With only one college football game televised on any fall Saturday during the 1950's and '60's, it was an attraction. Unfortunately, in the New York Metropolitan area, during that same period of time, Saturday afternoon was also the time for high school football. For decades, in other parts of the country, especially in the south and southwest, there was a de facto ban on playing collegiate football games on Friday nights. These were the province of local high school teams and entire towns would literally close up to travel to an away game. Crowds in excess of 10,000 people were the norm even for small classification teams as the high school football schedule often held more interest and excitement than the regional college programs or professional teams. To the chagrin of many true fans old enough to remember and enjoy those long ago days, the intrusion of television and subsequently more advanced technology like the Internet destroyed the concept of small town, high school football. While still wildly popular in some areas, there is no need to join a caravan of cars and buses in order to travel 60 miles away for the purpose of facing off against a hated rival. One can instead sit home and in many cases, follow the action either on the television or computer screen. When high school football was “the show in town” with little competition from other forms of sporting entertainment, “everyone” could be expected to be in attendance at a home game or travel to an away venue, thus Friday Night Lights and other expressions that referred or still refer to the passion of high school football have much less meaning in today’s culture.

 

In the New York Metropolitan area, there was never a true Friday Night Lights mentality although some annual rival games could attract a few thousand fans. Due to a high level of violence in the public school sector, even in the suburbs, “Friday Night Football” was delegated to Saturday afternoons with a 1 PM kickoff the norm. This did not obviate the opportunities available for gang warfare or fistfights but it did reduce the frequency and seriousness of violence brought to the games. Thus, for a young college football obsessed fan like myself, playing high school football did in fact negatively impact one’s ability to view college games either live, or on television. Only at the completion of the high school season could one completely focus upon the college action as the Sunday New York Times newspaper would otherwise be the only way to gather scores from the previous day’s game and individual statistics were never published until season’s end. With the high school football season ending with at least two or three weeks of college games still to come, our youthful group would be assured of the Army vs. Navy game and usually, the Harvard vs. Yale contest. Into the mid-1960’s, Harvard-Yale still held major significance, even when the two squads were not in contention for the Ivy League title. Ivy League football was relevant, despite its mid-1950’s de-emphasis and in our area, assuming one had the academic achievement to gain admission, playing Ivy football was considered as prestigious as a scholarship to the obviously more competitive schools like Syracuse or Iowa, both of whom recruited the New York City - Long Island area regularly.

 

I ran everywhere I went, and for years it was my primary form of transportation. In an era when “no one” ran, I was stopped by the police, ridiculed by classmates, and seen by most adults as “that health nut.” Though I illegally and regularly drove my first car, an abandoned 1953 Dodge that was salvaged from the empty lot next to our house, the County police that patrolled our area asked me to limit my illicit travels to the local streets, preferably during daylight hours. Not able to risk crossing over the Maple Avenue line into the City of Long Beach, I was left to hitch hike or jog from our isolated town of Point Lookout at the easternmost end of the Long Beach barrier island. When living in our without-heat house, it was a three-plus-mile hustle to the local high school, and later when needing to tack on an additional six or seven miles to get to my second school, the only available means of transport were hitching or running. I was certainly “in shape” and I augmented both my overall physical condition and conviction among my peers that I was not fully in contact with reality, by running additional miles on the track during my lunch break.