Alliance holdouts NVL, Pequot and CTC have their reasons
The Naugatuck Valley League gave a no.
The Connecticut Technical Conference gave a no.
And the Pequot League? A definite, who knows?
Founded by SCC commissioner Al Carbone, the Connecticut Football Alliance has seen five of the state’s eight leagues bond in recent years. They include nearly 100 of the 138 teams.
Leagues make their schedules. The CIAC runs the playoffs. The Alliance mission is balanced scheduling through inter-conference games to help define playoff worthy-teams and provide better matchups throughout the regular season.
Is it perfect? Nothing is. Has the Alliance been a strong step in the right direction? Yes. And it has had the unintended consequence of essentially saving a fractured Eastern Connecticut Conference.
Look. If the CIAC is going to approve a six-tier playoff format with 48 teams, it needs the correct teams. Even if it is dropped to the lowest competitive denominator involving maximum participation, well, in football bigger schools have so many more players on their rosters. Unless there is a separate division for Tech schools, the answer isn’t more 7-3 small schools with
28 players. Maybe a top tier division needs more playoff teams. And Lord knows where the Thanksgiving argument eventually will take the schedule.
That’s why everybody needs to be in the same scheduling room annually to pound matters out.
The Alliance will account for 97 crossover games in its fourth season.
You will not find powerhouse Ansonia among those games.
You will not see any of the slew of co-op programs that fill the Uncas and Sassacus divisions of the footballonly Pequot.
Nor will you find any of the schools from any of the state’s four corners that end in Tech.
I wanted to find out why. “A couple of years ago, maybe three years or so, there were definitely some pros,” said NVL commissioner Brian Mariano, Naugatuck High athletic director. “Getting your schedules better matched, the size school you’re playing, success rate. The possibility of more competitive matchups was nice.
“One reason for the downfall for us was distance to games. It’s very possible we could have Torrington go play Montville. Now you’ve got a twohour ride. The other was the continuity of the league, giving up 2-3-4 NVL opponents. The NVL has a long history of schools and playing certain schools. It was a little hard for us to give up the tradition.”
Did it come to a vote? “No official vote,” Mariano said, “just a consensus of the room that the some of the positives we identified didn’t outweigh the negatives.
“We really haven’t had much conversation around it since that time. I couldn’t honestly say if opinions have changed. For the most part, the core of ADs hasn’t changed.”
Mariano said he does see the option of playing more L and LL opponents and getting more points could help secure a playoff spot, but …
“Part of the tradition of who we play, Seymour, Woodland, Holy Cross, there’s a lot more than just the game,” Mariano said. “A lot of the athletes know each other, it means a lot more against Seymour than, say, Thomaston, or someone like that. So in that sense, I wasn’t in favor it.”
Games this year are all within the NVL. In the past decade Ansonia has gone 100-2 in the regular season. All except the two games in the SWC-NVL Challenge in 2013 and 2014 came within the NVL. After beating Masuk in 2013, Ansonia had its 48-game winning streak snapped by Newtown. The NVL went a sobering 1-12 against the SWC that 2014 weekend.
A four-time state champion in the 2010s, Ansonia went 124-9 overall, six losses were in state playoffs, one on Thanksgiving 2010 to Naugy and the other in the since-eliminated NVL championship. No other NVL team since Holy Cross in 2011 has won a football state title.
Would it be so terrible for Ansonia to step outside the NVL once or twice a fall? Virtually every year the Chargers are 10-0 and we have no idea until the playoffs if this is a very good or great Ansonia team.
With the NVL formed in 1930, many towns are so hide-bound traditional they’d rather lose every year to a Valley school than find an attractive similar-size, similarly competitive team 50 miles away. The culture of the community is as important as the culture of the program.
That was true a few years ago when the NVL principals and ADs decided against merging with the Berkshire League. Sports like girls soccer would have benefited.
“Distance and particularly tradition, sometimes outweighs the benefits,” Mariano said.
Every two years, the Pequot votes on new officers. Coginchaug AD Todd Petronio said Ellington AD Tim McCluskey took over as president in May. Petronio took over as vice president and Rockville AD Jeff Farrell as secretary. Coginchaug is in the Shoreline Conference in other sports. Petronio, who had been at North Haven of the SCC before going to Coginchaug in 2019, thought it would be beneficial to learn more for the Pequot.
“When Al Carbone started (the Alliance) as a FCIAC-SCC challenge, crisscrossing with a competitive opponent, I thought it was a good idea,” Petronio said. “After seeing a tweet and reading through it earlier in the month, I texted Al and asked why isn’t the Pequot in the Alliance? He texted back, ‘I’ll call you.’
“We talked about his perspective. I asked him for an invitation to the next time they met, which is in early September, hear what it’s all about, certainly share it with Tim and Jeff and report back to the Pequot. I certainly don’t want to speak for Tim or the league, but as an AD I think we need to explore options, do our due diligence for the sake of the conference.”
I’ve had some difficulty in getting a fuller Pequot perspective from a couple Pequot ADs: McCluskey did email, “There will be a change in the leadership of the Pequot so I am not sure I am the right person to speak with at this time.”
No team that has ended in Tech has won a CIAC state playoff game. Usually the score is a lot to a little.
At least a handful of the Tech schools in co-ops are Class L. While attendance in many schools is dropping, Tech schools, with kids wisely focusing on trades, seem to be holding their own. It is also true athletics often are not their No. 1 priority.
“The Alliance doesn’t fit for us at this point,” said CTC commissioner John Krot, athletic director at Parish Hill. “The concept is fine for other leagues, but our conference is ideally set up just for Tech schools.
“There is a difference between Tech schools and their preparation, the whole nine yards vs. other schools. We take it seriously. The kids take it seriously. Because of location and region some schools had found it difficult competitively. With co-op and individual teams, it’s ideal for a 10-game schedule. We don’t have to look elsewhere.”
Some criticism of the Alliance? Nearby rivalry games have been dropped. The conference dynamic is lost. Coaches want more input into the schedule. Some feel they are left with too many tough games. East Haven’s Scott Benoit, who has Alliance games at Killingly and Joel Barlow of Redding, was outspoken against playing teams an hour and a half away.
I went to the calculator. East Haven has 168 miles on the road. CTC’s Quinebaug Valley, comprised of Ellis Tech/Tourtellotte/Putnam, has 404 miles. No Alliance games.
“Travel has been an issue with the Technical schools since Day 1, since the Constitution Conference,” Krot said. “We have two divisions, but we have crossover games because schools may not offer a sport.”
Because the games are Friday night or Saturday it’s not as much of an issue and sub-varsity games are played locally. He said the Tech kids get used to it. Killingly of the ECC played an Alliance game at Brookfield in October 2019 and coach Chad Neal said his players were excited by a one-time, cross-state experience.
Tech teams getting wiped out in the playoffs is not so exciting.
“We’ve qualified a lot of teams,” Krot said. “Have we been successful? No. That’s on us. We have to get better. We have an equal chance. If we have a good enough record, we should get in especially with the number of teams they allow. If they limit teams and we felt we were on the onside looking in maybe we’d complain.
“You get in the state tournament, that’s a tremendous accomplishment — and I’m not for teams with 40 percent winning percentage getting in either. I’m old school. If you want to move on once you get there, prove you deserve it.”