It’s been a while since these teams have lost a Big Central football game, and they’ll go into 2026 with long winning streaks

The Bernards football team began the 2025 season with a 23-game winning streak against the Big Central Conference. After winning the North 2, Group 2 title in 2023, then reaching the finals in 2024, this year’s team suffered a first-round exit, falling to Madison at home, 22-21.

These things happen, but Bernards will ride a 32-game win streak against league competition into the 2026 season, with a chance to set the Big Central record.

The current mark is 35, held by St. Thomas Aquinas, but that ended back on October 17th, when they lost to then-top-ranked St. Joseph-Metuchen, 41-19, in North Edison. Bernards’ last loss against the BCC came on September 2, 2022 to Hillside, 35-20.

The Mountaineers had been making up ground on St. Thomas this year, with all BCC teams on their regular season schedule, and St. Thomas playing out-of-conference teams besides their division schedule. But next year, they’ll need just three league wins to tie the mark, and four to break it.

The Big Central has not yet released its divisional alignments, nor the schedule for the next two seasons.

Next on the list are New Providence and Manville, also smaller schools. (Bernards is a Group 2, while the others are Group 1s.) The Pioneers have won 13 straight in conference play, going 8-0 vs. the BCC this year after winning their last five against the league in 2024. The Mustangs’ streak is at 12, 7-0 this season after also finishing with five straight against the Big Central a year ago.

Those are the only league teams in double-digits, with St. Joseph-Metuchen on an eight-game BCC winning streak, all those wins coming this season.

Group 1 Glassboro rules New Jersey…

Statewide, the longest winning streak belongs to Glassboro, which has won 27 in a row, their last loss coming in the 2023 Group 1 final at Rutgers to Mountain Lakes. They won the state Group 1 title last season with a 13-0 record, and this year finished 14-0, beating Cedar Grove this past Sunday at Rutgers to win a second straight state championship.

Washington Twp. is next at 14 straight, all this year, in a 14-0 season in which they won the state’s Group 5 title. The Minutemen took out Old Bridge in the Central Jersey Group 5 title game.

Old Tappan – and West Morris were also in the mix, at 17 and 12 games, respectively, but Old Tappan lost to Cedar Creek, 34-7, in the Group 3 final at MetLife Stadium last Friday, and West Morris lost to Old Tappan in the Group 3 semifinals the Friday prior. Butler also saw its 11-game win streak snapped – with all coming this year – in the Group 1 semifinals, a 24-21 loss to Cedar Grove, but they’ve also won 27 of their last 30 games.

That leaves just Fort Lee – a Super Football Conference Ivy team, which is not eligible for the playoffs – next up with an eleven-game win streak.

The longest state streak coming into the season was held by Group 5 Toms River North, which lost its Week Zero opener this season, 21-0 to Red Bank Catholic on August 28th.

For the record – literally, and figuratively – Glassboro would have a long way to go to reach the overall state mark. Nearby Paulsboro won 63 games from 1992 through 1998. The Bulldogs would need 36 more wins to tie that mark, which – assuming they’d have to play 14 games a year – would mean they’d have to win two more Group 1 titles in 2026 and 2027, then win their first eight games of 2028.

Randolph also won 54 straight – and went 59 without a loss – from 1986 to 1991.

But there’s also an asterisk here. New Jersey didn’t play beyond sectional finals until 2018, and added the state group championships in 2022. So, until 2012, when the playoffs expanded to five groups, 16 public schools could have ended the season undefeated, then 20 after that. But in 2018 ,that number shrunk to ten, and now only five public schools (minus the Ivies) can end their season without a loss.

Nowadays, it’s much harder to win as many games as Paulsboro and Randolph did.

Back to Bernards…

But lets get back to the Mountaineers. Take out the playoffs, and Bernards holds the state’s longest active regular season winning streak, now at 34 games, with their 2022 Hillside loss also serving as their last regular season defeat overall.

You read that right, by the time Bernards steps on a football field again for an actual game, it will have been almost four years since their last regular season defeat. They are 40-5 overall – regular season and playoffs – in the last four seasons.

The extra two wins (compared to their Big Central streak) have been against their only non-conference regular season opponents since: Week Zero in 2024 at Monmouth, a 35-6 victory, and at Jefferson in Week Zero of 2023, a 47-6 win. They also opened with a Week Zero win in 2022 against Overbrook, 21-6, but the Hillside loss came the week after.

This season, Bernards played a Big Central crossover against Cranford in Week Zero, coming up with a 27-15 win.

Glassboro has the next longest regular season win streak, now at 19 games, going 8-0 this year and last, after winning their final three regular season games of 2023.

On the losing end…

It’s been a tough few years for Middlesex County football, with the state’s longest losing streaks belonging to Highland Park until the last game of 2023, JP Stevens, then Ferris up in North Jersey, and back down here to New Brunswick, and now Dunellen.

The Zebras snapped a 32-game losing streak in their season finale against West Windsor-Plainsboro, a co-op between the North and South high schools, on October 29th. (We’ll have more on that win in the next week or so, so stay tuned!)

The Destroyers went 0-9 in Year One under Phlip McGuane, who replaced longtime mentor Dave DeNapoli following his retirement. But adjustment was to be expected after decades under the same coach in the same system, and so the Destroyers will look to use their experience to get back in the win column next season.

Their last win came on October 19 of 2023, a 34-28 win over Brearley.

Next on the list are Orange and West Windsor-Plainsboro at 14, and Long Branch and Paterson Eastside at 13 straight losses heading into 2026.