It’s not a good time for professional sports leagues. Michael Vick. The gambling NBA ref. Barry Bonds. Scandals are getting more attention than box scores these days.

Perhaps that’s why many sports fans are turning to contests involving younger athletes where the games are mostly free of steroid and gambling concerns and star quarterbacks aren’t accused of funding illegal dogfighting rings. High school sports are enjoying their moment in the sun and big media companies have taken notice. And I’m not talking about “Friday Night Lights,” the critically-adored but ratings-challenged NBC drama that will be returning for a second season this fall.

“It’s an interesting time in the industry with everything happening in professional sports. I think a big part of the fans are dissatisfied with pro athletes so I think a lot of fans are looking to college and high school sports,” said Jimmy Pitaro, general manager and vice president of Yahoo! Sports. “High school fans are among the most passionate in the world, especially in locations where there are no college or local teams. These are the fans you want to attract. They will spend a lot of time on your properties. They are not casual fans.”

Yahoo (YHOO) is putting its money where its mouth is. It got in the high school game through its June purchase of Rivals.com, which focuses on both high school and college sports. Yahoo is rumored to have paid about $100 million for Rivals, topping the $60 million that News Corp. (NWS) shelled out for Rivals.com competitor Scout.com in 2005.

And Yahoo isn’t alone. Companies ranging from traditional media heavyweights CBS (CBS) and News Corp. to smaller local-oriented media firms like TV station owner Hearst-Argyle Television (HTV) and radio station operator Emmis Communications (EMMS) are all beefing up their coverage of high school sports so that readers, viewers and listeners can, like the old Beach Boys song goes, be true to their school.

In March, CBS announced it was buying the Web site MaxPreps.com, which focuses on high school sports, for $43 million. News Corp. upped the ante in its high school sports coverage earlier this month when its local TV station group rolled out the Web site FoxHiLites.com, which features videos from its TV news coverage of local high school sports.

Hearst-Argyle unveiled a similar site this month called HighSchoolPlaybook. This is among the more ambitious high school sports ventures though since it employs a team of high school students acting as sideline reporters, social networking tie-ins and even features on cheerleaders and marching bands. (This band geek…I played the tuba…wholeheartedly approves.)

Indianapolis-based Emmis has an agreement with the Indiana High School Athletic Association to run a site focusing on Indiana high school sports. As anybody who has ever seen the movie “Hoosiers” knows, high school basketball is a religion in the state.

And these are just a few examples of big media’s interest in high school sports. Newspaper and TV station owner Belo (BLC) recently launched its own high school sports site, HSGametime.com. The Washington Post’s new “hyperlocal” site focusing on Loudoun County in Virginia features a ton of high school sports coverage. And my parent company Time Warner (TWX), which owns Sports Illustrated magazine, has invested in and is partnering with a social networking site focusing on high school sports called Takkle.

So why are so many media companies rushing into the high school sports market?

The move isn’t that surprising when you consider that many media companies are quickly realizing that there is booming demand for both local news. and hence, interest by local advertisers to reach people that are getting news more from the Web and less from TV, print and radio.

In order to attract local readers and advertisers online, the media companies need to have compelling local content. And one easy way of doing that is focusing on high school sports, which tends to accomplish two key things…it attracts the interest of a highly desired demographic - teenagers who are active on sites like News Corp.’s MySpace and Facebook - in addition to their parents, i.e. the people with the cash to spend.

“It’s very important to serve local communities and be a one-stop shop for advertisers,” said Brian Bedol, the president and CEO of CSTV Networks, the division of CBS that is the parent company of MaxPreps. “While community probably is an overused term on the Web, it truly is what defines high school sports. With pro and college, you’re just attracing the fans of those sports. With high school sports, you’re attracintg the participants, the friends and the families.”

But Terry Mackin, executive vice president Hearst-Argyle Television, said that it will be increasingly important to keep students interested since they obviously have plenty of other sites that they could be going to, such as MySpace and Facebook. So that was a big factor in deciding to have students involved in the coverage. And this, he said, is one thing that he thinks will set HighSchoolPlaybook apart from competitors.

“Making kids part of the brand with high school students as sideline reporters has become not only a differentiator but a breath of fresh air since they are incredibly talented. User-generated content will be a big part of what we do,” Mackin said. “We intend to cover sports seriously but also have some fun with it. We’re looking to do local SportsCenters if you will,” referring to the popular, and at times irreverent, sports news show on ESPN.

Yahoo’s Pitaro also said that attracting more younger viewers is key. In fact, he said that the youth movement is making high school sports attractive not just to local marketers but also to big brand-name national advertisers.

“Advertisers are going after a young audience A lot of our clients want to advertise on high school sports,” Pitaro said.

So who will be the big winners and losers in this market? And are media companies being too aggressive, too too aggressive in their rush to act as cheerleaders for the business of high school sports?

Hearst-Argyle Television’s Mackin concedes that there is a lot of competition but he’s confident that his company’s offering will stand out because of all the user-generated content. Bedol of CBS said that he thinks the combination of MaxPreps content with content from CBS’s numerous local TV and radio affiliates will give it a leg up on the competition. Other local media companies obviously also have the benefit of tapping the resources of their on-air talent.

That would seem, at first blush, to leave Yahoo as the odd-man out. But maybe not. After all, Yahoo has a cozy relationship with several big publishers thanks to a growing advertising consortium with the newspaper industry. And Pitaro said Rivals.com will work closely with its print partners. Pitaro also said that Rivals.com is not relying on too much user-generated content yet but that will change in the coming months.

Still, I think that the companies that will succeed in the growing high school sports business are the ones who do the best job of focusing on the local angle. A national blanket approach to covering high school sports doesn’t make that much sense since there are so many high schools throughout the country and only a handful of high school stars wind up getting the publicity of say, a LeBron James.

So the companies that put most of their attention into markets where high school sports are a big part of the local culture, like Texas, Pennsylvania and Ohio for football and Indiana and New York for hoops, stand the biggest chance of earning a varsity letter from their users.