The NJSIAA's approach to scheduling kills rivalries and diminishes interest in the sport. The impact is devastating locally.
Two teams that should be brothers feel more like distant cousins – and the New Jersey football family suffers for it.
When the scholastic football season opens this weekend in northern Warren County, North Warren and Belvidere, instead of marching like brothers into a common schedule against area squads, veer (pun intended, for the County Seaters’ offense) off into wildly distant and different schedules.
The County Seaters should pack up and move to Union County. Their Skyland Conference pits them against schools like David Brearley, Dayton, Manville, A.L.Johnson, Roselle Park and Pingry. Even the geography mavens at Belvidere might not be able to find those schools on a map.
Meanwhile, North Warren fans will become quite familiar with Interstate 80 as their Northwest Jersey Athletic Conference schedule dispatches them against Boonton, Butler, Kinnelon, Morris Catholic and Morristown-Beard.
While the County Seaters and Patriots rack up the mileage, here’s the catch – Belvidere and North Warren don’t play each other.
Two Group 1 schools next to each other, communities with close ties in sports, commerce and geography, two schools that put on terrific rivalries in other sports – one Belvidere wrestler once said beating North Warren “is like the whole season” – don’t meet in football.
If the NJSIAA wasn’t involved, this could be all be called unbelievably stupid. But what’s happening to football in New Jersey is, sadly, all too believable, as massive mega-conferences sunder rivalries and sap interest from the sport.
And Belvidere and North Warren are left to scrimmage each other, on a searing early September weekday, a basic little game-condition scrimmage in front of what was still a decent crowd that filled every parking space at North Warren.
Just imagine if it had been a game. Say mid-October, crisp, cool night, perhaps Homecoming? People would have had to park at the Water Gap and walk.
"Playing Belvidere is important to our kids and our community," North Warren coach Matt Parzero said. "It would be nice if we played a game. There was more interest in our scrimmage with Belvidere than there is for some of our games."
The interest goes both ways.
"Of course this should be a game," said Belvidere junior quarterback Jake Thornton with an air of who-could-think-otherwise? "We have a great relationship."
Patriot quarterback Sean Thornton – Jake’s cousin, by the way, just another example of the ties that bind these teams – said, "It should be a game every year. We have a great rival in Belvidere and we all know each other."
But it’s not a rivalry if you don’t play.
“Our kids need a rival,” Belvidere coach Josh Costantino said. “We don’t have a rival, and that’s what high school football is all about, playing your rivals.”
Unless you’re in New Jersey.
There, it’s about enormous conferences stretching across the state uniting teams that have nothing in common and sending kids on hour-long trips to play "league" games that mean nothing while they don’t see their next-door neighbors.
And it may get even worse. In a move designed, it would seem, mostly to allow Bergen County public school teams to avoid playing private powers like Don Bosco Prep and Bergen Catholic, North Jersey could soon see a 115-team football conference that would include North Warren and Hackettstown. And more long trips.
“We could be in a league with Hoboken and Verona,” Parzero said. “We’re doing what we can but it’s the guys who make all the money that make all these decisions.”
This is insanity. Making North Warren go to, essentially, New York City to play football games just because some teams don’t want to play Don Bosco Prep? Where is the benefit to the athletes? Aren’t the kids supposed to come first? Wait, don't answer that.
This is not just an issue in upper Warren County, either.
Delaware Valley coach Mike Columbo will tell anybody who listens that his team’s Mid-State 38 schedule that sends the Terriers to distant outposts such as West Essex, Clark, Rahway, Hillside and A.L. Johnson is killing fan interest. Phillipsburg travels to Elizabeth and North Hunterdon to Linden but the two rivals, despite being identical in size, don’t play each other.
North Hunterdon does face Warren Hills, Del Val and Phillipsburg – in scrimmages. Great.
Are you kidding?
As we said, unbelievable stupidity.
If the NJSIAA is going to allow 115-team football leagues, then why not just make the whole state one big league, and and allow local scheduling for local leagues? Why have these enormous mega-conferences that benefit nobody?
In less than a minute, you could create a 8-team football league for small schools that makes sense – Belvidere, North Warren, Hackettstown, Kittatinny, Hopatcong, Newton, Delaware Valley, South Hunterdon. Seven league games, two non-league games. If Voorhees drops back to Group 2 at some point, put them in too.
“That would be nice,” said Parzero wistfully.
As useless as the mega-leagues are, though, they may have one unintended good consequence.
"We may have some open dates on our schedule next season with the new league," Parzero said. "Josh and I are discussing a game."
"I would love to have North Warren back," Costantino said. "I would put North Warren at the top of the choices."
Because there’s nothing like a rivalry of brothers to make high school football come alive.
Brad Wilson may be reached at bwilson@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @bradwsports. Find Lehigh Valley high school sports on Facebook.
