Many millions of Americans will be united over the next three weeks while engaging in a profoundly American experience: watching the college football playoffs.
Yet an even more profoundly American experience is not watching football -- but playing it.
This fall, the National Federation of State High School Associations released the results of its survey on sports participation by high school students during the 2023-2024 school year.
It showed that the number of American high school students engaging in athletics set a record in that school year.
"The NFHS High School Athletics Participation Survey indicated that 8,062,302 participants were involved in high school sports in 2023-24, which is up 210,469 from the previous year and tops the previous record of 7,980,886 set in 2017-18," said a press release from the NFHS. "The total includes 4,638,785 boys and 3,423,517 girls -- both record highs -- according to figures obtained from the 51 NFHS member state associations, which includes the District of Columbia."
While the total number of high school boys and girls competing in athletics set records in the last school year, there was one sport that continued to stand out: 11-player tackle football.
Nationwide, 1,031,508 high school boys played this game.
That was more than twice the number who played baseball (471,701) or soccer (467,483); and approximately 92% more than the 536,668 who played basketball and 65% more than the 625,333 who competed in outdoor track and field.
Football was the only high school sport played by either boys or girls that had more than a million participants in the 2023-2024 school year.
The top girls' sport was outdoor track and field, which had 506,015 participants -- less than half the number of boys who played football.
Nor, as this column has noted before, was playing football popular with boys in only some parts of the country.
In Massachusetts, for example, 2,324 high school boys participated in swimming and diving in the 2023-2024 school year; 3,298 played tennis; 4,628 golfed; 4,948 wrestled; 5,874 ran cross country; 7,280 played ice hockey; 8,202 played lacrosse; 10,061 competed in indoor track and field; 11,271 played baseball; 12,803 played basketball; 14,141 played soccer; and 14,725 competed in outdoor track and field.
But 17,806 Massachusetts high school boys played football.
California and Texas, the nation's two most populous, states, had the largest numbers of boys playing high school football, according to the NFHS. In California, 1,035 schools had 11-player football teams, and 89,667 boys played on those teams. In Texas, 1,104 schools had football teams, and 171,246 boys played on those teams.
In Ohio, where the population (11,883,304, according to the Census Bureau) is less than one-third that of California's (39,431,263), 717 high schools had 11-player football teams and 43,020 boys played on those teams.
In Florida, 585 high schools had 11-player football teams, and 38,515 boys played on them, In Illinois, 517 schools had teams, and 36,810 boys played. In Georgia, it was 416 schools with 33,039 boys on their teams.
Even in Wyoming, the nation's least-populated state, there were 38 schools with 11-player football teams and 2,275 boys playing on those teams.
In Vermont, the second-least populated state, there were 19 schools that had football teams and 545 boys who played on those teams.
Why is it a good thing for America that so many young men play this fundamentally American game?
Parke H. Davis played football at Princeton in the early 1890s before coaching college football for six years. He then went on to become a lawyer. In 1911, he published a book on the early years of the American game.
"It has been only a sport but its gridirons have been training-grounds upon which men have been made," Davis wrote in "Football: The American Intercollegiate Game."
"Where are the players whose names appear in the stories of these games?" he asked. "They are at the head of great business enterprises. They are occupying posts of distinction and honor in our government. They are presiding as judges in our courts, as presidents and professors in our institutions of learning. Transferred from the mimic battles of the lines of lime, they are leading our armies and commanding our warships. Clergymen, merchants, lawyers, authors, doctors, inventors, manufacturers, whatever and wherever they are, they are pursuing their vocations with courage, solving their problems with wisdom, and treating their competitors with honor, worthy soldiers from a worthy school."
As Americans watch this year's college football playoffs unfold, they will see many players do great things.
And many of them -- as well as their old high school teammates -- will do even greater things in the years that are to come.