Who Needs Helmets?

Seamus Kelly, foreground, is a rugger


A local high school running back with stunning statistics is not going Ivy after all. Thanks to a reader who noticed this piece, we now know that Catholic League all-star Seamus Kelly isn't even looking to play football.

Instead, Kelly will play rugby at Cal Berkeley, where that team has a storied and great tradition.

I know it probably sounds like sour grapes, but the truth is that we haven't really seen a star college football player come out of the NYC Catholic football league, (CHFL), in a long time. I'm not sure that Kelly would have made an impact at Columbia.

That's too bad, because Catholic schools from other parts of the country, namely Ohio, Illinois, and California, have sent us a lot of recent stars and other solid players recently. That includes some good looking prospects coming to the class of 2013.


This begs two questions:

1) Why has high school football across the New York City area fallen on hard times? We don't even see many BCS recruits from Long Island anymore.


2) Would a star high school player from NYC bring in the crowds to Wien Stadium? Has New York become a "football soft" town when it comes to schoolastic sports, or could the local tabloids create a mythical hero New Yorkers would keep following into college?

Please comment away!