by Mike Pavlichko
As major league sports resume this summer, the late August start to the high school football season has been moved to the first weekend in October.
The NJSIAA made the change in response to the coronavirus pandemic, effectively shortening the 2020 season.
The current plan has teams playing six regular-season games, as well as two “postseason” games, although they will not be traditional “playoff games” as in years past. Just as the regular season schedules will be shuffled to reduce travel times between schools, the 2020 postseason will be more regional in nature.
New NJSIAA Executive Director Colleen McGuire announced the changes in early July.
Locally, it means the new 60-member Big Central Football Conference – formed as a merger between the Greater Middlesex and Mid-State Conferences – will have to go back to the drawing board and, at least for now, scrap the divisions and schedule it had come up with late last year.