Bradford Railroads the WOAC

 Bradford is again struggling to get enough players on the field to have a football team.  The rumor is that only about 12 kids went out this season. And the rumor was confirmed as team after team in the WOAC has announced schedule changes here in the preseason. They are scrambling to find out of conference teams to replace Bradford on their schedule.

Bradford has been having a problem getting kids out for several years now.  They had to cancel a season earlier when they were in the CCC and even when they had teams they had low numbers - once going through a season with like 15 players.   Really a program needs twice that many players - above 30 is best.  That way you can give players a rest, have some depth in case of injuries, and be able to compete.  

Whether the problem is with worried parents not wanting kids to play because of concussions, or just a lack of interest in football (a lot of schools are seeing numbers diminish in all sports, not just football), it seems clear that Bradford needs to take a hard look in the mirror and just end the program.  It is difficult to end a tradition and I am sure there are many in the community that will fight this. But if the interest is not there from the students, then it just needs to be taken off of life support and fade away.

 The other schools can find out of conference games to fill their schedules. They would have an entire off season to pick up games to fill the empty slot.  Franklin and Newton are fellow WOAC members who do not have football, so the precedent is there.  Bradford has shown that they can be competetive in the WOAC in other sports so there are athletes attending this school, just none that care enough to play football.

Having said all this - there is a radical way that Bradford could salvage their football program - 8 man football.  Travel would be a problem as there are not that many teams that are doing this.  But as other small schools reallize that to keep football they need to adjust to smaller teams this division can grow.  As the number of small schools participating grow, then travel times will go down. Not the best solution, but it would be a means to keep football alive in Bradford.