A Few Final Thanksgiving Football Thoughts

Yesterday was an epically beautiful day on College Hill in Easton, a perfect day to sit and watch local high schools Easton and Phillipsburg play a football game in front of a packed house at Lafayette College. Yesterday was the 109th time the two schools have played, but it was nice to see the game back on Thanksgiving after the postponement to Saturday last year. The game should always be on Thanksgiving. I do understand why major snow storms sometimes delay the game a few days, unfortunately modern civil liability rulings understandably scare college administrators, but in a perfect world that would not matter. This game being on Thanksgiving is a tradition worth keeping.

A few thoughts on the Rovers 26-0 victory, the two towns, the tradition, and some of the other Thanksgiving traditions in this area-

• The old saying seems to hold true- if there is no strong favorite, Easton is the favorite. Phillipsburg rolled in at 9-1, bound for their state championship game next weekend against Middletown South, and left bruised and beaten. Easton's defense stifled the Liners in the 26-0 victory, and never really let them get going. As seems to be the case most years that Easton wins, their defensive linemen beat Phillipsburg off the line all afternoon, and never let their running game get going. While this is a "down" year for Easton, most schools would be thrilled to go 9-4, and make the playoffs and beat their arch-rivals in one year. The Red Rovers seniors should be quite proud of how they did this season.
• Phillipsburg wasn't nearly as bad as a 26-0 score suggests. They did not give up an offensive touchdown in the 26-0 loss. Their offense gave up scores, their special teams gave up scores, and their defense tried to bail them out all day. I'm hardly shocked that a proud Phillipsburg defense would show up to play on Thanksgiving Day. They will be decided underdogs against Middletown South, New Jersey's best team, next weekend at Giants Stadium, but Phillipsburg has won games like that before.
• Up the road in Northampton, another rivalry was playing it's 93rd game. The Northampton-Catasauqua Thanksgiving Day rivalry game is the most underrated game of it's kind around here. While Easton and Phillipsburg are going to play their 110th game next year, this rivalry is just a few years behind that great one, and they will play their 100th game is slated to be played in 2022, and if they stay at the schools for that one, it would be at Catty. I hope they see it through. In an age when many people would ask what the value is in a non-league game scheduled during playoff season, I'd remind them that there are a lot more lessons to be learned by teaching the values of tradition, community, and spirit than are learned in chasing medals.
• Since it's out there, a lot of internet chatter in Easton since Saturday's district playoff loss to Parkland has been negative towards Easton's coach, Steve Shiffert. The most unfair criticism of Shiffert is this myth out there that "a good coach would have won several state championships at Easton." That severely underrates how hard it is to win a state championship. It is true that Easton has been close before, but not one time were they really a favorite to win a state championship. With the exception of 1993 and 2009, I can't think of a single time they lined up across from the state champions and really put them on the ropes. It's hard to win in a state as large as Pennsylvania. If you watch the finals each year, those teams are usually Catholic schools, sending several kids off to college as major D-1 recruits. They are not public schools that are providing an extra-curricular activity to their community's students. I'm not saying Shiffert hasn't made some mistakes in big games, or that Easton can't ever break through and win one state title, or even that the frustration of being in the district playoffs 20 times in the state playoff era and coming up short each one shouldn't bother fans at some level. I'm just saying get real, we don't have a recruited team of super-athletes, so this pipe dream that some great coach would bring in a half dozen state titles in a decade is stupid. We'll be very fortunate when we win one.
• By the way, Northampton beat Catty 40-26 yesterday. For two teams who had really tough seasons, and fought a lot of injuries, it seems to me that they went out and laid it all on the line yesterday. That kind of back-and-forth, high scoring game may not be as good as the Easton-Phillipsburg game was, but it's a lot of fun. 
• In another aside, somewhat related to the thought about Easton in state playoffs- I'd rather Easton play on Thanksgiving forever than give that up to win a state championship. No state playoff game would draw a crowd like yesterday. No state playoff game would unite communities like yesterday. A lot of people not from Easton and Phillipsburg question why we care about a non-league game on Thanksgiving more than winning states. They clearly never experienced anything like this. The PIAA has tried to kill off Thanksgiving rivalry games for no good reason whatsoever, other than their desire to grow their playoffs, and their revenues. Frankly, i'm much happier paying my money for a football ticket to the Easton and Phillipsburg School Districts.
• So up until yesterday, I had totally forgot that East Stroudsburg South and Stroudsburg got rid of their timeless Thanksgiving Game rivalry battle for the Little Brown Jug. Both schools also recently got rid of their head coaches of roughly 40 years a piece. These are proud old programs, but I guess their administrators think playing a game in September is the same as playing a game on Thanksgiving. This could be why their programs aren't on the same level as an Easton or Phillipsburg too though- there is no organizing principle by which to get players to buy in 12 months a year, and to put in the work, knowing that they will have their big day every November. Their lack of regard for tradition, for uniting their communities behind a big day, and for loyalty to their legendary old coaches is kind of sad. Their excuse is that the game was "just and exhibition," and that the new people who moved into their community don't care about the game. So, rather than integrating the community's new members into the traditions, they just moved the game to some random night in September. They won't find that this helps them compete with the better programs in the district. It probably will actually hurt them.