They’re bitter Fairfield County rivals, with a long and contentious history (like this and this and this.)
But now that they’ve both reached the Class L championship game, Darien and New Canaan are apparently uniting for a common cause:
Changing the state football championship venue from New Britain’s Arute Field to Fairfield County.
Former Stamford Advocate reporter Dave Ruden, now of his eponymous site ‘The Ruden Report,’ which covers the league, Tweeted this morning that the CIAC home offince in Cheshire has been inundated with calls for the Connecticut high school athletics governing body to switch the site to nearby Boyle Stadium in Stamford.
It was in 2008 that New Canaan was pressured by the FCIAC to move its Turkey Bowl home game, which was for the FCIAC title, to the historic field. An estimated 10,000 fans showed up to watch New Canaan defeat Darien 28-20.
The two teams met a week later in the Class MM championship game at Trumbull, just few towns away up Route 15. The size of the crowd for that game was approximately 40 percent of the Boyle crowd.
So, with both of those things in mind, people were busy bugging the CIAC to get a change of venue.
Top CIAC officials have spent all morning responding to email campaign by New Canaan & Darien to get Class L final moved to Boyle. #cthsfb
— Dave Ruden (@DaveRuden) December 9, 2013
Both Darien and New Canaan’s Twitter accounts were united in this thinking.
@Darienfootball Let’s move this thing to Boyle! #cthsfb (2008 10,000+ fans)
— New Canaan Football (@NewCanaanFB) December 9, 2013
A first? NC and #Darien in agreement! MT @NewCanaanFB: @Darienfootball Let’s move this thing to Boyle! #cthsfb (2008 10,000+ fans)
— Darien HS Football (@Darienfootball) December 9, 2013
(ugh).
As absurd is this sounded to me, we here at football central reached out to the CIAC to provide a statement in response:
Here it is:
“The CIAC has a contract to play all of its football championship games at Central Connecticut State. The site has been known to the public since the start of the season, and we have an obligation to honor the contract. CIAC understands it may be more convenient for some teams to play at a different site, but we feel CCSU is an excellent site, will be a great venue for the finals, and for large events like this it is simply not possible or practical to change venues.”
So we’ll take that as a soft, but firm ‘No’ …albeit in the nicest way possible.
My official response to all of this?
See you guys at New Britain!
If you don’t want to go, I know of teams from Middletown and North Haven that would just looooove to take your place.
Or, to put it another way:
