Continued...
Although life would bring many new experiences to each player, each found that nothing in life filled the void left by the absence of violent pickup football with old friends. Still in contact, the players organized a schedule for the 1997 season, with games before and after Christmas, but first, would come a flagship game, a game so important, it would overshadow the holiday on which it was played. This game would take place on Thanksgiving Day. On November 27, 1997, the first Thanksgiving World Championship Football Game took place, followed by heated contests on both Christmas Eve and Boxing Day.
Despite the fact that the players were separated by hundreds of miles, the football had survived, yet these heated holiday gatherings lacked a name, so prior to the 1998 season, it was decided that when the sides faced off on November 26, 1998, they would do so at Jiblet Jam II. The Christmas Eve game was named Jingle Jam, with the post-Christmas affair earning the moniker, �The Boxing Day Massacre�.
A Common Name:
Although the players shared a common game, a common field, and three annual events, they shared no common name. They played in New Milford. (Southern New Milford, to be exact.) They played football. (Sort of.) They weren�t a team, since they played against one another with different sides each game, nor were they a league, however, football was their highest priority. These facts were all taken into account, and although nobody remembers the exact date, at some point around the 1999 season, the group that had been playing pickup football behind Hill and Plain school since the fall of 1995 came to be known as the Southern New Milford Football Concern.
The SNMFC gathered at Hill and Plain each season for all three legs of their triple crown, providing such thrilling events as Jiblet Jam III, Jiblet Jam IV: Millennium, and the unforgettable Boxing Day Massacre III. The schedule remained unchanged until 2001. Following the emotional Jiblet Jam V: The Football Game For New York, the SNMFC gathered before Christmas for Jingle Jam V: Rage Against Anthrax, with Brian Durand, just days prior to his own wedding putting in a valiant performance at automatic offense.
The next week, the SNMFC played outside of Southern New Milford for the very first time. The day after the wedding of Brian Durand, the available members of the SNMFC engaged in a classic battle upon a frozen high school football field in the Philadelphia Suburbs in �The Nuptial Nightmare�. The MVP performance of Tom Marks earned him the newly designated Brian Durand Memorial Trophy. �The D-Cup�, as it has come to be known, was a centerpiece at the Durand wedding. It was named for the first member of the football concern to marry and has become the award for the Most Valuable Player of any Nuptial Nightmare game. The MVP, in an act of true selflessness passed the beer filled trophy to each of the game�s participants.
The Defining Moment:
In seven seasons, the Southern New Milford Football Concern had played in the mud, in the snow, in the dark, and in other states, however they had never played against anyone else. That would change in the fall of 2002, when SNMFC Veteran Tom Marks got married. The wedding would be in Middlebury, Vermont, and unlike the first Nuptial Nightmare, this match-up would offer up a stable of the groom�s college friends as opponents. The Groom and his Middlebury chums had spent their college years honing their skills in the Middlebury College Intramural League.
As the date of Nuptial Nightmare II: The Green Mountain Massacre, drew near, the animosity between the two sides built, as flurry of insults were exchanged online. After six years of beating each other into submission, could the SNMFC unite for long enough to beat someone else? What would happen if they lost? Could they ever play a Jiblet Jam, or even look each other in the eye, if they were humiliated by a group of outsiders? The SNMFC would face its' greatest challenge, but in doing so, would find it�s defining moment.
On Friday, October 25, 2002, the SNMFC lined up as a single team for the first and only time, in the shadow of the very building in which their opponents, decked out in matching blue uniforms, once called home. It didn�t take long for the visitors to get familiar to their new surroundings, as the Southern New Milford side jumped out to a 56-0 lead, en route to a 104-14 win. As an act of loyalty and friendship, Tom Marks switched teams, lining up against his SNMFC teammates in a rematch. The personnel move yielded little in the way of results, as the SNMFC rolled to a 50-22 win.
Still Jammin':
The Southern New Milford Football Concern returned triumphantly to Hill and Plain for the 2002 regular season. Marc Lucente�s surprise MVP performance highlighted Jingle Jam VI: Me and My Family are Looking for Sex, while the newly renamed, Kwanza Khaos, featured the concern once again playing the grinding, three-hour marathons of their high school years. This fall, the SNMFC enters its ninth season, playing upon the scared grounds of Hill and Plain School, where most of it�s players started school almost two decades ago. After eight years, the SNMFC has established itself as more than just a bunch of guys that play pickup football. Its games are bigger than the holidays on which they are played. Its fierce competition unifies people separated by thousands of miles. Its players have proven themselves to be part of the pickup sports pantheon. BACK
