Was the "competitive local engineering school" ever big on football? If not, I doubt it would affect anything very much.

Football championships can increase app numbers in the following few years. However, the reverse is not necessarily true, that when the team struggles apps will go down enough to significantly influence one applicant's chances.

Of course you should have backup options.

The football thing is a demonstrable trend but I wouldn’t assume it will work out that way on an individual level. There’s so much random variation in the process.

My brother went to a big football school and he's mentioned that when his team won the national championship they were able to be more selective academically because they got a flood of applications. So now my senior wants to go to a competitive local engineering school, for the engineering not the football, that school's team is struggling, will that help make it a little easier to get accepted? My kid has the stats on paper but it's never a sure thing so we are trying to decide whether to apply to back up options.