For Stamford, Thanksgiving stadium deal may be a turkey
STAMFORD — The football teams from Darien and New Canaan high schools are powerhouses, well-funded and well-equipped, and perennial county and state winners.
On Thanksgiving Day they play each other in what they call the Turkey Bowl, drawing about 7,000 fans.
Since neither town has a field to fit that many people, Darien and New Canaan play the Turkey Bowl in Stamford High School’s Boyle Stadium, charging $10 a head and bringing in about $70,000.
But the benefit to Stamford — with an 80year-old stadium that needs work and football programs that could use funding — is less than $4,000.
That’s what the city charged the towns last year for stadium rental, an electrician, and custodians who clean up after the game, Board of Education spokeswoman Sharon Beadle said. The money goes to the school building-use fund, Beadle said, not to athletic programs.
Darien and New Canaan don’t pocket the remaining $66,000 — they spend some on police officers they are required to hire to provide security; they hire an online ticket distributor; they hire ticket sellers and takers at the gate; and they rent portable bathrooms.
Neither town’s athletic director returned requests for comment, but Stamford High School guidance counselor Robert Augustyn, who worked as a site director at last year’s Turkey Bowl, estimates the costs amounted to roughly $20,000.
“Darien was the home team last year and they took in more than $70,000 gross, so they walked out with a net profit of about $50,000,” Augustyn said.
Stamford got less than one-tenth of that.
“Do the Board of Education and the Board of Representatives know about this?” Augustyn said. “It doesn’t seem like we are thinking of our kids first, or about a historic stadium that needs work. Do you know what we could do with $50,000?”
It’s become an issue this year because the district is considering adding a charge on youth sports leagues to help cover the cost of maintaining school fields and courts, said Rich LoRusso, president of Stamford Babe Ruth Baseball.
“Babe Ruth is a breakeven program. To throw another fee on us will be hard. I want to protect the youth sports programs of Stamford,” LoRusso said. “If we need to make some money, why don’t we do it at Boyle Stadium?”
Beadle said the school district has a two-year agreement with Darien and New Canaan for the Turkey Bowl, and this is the second year.
“I’m sure they will revisit the agreement when it ends,” she said.
Central Office did not have a copy of the agreement, she said, and someone would go to Stamford High to check for one.
Former Stamford High Athletic Director Jim Moriarty said administrators from Darien and New Canaan schools contacted him last year to ask how they could rent Boyle Stadium on Thanksgiving Day, and he directed them to the district’s facilities department.
“The reason I didn’t discourage it was that the Stamford High Athletic Council gets the concession stand during the game, and I wanted to make some money for the school’s athletic department,” Moriarty said.
He estimates the concession stand brought in $2,500 last year.
It doesn’t sound like much for 7,000 people sitting in a stadium for three or four hours. LoRusso said it could be because people from Darien and New Canaan have tailgate parties in the Stamford High parking lot.
Moriarty said he’s surprised that Stamford doesn’t charge more to rent Boyle Stadium, but “I figured the athletic council made some money on the deal, the city got paid for the use of the field, Stamford police and custodians made some money on holiday pay, and Darien and New Canaan can play their big game, so it works out OK for everybody.”
The Turkey Bowl is a regular-season game for the two towns, Moriarty said, but during his tenure there were similar agreements with the Fairfield County Interscholastic Athletic Conference and the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, Moriarty said.
“The conferences would pay the charges and the league would make the money,” he said. “Stamford didn’t profit much from that, either.”
That should change, Augustyn said.
“I say let them take the concession stand and we’ll take the gate,” he said.
He laments Stamford’s lost history, when city teams faced off in Boyle Stadium on Thanksgiving Day, said Augustyn, who played football for Stamford High in the 1960s and ‘70s.
Boyle was built of handcut stone during the Great Depression, the envy of Connecticut, host to state and regional title games, and home of the mighty Black Knights, who hold 20 state championships – still among the winningest records in Connecticut history.
“The whole city would turn out for the game on Thanksgiving Day,” Augustyn said. “It was a reunion for all the classes that graduated Stamford High. But after lights were installed at the stadium, they moved the game to the night before.”
There’s another issue — the last time Stamford High won a championship was 1971, and it has not competed for a conference or state title for many years.
“Unfortunately you have to win to get people behind you, and in Stamford the athletes get siphoned off to multiple high schools — unlike the suburban towns, where they all go to one school,” Moriarty said.
LoRusso said youth league organizers will oppose maintenance surcharges; Beadle said nothing has been finalized.
The city should capitalize on a great asset — Boyle Stadium, LoRusso said.
“It’s disheartening to watch a program like Darien or New Canaan walk out with all that money, and Stamford get so little,” he said. “I think it could be a good thing for them to use the field, but it has to be some kind of split of the gate. It’s very one-sided right now. There has to be a way to make it good for everybody.”