Bedford, Concord-Carlisle end Thanksgiving Day game
Keith Mangan could see the writing on the wall and it wasn’t a pretty picture.
After deliberating long and hard, the Bedford athletic director made the decision to end the annual Thanksgiving Day football rivalry with Concord-Carlisle. The teams have met on Thanksgiving since 1973 with Concord-Carlisle holding a sizable 33-13-1 advantage.
It wasn’t that statistic which troubled Mangan as much as the recent dominance displayed by Concord-Carlisle. The Patriots have won the last seven meetings in a row by an average of more than 23 points and have surpassed 40 points in each of the last five contests, including a 63point barrage in 2017.
“We’ve thought about it for a while and it just reached that point,” Mangan said. “I spoke to administration, I spoke to people in the community and spoke to kids who played in the game and they all pretty much agreed that our programs are in different places right now.
“When we started playing them on Thanksgiving in 1973, the enrollments were pretty much the same. Now, they are a much bigger school than we are. We’re having trouble trying to support programs at two levels (varsity and junior varsity).”
Concord-Carlisle athletic director Aaron Joncas sympathized with Mangan’s plight.
“We’ll have our work cut out for us, we’re definitely starting to look elsewhere,” Joncas said. “If we were in Keith’s shoes, we’d probably be looking to do something like that.”
An interesting scenario was floated on Twitter by former Concord-Carlisle athletic director Barry Haley. He suggested that Concord-Carlisle look into resuming its Thanksgiving Day game with Lexington. The two sides played on Thanksgiving from 1924-72 and remained on each other’s schedule after the Turkey Day game ended.
If that scenario did have legs, it could possibly open the door for Bedford and Burlington (which is currently playing Lexington on Thanksgiving). The two schools are 6 miles apart and have a somewhat similar enrollment.
Another option is Masconomet, which ended its four-year Thanksgiving Day series with Everett in 2019.