Interest in basketball and game attendance is stable at high school level

Editor's note: This is the fourth of a seven-part series exploring the state of basketball in Utah.

Utah is a football-crazed state. A Friday night at just about any high school football stadium confirms that observation. The atmosphere will likely be fantastic, and the attendance is sure to be in the thousands.

Conversely, spend a Friday night in a high school basketball gym and the atmosphere and crowd will be decent but nothing compared to most football games.

This isn't a recent trend, either, according to Davis boys basketball coach Jay Welk.

"I think football's always been the sport of America, and not just recently. I know in our community, I've been here 20 years and football has been 'the' sport," said Welk.

Realistically, even though college football attendance is up in Utah — seemingly at the expense of college basketball — a similar trickle-down effect at the high school level is minimal at best.

Utah High School Activities Association executive director Rob Cuff, a former boys basketball coach at Mountain View, believes attendance and participation in high school basketball is as high as ever.

Twelve years ago, when Orem and Mountain View met in the 5A basketball championship game at the Huntsman Center — the last state tournament game played at the University of Utah — attendance approached 10,000, according to Cuff. That 1998 season was the pinnacle of basketball's importance in the state, with the Utes advancing to the NCAA championship game and the Utah Jazz participating in the NBA Finals.

Many believe the overall interest in basketball has fallen off since. However, roughly 10,000 fans were on hand at the E Center for the epic Bingham-Riverton boys basketball championship game in 2006, and just as many were at the Dee Events Center two years ago for Lone Peak's thrilling double-overtime win over Davis.

At the high school level, it would appear that the interest in basketball is just as high as it was a decade ago.

"I don't know if I can say it's more of a football state than a basketball state, certainly both contribute a ton to our budget," said Cuff.

Individual high schools don't keep track of attendance, so gauging whether there's been a rise or fall in a particular sport in the past decade is impossible. The UHSAA does track attendance for state tournaments.