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John Doyle: Turkey day games need a reboot

Saturday, November 24, 2012

You can go to a Mardi Gras parade in Baton Rouge, but it's not the same as seeing one in New Orleans. You can attend Oktoberfest in Berlin, but it's nothing like the real one in Munich.

That's sort of how it feels to watch high school football in New Hampshire on Thanksgiving morning. Sure, it's a lot of fun, but Massachusetts is where they do it right.

New Hampshire has neither the precedent nor the season structure that Massachusetts has, which would make it nearly impossible to duplicate the scope of the Thanksgiving Day football tradition our neighbors to the south enjoy every year.

In most cases, Massachusetts schools play the last game of the regular season on Thanksgiving. A majority of schools play on that morning, many in long-standing rivalry games that have a century of tradition behind them. Even if a team isn't in playoff contention, teams always get up for their rival, especially if the game is played on the tradition-steeped stage of Thanksgiving football.

New Hampshire has a few rivalries that go back 100 years or close to it. But in this state, by the time Thanksgiving rolls around, the championships have already been handed out and teams are playing for pride only. The major drawback to this format is that the teams participating are either a) playoff teams that are required to tack on a rather anticlimactic contest to the end of the season, or b) non-playoff teams that have to extend their seasons by up to three weeks just for one game.

The Portsmouth-Dover Thanksgiving rivalry, which ended after seven years following the Clippers' 27-14 win on Thursday at Tom Daubney Field, got caught in the crosshairs. Portsmouth has played in the last five Division III championship games (winning the last two), and the atmosphere at this year's Turkey Bowl game was far less exciting than the one that unfolded just five days earlier, when the Clippers beat Goffstown for the D-III title. Dover had been idle for 20 days, missing the playoffs after a disappointing 3-7 regular season. I believe the two schools are a perfect fit for one another on Thanksgiving, but perhaps the series needs to take a couple of years off to reboot.

Thanksgiving football in New Hampshire, while it will probably never match the scope of Massachusetts, is a tradition worth keeping. Here are four ideas to keep it fresh and relevant.

1) Get the bands and cheerleaders involved. There were no bands or cheerleaders at the Portsmouth-Dover game on Thursday morning, and their absence was noticeable. Awkward, even. If a school commits to playing on Thanksgiving, the entire school community should be involved, and that includes the supporting cast. I haven't taken an official survey, but the TV highlights of the Massachusetts game featured lots of music and lots of cheering.

2) It wouldn't hurt if the rest of the community came out either. Look, I know it's not 1950 anymore, and in this instant-oatmeal world, it's a hard sell to anyone with no connection to a school's football team to come out to watch a game on Thanksgiving morning. But the weather on Thursday was brilliant, the games are at a convenient time (10 a.m.) and what else are you going to do if you're not cooking? Watch the parade?

3) Make the games more meaningful. This is a tough one. In most cases, Thanksgiving matchups are decided before the season starts. That can make for an awkward situation if one team goes 0-10, then has to practice an extra 2-3 weeks for one game. Worse are the mismatches. One idea would be to treat Thanksgiving games like college bowl games by waiting until the regular season is over to invite teams to play against each other. This, in a way, is what Manchester does. Somersworth-Spaulding has provided a good matchup the last couple of years, but will it always? Would Dover-St. Thomas have been a good game this year? Probably. What about a Winnacunnet-Exeter rematch?

4) I'm looking at you, Maine. There's a longstanding prohibition on Maine high schools playing on Thanksgiving (a grandfather clause allows Portland and Deering to play against each other). Lift it. How fun would it be for Noble and Spaulding to play each other? Or Marshwood and Dover? Somersworth and Traip? Portsmouth and York? The possibilities are ... well, not endless, but they're fun to think about.

John Doyle is a staff sports writer and editor at Foster's Daily Democrat. Follow him on Twitter at @JohnDoyle603 and reach him at