The mega-merger that will define at the least the next two years of North Shore high school football is upon us.
Time will tell if it turns out to be wildly successful — like the AFL-NFL merger of 1970 — or a total boondoggle.
Beginning this fall, the Northeastern Conference and the Cape Ann League join forces to form a 24-team super conference. The clubs will be divided into four "tiers" of six teams each; the only games that count towards league standings are those within each tier.
Using the four MIAA playoff berths already given to the former NEC Large, NEC Small, CAL Large and CAL Small champs, every tier champion from this new super league will advance to the postseason.
Tier 1 features (for the most part) the league's largest schools with Lynn Classical, Lynn English, North Andover, Masconomet, Peabody and Revere competing; the winner moves on to the state's Division 1A playoffs.
Tier 2 is made up entirely of long-time NEC teams and, in fact, has every champion from the split NEC era: Gloucester, Beverly, Swampscott, Marblehead plus Salem and Danvers, who'll compete in the Division 2A postseason.
Tier 3 is a mix with Amesbury, Newburyport, Pentucket, Saugus, Triton and Winthrop in Division 3A, while Tier 4 is mostly CAL clubs with Georgetown, Hamilton-Wenham, Ipswich, Manchester Essex, Lynnfield and North Reading also in Division 3A.
THE WHY
What led to this seismic shift in North Shore football, as first reported by The Salem News 15 months ago?
When you break it down to its simplest terms: scheduling.
Over the last few years, the gap between the big and small school in the CAL has widened significantly. Wilmington, one of the biggest schools, left the league, and since crossover games between the CAL Large and Small were no longer mandatory, large schools like Masconomet and North Andover wound up looking far and wide to fill their schedules.
"As soon as you give people choices, you have problems," said Ipswich heads coach Ted Flaherty. "I always felt bad for the big teams that had to go out and find 4-5 games every season. This now makes it easier for them."
Meanwhile, some of the smaller schools in the NEC found a widening gap with their large counterparts. There was usually some debate about whether the league should be arranged by strength of program or enrollment size.
Joining forces with the CAL adds to the league's range of sizes and helps bridge those gaps. Also, the loose affiliation with the other tiers would help fill "non-league" games, in theory.
"The main goal was to bring 24 teams together and have everybody leave with a full schedule," said Salem High athletic director and head football coach Scott Connolly. "Unfortunately, it didn't happen that way because a lot of schools, for one reason or another with certain teams, wouldn't cross over."
Just five schools — Peabody, Danvers, Amesbury, Newburyport and Ipswich — are the only squads of the 24 that are playing every game within the NEC/CAL kingdom. Most teams have only one or two games outside the structure, though North Andover plays five such contests and Manchester Essex plays four.
Those pitfalls seem to most adversely affect Lynn Classical — which is playing East Longmeadow — and Swampscott, a school with only 388 boys that had to fill its schedule with much bigger city schools Somerville and Malden.
"It's kind of a mess. There's a disparity with the set-up — is it power or is it enrollment? Some of our junior varsity and freshman teams are going against teams with twice as many kids," said Swampscott head coach Steve Dembowski. "I don't think it's anything great ... or anything bad."
THE HOW
Dembowski, the outspoken Super Bowl winning coach of the Big Blue, raises a good question. How did the athletic directors and principals of the NEC and CAL schools group these teams and arrange these tiers?
It's not straight by enrollment — otherwise Salem and its 674 boys in the school would be in the top group, and three schools with more boys than Swampscott wouldn't be in Tier 3. It's not strictly by power — i.e., strength of a team — either; otherwise, there's no way Revere, with no winning seasons in recent memory, wouldn't be slotted one tier higher up than Gloucester and its current 26-game winning streak.
Instead, the grouping is a mix of the two, one that's designed to keep rivalries intact and, hopefully, provide the best of both worlds.
"We got into a room and everybody kind of had their own breakdowns of what the league might look like," said Beverly High athletic director James Coffey. "We went back and forth on which way to go, power or size. Someone came up with the idea of keeping as many Thanksgiving rivalries as we can, and that's how this worked out."
Turkey Day, which frankly drives the bus in Massachusetts high school football, solved the issues. It explains perfectly why Salem belong in a tier with Beverly and why it makes no sense to split up Masconomet and North Andover.
Only two of this year's 12 Thanksgiving games — Peabody vs. /Saugus and Winthrop vs. Revere — won't have potential playoff implications.
"One thing you have to say about the mix of the four divisions is that every one of them will be very competitive," said long-time Masconomet head coach Jim Pugh, whose team won four straight CAL Large championships from 2006-09.
"What's great is that a team like Beverly (last year) can go 0-5 to start and win its league. Everyone can play a tough schedule and have their playoff fate come down to Thanksgiving — there's something nice about that."
