Revisiting the matching of a playoff-era Middlesex County shutout record: another Aquinas team had a similar season before Piscataway
With the closure of Gridiron New Jersey, our work to publish the entire collection of NJSIAA playoff brackets from 1974 to the present left us a lot of research to be done. But we learned a lot about the history of the playoffs in the process. And one of them pertained to an incredible feat by the St. Thomas Aquinas football team in 2021 under the late Brian Meeney. That much we knew already. It was the first full year of Big Central Conference play, which should have been 2020 except for a global pandemic. And STA matched a feat…
Late-hired Big Central coaches may need honeymoon period as they get to know their teams, assemble staffs with little time before camp
By the time the Fourth of July rolled around, eleven new football coaches had already been hired in the Big Central Conference for 2025, with one – Perth Amboy – on the way. That makes 25 coaching changes in the league in the last two seasons alone. And after the Panthers’ new skipper Evan Baubles got approved by the Board of Education this past Thursday, the 12th coach was in place, but there was to be one more, although it actually had happened earlier. Phlip McGuane stepped down just a few weeks ago at Dunellen, a year after replacing Dave…
Not so fast: One more Big Central hire, as new Dunellen AD Kyle Baach takes over Destroyers’ football program
Longtime Dunellen football coach Dave DeNapoli retired after the 2024 season – his 29th with the Destroyers – then handed the keys to veteran mentor Phlip McGuane before he retired as Coordinator of Athletics this past April. McGuane held both roles for a few months but now has ceded them to Kyle Baach, a native of Basking Ridge, who will be a head coach for the first time. Baach was living in South Carolina with his wife and young child when they decided they wanted to be back in Central Jersey and closer to their families, and he started looking…
Perth Amboy hires Wall alum, ’25 Carteret assistant Evan Baubles to rejuvenate football program
The Perth Amboy Board of Education has approved a new coach for the Panthers’ football program, hiring Evan Baubles with an eye toward elevating the struggling program over the next few years. Baubles – who was approved at Thursday afternoon’s meeting – is a guidance counselor at South Amboy High School for juniors and seniors, and spent the past year as an assistant at Carteret under Kevin Freeman. He met Freeman while the two were at Lakewood, where Baubles spent nearly two decades, before a year at Hightstown and another with the Ramblers. The 42-year-old Baubles is a graduate of…
Gameday with Marcus Borden: Summer 2026 Edition! (Part 2)
School’s out for summer, but the Central Jersey Sports Radio crew is in! There are just six more weeks until preseason camp begins, and there’s a ton to talk about, so let’s finish what we started with CJSR analyst Marcus Borden! In Part One – which can be found here – Mike and Marcus begin with taking a look at the huge recent news that Gridiron New Jersey has been shut down by creator Jon Fass. The site was a resource for every high school coach around the state for playoff standings, records, and playoff history. They also talk the…
Gameday with Marcus Borden: Summer 2026 Edition! (Part 1)
School’s out for summer, but the Central Jersey Sports Radio crew is in! There are just six more weeks until preseason camp begins, and there’s a ton to talk about, so let’s do it with CJSR analyst Marcus Borden! Mike and Marcus begin with taking a look at the huge recent news that Gridiron New Jersey has been shut down by creator Jon Fass. The site was a resource for every high school coach around the state for playoff standings, records, and playoff history. They also talk the “new” snaking procedure being back in the playoff formula. This episode is…
Your handy, all-in-one guide to all our Big Central Conference “early looks” for 2026, plus recent coverage
We are just six weeks from the first date high school football teams across New Jersey can practice in advance of the 2026 season, but many programs have been busy. Individuals are going to camps, teams and have been participating in 7-on-7s, trying to get an early glimpse of their situations before hitting the practice field in earnest, with Week Zero of the season – generally, an optional start time, but now, seemingly, the default, so can we call it Week One already? – set for the weekend of August 27 through the 30th. Some teams will play longtime rivals,…
Earlier than usual, here are the estimated starting Strength Index numbers for the 2026 H.S. Football season
With Gridiron New Jersey now off-line after more than two decades, and NJ.com set to take over the official role of playoff calculator for the NJSIAA – as it does for all other sports – many coaches are in limbo if they never wrote down their own Strength Index number from the end of 2025, or those of their opponents. Well, have no fear; we’ve got them for you! Though Gridiron never released final SI numbers for 2025, we published our own at the end of the season, which can be found here. However, those are not the starting numbers…
Carrying the torch: NJSIAA football playoff brackets are live on Central Jersey Sports Radio in wake of Gridiron closure
The news hit like a ton of bricks for football coaches, fans, the media, and just plain, old-fashioned football history junkies. Gridiron New Jersey, a bastion of simple, easy-to-access, free historical data on high school football in the Garden State shut down last Friday. The site was popular over the years for its playoff standings and calculations, team records going back to its inception in 2003, and its NJSIAA playoff brackets, documenting every section, public or parochial, in every season since the playoff era began in 1974. The NJSIAA has playoff history on its site (you can find the football…
Early look at Big Central Football 2026: Big graduation losses for Manville could level playing field in Freedom Silver Division
Just like some of the large school divisions, no change was made on the opposite end of the spectrum by the Big Central Conference when it comes to the Freedom Silver Division, which will keep the same six teams it had last year. Manville is coming off a 10-1 season and a year in which it scored the first playoff win in school history, but they will see some significant graduation losses that could allow others to make a move. Bound Brook and Belvidere are coming off .500 seasons, while Middlesex will look to gain some ground, South Hunterdon has…
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