Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Big-Time Cross-Country High School Football Games Nothing New

by Jeff Fisher
The High School Football Huddle


It's become commonplace for high school football teams to pick-up frequent flyer miles these days.

Most of the recent big interstate games are a direct result of the Kirk Herbstreit Varsity Series (with help from ESPN) inviting teams from around the country to descend on cities in Ohio and Texas to settle state high school football bragging rights. It continues this weekend with national powers Don Bosco Prep (Ramsey, NJ) and De La Salle (Concord, CA) squaring-off in New Jersey. It's the second game of a home-and-home series that has sent each team packing and traveling thousands of miles for a football game.

However, today I discovered a story in the New York Times that shows a couple of high school football teams from New York and Chicago were trendsetters back in 1903.

On November 28, 1903 at Brooklyn's Washington Park, Chicago's North Division High School beat Boys' High School of Brooklyn 76-0. According to the report, over 5,000 fans witnessed the game that was called early on account of darkness.

One interesting part of the story...is the Chicago team is described as being from "the west".

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