re: Have wealthier whites been abandoning college football for a while now?

It seems to be a regional issue too. I can't comment on class bias but I know the amount of kids playing in California, west coast and really the whole northeast has gone way down. Though there are exceptions.

FWIW up here the popularity among blacks is as high as ever but a lot of cities are becoming more and more hispanic and that's changing things. There are a lot of large public schools in NJ that used to produce D1 kids regularly. They now are .500 teams with depleted rosters, meanwhile their soccer programs are state powerhouses.

So it's really not only the wealthier white kids but also the hispanic kids not playing that's harming the game in a lot of these places. You never know though the Hispanics may come around. I know in Mexico the NFL is pretty popular.