. If they still ran the big headlines about the big games, you may get the person, who normally wouldn't care, interested to go check out a local game. On the flip side, the websites that have popped up (such as this one) give us hard-core fans a great outlet to discuss the game and give the kids alot more expanded exposure. Where is goes from here, I'm not sure. But, my guess would be that high school football will be here long after physical "print" media has vanished.

[DisabledAccount]

Years ago thats all we had was newspapers for prep football. I always waited with anticipation for the football preview issue to come out in August. The Tampa Tribune always had a good one. The only problem was the limited amount of detailed info available, sites like Floridahsfootball.com have much better coverage. Joshua and crew do a great job and I am thankful for the service provided. I enjoy the boards and although I only joined in the spring I have followed them for quite a while. The boards are a great way to get local insight on teams in other areas, most members give fairly unbiased assessments and that is such a great resource for those of us who love the game.

I'm very unbias

[DisabledAccount]

I have to agree with the sentiment that the landscape has just changed over time. When I am looking for sports stories, I'm not waiting until the next day to read them in a physical newspaper. I'm on whatever site is covering it.

 

The landscape of prep football coverage has changed as well. If you look at newspapers back in the 50's & 60's, many of them would cover some of the bigger games state-wide. The St. Pete Times used to regularly cover the Lakeland games and Manatee games, since they were big games in the state, even though those areas had their own newspaper coverage.

 

In my opinion, there are positives and negatives to the change in coverage. High school football used to be a community event, where most games were packed. The average person in the community that is not "connected" to any specific high school is not out searching the web for coverage. That is where I think the decline in newspaper coverage has hurt high school football. If they still ran the big headlines about the big games, you may get the person, who normally wouldn't care, interested to go check out a local game. On the flip side, the websites that have popped up (such as this one) give us hard-core fans a great outlet to discuss the game and give the kids alot more expanded exposure. Where is goes from here, I'm not sure. But, my guess would be that high school football will be here long after physical "print" media has vanished.

As I stated above I think the smaller market news media outlets will continue covering but as you get like Jacksonville or Tampa or Miami where you have 30 schools they will only cover the big ones (TCA,Bolles,central,armwood,plant,STA,northwestern) you get the idea

[Sharkbait]

Actually in our area the Panama City has really good coverage of high school football especially considering how spread out the teams are. 

[gwdrum75]

As I stated above I think the smaller market news media outlets will continue covering but as you get like Jacksonville or Tampa or Miami where you have 30 schools they will only cover the big ones (TCA,Bolles,central,armwood,plant,STA,northwestern) you get the idea

 

Probably for a while. The Lakeland Ledger still has a fairly decent Preps section and puts out their annual preview section. But is has declined ever-so-slightly over the years. Likely, as you said, due to the expansion of high schools over the past 30 years. 

[SportsNut25]

I have to agree with the sentiment that the landscape has just changed over time. When I am looking for sports stories, I'm not waiting until the next day to read them in a physical newspaper. I'm on whatever site is covering it.

 

Not to mention the growth of Twitter has really made it so that fans now just have to check a team Twitter, a reporter's Twitter, or this site's Twitter to get a score update 99% of the time. 

 

And, on top of that, not every fan cares that big-time RB John Smith had X rushing yards, and Y TDS and is a ____ verbal commit. Some just need to know who got the W and who took the L so Twitter is perfect for them. 

[DisabledAccount]

Not to mention the growth of Twitter has really made it so that fans now just have to check a team Twitter, a reporter's Twitter, or this site's Twitter to get a score update 99% of the time.

I use scorestream for scores

[181pl]

Josh, I see this first hand. Our coverage has severely declined. The local tv news used to come out to the games constantly and almost all of them would have a little section on Friday night to cover the games. That's even in Decline. So what are we stuck with a few websites? That's not legitimate coverage of a sport that draws close to 25,000 people every weekend just in Hillsborough County.

[Zoe Boy]

I think you gotta have dedicated ppl to do it.. Down here we have Larry Bluestien JT Wilcox for sfhss and the 2 that does Miami herald and the one for sun sentinel and palm beach... Plus they have young kids starting early doing it also... They cover all the highschools down her... Don't know how they do it but once you pop open the newspaper or the app, it's there.... Gotta have more dedicated ppl and I don't see it stoping down here either... Another reason is maybe the school at those areas haven't been bringing home champiship.... Could that be a possible reason?

[gwdrum75]

In the Tampa & Orlando area, you now have a channel dedicated to high school football on Friday nights (BHSN). Unfortunately, if you don't have Bright House, you don't get the channel. But their coverage is really good on Friday nights covering the various games.

[Joshua Wilson]

If Bright House, er. Charter would distribute that channel to the other cable carriers in the state then that would be a MAJOR win for high school sports in Florida.

[181pl]

If Bright House, er. Charter would distribute that channel to the other cable carriers in the state then that would be a MAJOR win for high school sports in Florida.

No doubt.

[181pl]

Another point. The Championship games arent even really televised anymore. We went from A+ coverage of games on Sunsports/Foxsports to BHN. Huge step down.

[Zoe Boy]

Another point. The Championship games arent even really televised anymore. We went from A+ coverage of games on Sunsports/Foxsports to BHN. Huge step down.

I have to agree with this... BHN must of had that fee to pay the state for viewing rights... That's were the state f up at...

[Joshua Wilson]

I would say what I want to say in regards to the TV contracts, but sometimes keeping the yapper shut is a better option on some of this.