[Diogenes]

It's not just Paintsville. I think it's Class A football in general.

Two things are working against high school football in general. One is dilution of the talent. Once, if you wanted to do something for your school in the fall and you were a boy, your choice was football. Now, you could play soccer, or fall baseball, or be in the band or on the academic team, or a million other things. And these things are becoming increasingly specialized - kids who used to play three sports well now often just save themselves for one and spend the offseasons conditioning for and playing AAU-type versions of their sport. Two, too many kids just don't do ANYTHING anymore. Kids who once would've had nothing to do BUT play football now can sit at home, drive their expensive cars, get into booze and pills, play video games, get into all kinds of non-productive trouble. I think across the state, numbers on football teams are sneaking down (except of course at places like St. X and Trinity and Highlands where people go to that school for the express purpose OF playing football), and the first place you see the effects of that is Class A. There was a time the old Class A teams like Mayfield and Raceland and Danville and Paintsville and Pikeville could hold their own with most teams across the state. Those days are pretty much gone for good, I think. And I suspect there'll be a time in the not too distant future when some of the smallest teams will have to fold because their numbers of available players will simply get too small. Honestly, I think a little further down the road, school-based athletics in general may fold in favor of a club-based AAU-type sporting setup. Just evolution.