via SFGATE
Updated 7:14 pm, Thursday, November 2, 2017
It’s rivalry week for Bay Area football teams.
Some carry playoff ramifications: Antioch at Pittsburg, Liberty-Brentwood at Freedom-Oakley, Acalanes-Lafayette at Miramonte-Orinda.
Others not so much: Burlingame at San Mateo, Amador Valley-Pleasanton at Foothill-Pleasanton, Menlo School-Atherton vs. Sacred Heart Prep-Atherton at Foothill College-Los Altos Hills.
Either way, emotions run high both on the field among competitors and off the field among communities.
“We’ve been playing these games for decades, approaching a century,” said Pittsburg coach Vic Galli, whose program has played Antioch 100 times in the Big Little Game.
Pittsburg, which hosts Antioch at 7 p.m. Friday, leads the overall series 66-27-7. “There’s a whole lot of people still around who have been involved in the game.”
On the Peninsula, Saturday’s 11 a.m. Burlingame-San Mateo matchup — the Little Big Game — is the 90th in the series. Burlingame holds a 53-32-4 edge.
“It’s really a tremendous event,” Burlingame coach John Philipopoulos said. “Just get there early to find parking.”
But combine parking frustrations and community rivalries with some hard-hitting football competition and things can get out of hand in a hurry.
Two East Bay games — Kennedy-Richmond at El Cerrito (Sept. 29) and Skyline at Oakland Tech (Oct. 6) — were stopped early because of fighting by fans in the stands and surrounding areas.
Both games were deemed “no contests,” meaning no record of either game will be made.
The Oakland Athletic League took action after the Skyline-Tech cancellation, allowing only students from competing schools to attend games. All other minors may attend, but must be accompanied by an adult.
There were also problems at Kezar Stadium on Oct. 20 when Mission and Galileo played.
After a Mission player was called for a late hit following a kickoff, Mission players entering the field to huddle began sprinting toward the Galileo sideline. More Mission players followed as did coaches to restrain their players.
Besides the late hit, two offsetting unsportsmanlike-conduct penalties were called, which irritated Galileo coach Mark Huynh.
Doesn’t “leaving your own bench during an altercation warrant an ejection?” asked Huynh, who sent a video of the incident to San Francisco Section Commissioner Don Collins and the head of the referees’ association. “If that’s the case, the whole Mission team should have been ejected.”
A Mission starter was later ejected for a late hit (and suspended for a game), but the bench-clearing incident came and went without additional discipline.
“I’m glad the referees did see that, but there’s a bigger picture here,” Huynh said. “I was really proud of our kids for keeping their poise when they came at our bench. That could have been a very dangerous situation.”
It was dangerous, too, but deliriously so in the final moment’s of Acalanes’ 35-28 win over visiting Campolindo-Moraga last week, called by longtime Campolindo coach Kevin Macy one of “the greatest games in Lamorinda history.”
Reminiscent of “The Play” in the 1982 Cal-Stanford Big Game, an overflow Acalanes crowd stormed the field before the final play had ended. Starting on his own 35 with 6 seconds left, Campolindo quarterback John Torchio scrambled right toward the Acalanes bench and near midfield and then threw a lateral across the field.
The ball was eventually gathered by Parker Windatt at the Campo 45. But aby then, Acalanes fans – along with most of the players — had begun storming the field.
Windatt had open field in front of him and sprinted down the Campo sideline before Acalanes safety Trenton Tso knocked him out of bounds at the 25.
With the fans and players having gone onto the field before the play ended, Macy pleaded for a penalty and an extra untimed play. But the referee deemed that the fans did not impede Windatt when he was running with the ball. Game over.
Contra Costa Officials Association supervisor Dave Cotaia saw the final sequence via TheCube.com and said Wednesday, “I can’t disagree.”
“The high school rule book basically says it’s up to the referee to determine whether the play was interfered with,” Cotaia said. “By no means is this a good situation for anyone. Certainly not the officials. The referee had to exercise judgment and he felt the runner was not interfered with.”
Cotaia, a former police chief who offers rules interpretation on college football for ESPN, said crowd control is a problem at all levels.
“Whether you have 50,000 at the Coliseum or 3,000 at Acalanes run on the field, no amount of police or security is going to stop them,” he said. “It can be a very dangerous situation.”
Said Macy: “It was a wild night and with one more play probably would have made it wilder. I guess it will just add to the folklore of an amazing game.”
MaxPreps senior writer Mitch Stephens covers high school sports for The San Francisco Chronicle.