Should there be a national Catholic HS football league? It may happen someday

Picture this: It's Thanksgiving Day, before the NFL games kick off, and Notre Dame Stadium is packed with high school football fans, with crisp amber and maize leaves as a backdrop.

It’s the national championship game for a national Catholic high school football league.

A dream? Maybe. But the template for just such a plan was in the works in North Jersey a few years ago. Former Pope John coach Brian Carlson convened a meeting of his fellow non-public colleagues to pitch them the concept and found interested parties.

“There is enough of a connection and competitiveness,” Carlson said last week. “I know a lot of people. We can play a national Catholic league championship.”

Carlson had a letterhead made. He called it the National Catholic High School Football Association and wrote a motto: "Family, Faith, Football."

There is lots of talk about the Power 5 schools in college football breaking away from the NCAA and forming their own coalition. There's good reason for it. The NCAA’s rules are arbitrary and hardly enforced. Name, image and likeness rules have given the players more power. Television networks are paying billions for the broadcast rights. Power 5 programs are operating in a different stratosphere than other college football programs.

There are a lot of similarities in high school football. There's a huge class divide between public schools and non-public football powers in most of America.

New Jersey has the Super Football Conference United Division with Bergen Catholic, Don Bosco, St. Joseph and St. Peter's Prep.

California has the Trinity League with Mater Dei and St. John Bosco. Ohio has its Greater Catholic League with St. Xavier and La Salle.

Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., have the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference with DeMatha Catholic and Gonzaga Prep.

These leagues are where the fans are. They're where the colleges recruit. They're where the best players go.

How would a national football league work?

The belief that planes are passé and bus rides are better has started to take root among non-public football programs.

New Jersey has seen an explosion of early-season events that pit teams from the tri-state area against one another. There is the Battle of The Beach in Ocean City and the enormous Rumble on the Raritan at Rutgers.

The best non-public teams are in sort of a Catch-22. In order to get top talent, they have to go on big trips. Those trips add status to the program, but they're also expensive.

But if a North Jersey powerhouse can get a great game against a team within a 200-mile radius, why would it want to go anywhere else?

“My feeling is, it's good for the betterment of football everywhere,” said Tom McGuire, an event organizer for the Rumble on the Raritan. “If New York is good, then there’s no reason to make a travel budget to go to California and Arizona. And now that we’re all back on TV, I think it makes sense.”

Carlson's vision called for teams split into eight regions across the country. Teams would be split into A and B groups (large schools and smaller schools). New Jersey would be mixed in with teams stretching from Maine to Washington, D.C.

“There is great football in Maryland. From the time New Jersey started playing those games back in 2011, there are great match-ups of similar minded teams and it’s not too far away,” Paramus Catholic coach Greg Russo said. “It’s a great experience for everyone that has produced great games.”

There would be a schedule, a playoff to crown the Northeast region champion, and that champion would advance to face other Regional champs.

“You could have all the regional finals at one of the Catholic university campuses, like Villanova or Boston College,” Carlson said. Notre Dame seemed like the perfect spot for the finals, he said.

What are the benefits to a national league?

A national league would ensure teams are always playing against elite competition. It would also give the schools the ability to set their own rules and schedules.

North Jersey wouldn’t lose the Bergen Catholic-Don Bosco rivalry or the St. Joseph-St. Peter’s Prep thrillers, but those teams' other regular season games would include the best competition from across the Northeast.

“It would definitely make for a lot of good football,” said Bergen Catholic coach Vito Campanile. He isn’t endorsing the idea, but did say he has heard it discussed.

"I think the SFC and Dan Vivino and Denis Nelson, specifically, have done a tremendous job in filling our schedules, which has always been a tough thing to do," St. Joseph coach Dan Marangi said. "The biggest issue I see us being confronted with now is the lack of lower-level games when we have these matchups. Teams aren't lining up to play the lower levels."

Finding suitable JV opponents would be an issue. The exact rules would have to be figured out. The elephant in the room – as it is in every high school sport – is transfers. How would transfers be handled? Would a student have to sit out at all?

But a national league would offer a uniform schedule in which teams start and end their seasons at the same time. That would be welcomed. So too would uniform rules on spring football instead of a hodgepodge of different state rules.

College recruiters would appreciate it too. And so would broadcast companies, who would likely bid for the rights to these games and the playoffs.

What's holding this idea back?

Even though there are benefits, there are a myriad reasons this notion is a non-starter.

For one, we’re talking about high school athletics here. At age 15, kids aren’t supposed to be national football stars. Or at least, they haven’t been. They’re supposed to be playing for their town and eating cupcakes, not traveling 200 miles for a road game.

Travel for fans would be an issue too. How many Don Bosco students would have the means to drive to Notre Dame for a championship game? High school sports remain one of the last bastions of American small-town communities. Being local is a plus, not a minus.

But the biggest sticking point is that these Catholic schools all usually belong to their state high school athletic association, unless they are independent.

If Bergen Catholic wanted to join the new Catholic football league, it might have to leave the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association. The Crusaders need a wrestling schedule, a basketball schedule and a baseball schedule.

Co-ed schools like Paramus Catholic would need games against other co-ed schools. Making a trip up I-95 for a football game on a Saturday is one thing, making the same trip for a baseball game on a Wednesday afternoon doesn’t make much sense.

“I really think you could work a deal out with the NJSIAA and say, 'This is going to be a revenue producer for them,' and we could all work together,” Carlson said. “There is already friction between the public and non-public schools and we’re already half kicked out anyway, so let’s take the leap.”

Carlson's idea led to the creation of the Super Football Conference, which put non-public teams in their own divisions in 2016. For now, it's a compromise. New Jersey gets to have its non-public superpowers and its small schools.

But the idea for a national Catholic high school football conference is out there. That day could come.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: National Catholic High School Football League? It could happen