You have stumble onto Alcoa's success. Getting a high percentage of your male population to play football instead of walking the halls is the main part. Kids want to play for a winner. Plus, Most of the kids start out in the feeder system at 5 to 6 years old. They want to play at the high school and play for state championship at a young age. The youth football programs in Blount County are the best in the state. It use to be, freshman never played til their sophomore or Jr. year. Now freshman are coming to the high school level ready to play. Alcoa and Maryville have had serious talented freshman the last couple of years. Alcoa starts several freshman this year. if a typical roster is 50 players and 15 are freshman that need to be developed then your at a disadvantage against a 75-80 player roster,especially when the freshman are well coached and ready to contribute. This builds depth,and allows the Coaches to rotate players for different schemes just like college teams. Alcoa has 6 or more great RB's . They rotate in and out. All can take it to the house. Linemen rotate the same way and for different packages. When Alcoa had their best success against Maryville they were dressing closer to 100 players. They had the physical size to keep fighting for 4 qtr.
Bottom line it's success builds sucess. Build it and the kids will come. If I wanted to jump start a football program, I would start by building up the youth programs in the community.