Brace yourself for more stories with headlines like this: "Football's popularity continues to take a hit across Southland campuses."

This is from a piece courtesy of Los Angeles Times prep columnist Eric Sondheimer, who noticed the difference between a season-opening football practice and a soccer tryout at El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills. El Camino Real is the same distance west of downtown Los Angeles as Katy High School is from downtown Houston.

Sondheimer wrote that "Fútbol is becoming more popular than football on various high school campuses in Southern California."

He is right about those schools, but does that mean participation in football is on the decline overall?

Not at all.

The game is not without its problems – you can't mention football without having a concussion discussion, and every time the President brings up the NFL, social injustice protests dominate the national conversation – but kids all over the country will don helmets at practice today, because football is the most popular sport in America.

A Gallup poll from earlier this year shows that football is still Americans' favorite sport to watch, and has been since 1972. Though football's dominance has dropped from its height of 10 years ago, it was listed as the favorite for 37%, almost twice that of basketball (11%) and baseball (9%) combined.

The death of football is a long way off.

I'd bet money that you have heard that more and more kids are playing soccer. That isn't true.

In fact, the way kids are leaving soccer, that sport should be concerned.

This from a July story in the New York Times:

"Over the past three years, the percentage of 6- to 12-year-olds playing soccer regularly has dropped nearly 14 percent, to 2.3 million players, according to a study by the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, which has analyzed youth athletic trends for 40 years."

The good news for those of us who love believe participation in sports has significant value, the number of kids involved in high school athletics is certain to rise again, for the 29th consecutive year.

There was a slight drop in football participation last year, but with a record 14,099 high schools offering 11-player football we're talking an average of 1.8 players per school.

There were still 1.08 million kids playing football in high school last year compared to the second most popular sport of track and field, which had a little over 600,000.

Forget what you heard, football is still king.