The hope is that emphasis on rivalries will create excitement that culminates on the big day.
"I think it worked out pretty well. I don't think you're going to get much better divisions," said Coffey.
THE REACTION
The biggest question on the North Shore and beyond revolves around Gloucester — and the logic behind the Fishermen and their recent run of dominance in the state's Division 1A playoffs, actually being dropped down two divisions by being placed in the new league's Tier 2.
It is difficult to explain, but as football coaches often say it is what it is. Tier 2 certainly has a decidedly old school NEC feel, and it's the only one of the four groups with all original NEC teams.
"From Beverly's point of view it hasn't changed much except that Salem is in the division, which is awesome," said Coffey. "All six teams are rivals, and I think every Thanksgiving game will matter. It feels like that's how its going to play out."
Tier 2 should be extremely competitive. It is only division in the state — and one of the only ones in state history — with two defending Super Bowl champions, Gloucester and Beverly.
Add Swampscott and Marblehead to the mix with Salem (which upset Beverly last year) and an improving Danvers team, and it's hard to envision anyone running the table.
"Last year two NEC teams won the state title, and that makes the rest of us proud and hungry," said Connolly. "As a former player and now a coach at Salem, it's nice to be in a conference with all our rivals. I think with all the rivalry and tradition, any team can win any day."
Even when Salem and Gloucester were in the NEC Large, they developed healthy rivalries with the NEC Small teams.
"I'm looking forward to it," said Swampscott QB Mike Walsh of the new setup. "We've had a great rivalry with Gloucester and I'm looking forward to playing them when it means something."
Up in Tier 1, competition should be fierce as well. The Lynn schools, English and Classical, have been very good in recent years and Peabody continues to improve. Masconomet and North Andover are solid programs and, judging by the Chieftains' battles with Gloucester over the years ,they'll be a good fit.
"We're excited about playing at the Manning Bowl (i.e., Field) and facing that tradition. And Peabody ... God, think about all their tradition. To play with them is going to be great," said Pugh. "I think we'll be in the thick of a very good league."
From Peabody's point of view, the league realignment worked out well because it allowed them to rekindle "non-league" rivalries with neighboring Danvers and Beverly, plus keep Gloucester on its schedule. The addition of the other Tier 1 rivals is an added plus.
"I have mixed thoughts because I like the idea of the NEC being the NEC (that) I grew up on," said Tanners' head coach Scott Wlasuk, referring to the old 10-team league in which teams scheduled one non-league game, then played each of the conference's other nine squads.
"My first concern was would we still be able to play those teams like Salem, and I think it's worked out well for us in the long run."
The third tier has been a big hit in the River Rival Region because teams like Triton and Pentucket that have been buried under Masconomet, North Andover and Wilmington in the CAL have a chance to go to the playoffs.
In Tier 4, there's also a Cape Ann flavor. While Manchester Essex is a newcomer, the rest are CAL Small holdovers.
"It's great for us," said Flaherty. "We've generally kept our league together and we have the exact same schedule. It's a little strange to think games like Newburyport, Pentucket and Triton are non-league games, but from my point of view this is really good for Ipswich."
THE FUTURE
The elephant in the room of this super league is the fact that North Andover plans to join the Merrimack Valley Conference beginning in the fall of 2012. That would leave a gaping hole in Tier 1, and threatens to send the entire thing crashing down when the current two-year deal expires.
"It's a two-year deal and that's locked in. After two years, we'll revisit the entire thing again," said Coffey, who noted that Tier 1 playing as a five-team division for one season in 2012 was a possibility.
Non-league scheduling becomes tough with the Scarlet Knights out of the picture; teams usually play home-and-home on a two-year basis, so looking outside the league for a one-year fix is precarious to say the least.
"That's the unfortunate thing and if they drop out, it could change a lot. It adversely affects people's schedules and it could mean you're playing an extra away game if you lose (North Andover) in a year where you would have had them at home," said Wlasuk.
A lot of things can happen in two years, and the MIAA could re-visit its statewide realignment for football by that time. Many of the issues facing Massachusetts football originate from the fact that teams have been allowed to switch leagues and divisions at will.
The proliferation of tiered leagues has led to more playoff berths and divisions that are not grouped by enrollment.
"The one thing this points back to is that the state's design is not good enough. This changing and swapping of league is not in the best interest of football," said Dembowski. "There needs to be more thought put into preventing things like the dying of the Greater Boston League and the splitting up of the CAL."
Whatever the case is in two year's time, this fall is unlike any other in North Shore history. No matter how people feel about the process, the alignment or the future, no one is disputing that there will be ultra-competitive football in 2011.
There's only one question left to answer: What the heck are the Tier champions going to put on their jackets?
