Krause: It’s good to have the Saugus-Peabody rivalry back

The Northeastern Conference – finally – is whole again.I say this because, finally, all 12 of its teams are playing against each other on Thanksgiving ? something that hasn’t happened in two years.The resumption of the Saugus-Peabody rivalry was the key in making this a closed loop on Thanksgiving. For the previous two years, Saugus has played Chelsea while Peabody has gone against Malden Catholic.It didn’t matter that Saugus swept both games from Chelsea, or that MC beat Peabody twice in a row. What matters is that a good rivalry – even one that had fallen into tough times due to the competitive imbalance between the two teams – has been resurrected.Rivalries are special because of the connection that runs through them. The minute you’ve played in the English-Classical or Swampscott-Marblehead game, you become part of something that dates back almost 100 years. There’s a continuum that defines these rivalries, and that’s what helps makes sports special.That’s why it was so discouraging when Boston College and Holy Cross discontinued their rivalry game. Once upon a time, that was a great game. And in some cases, the game’s been the stuff of legends – such as in 1942, when the Eagles were supposed to have a victory celebration at the Coconut Grove nightclub only to lose to the Crusaders. That very night, the Coconut Grove caught fire and 492 people perished – none of them members of the BC football team, because they weren’t there.Holy Cross’ football fortunes took a serious dip, obviously, and the rivalry was discontinued. But the Crusaders are definitely a lot better these days, and who’s to say they couldn’t give this year’s BC team a run for its money? Especially since BC has made it a point to play other New England Division 1AA schools as part of its pre-ACC schedule.Getting back to Saugus-Peabody, though, the Sachems saw their own football fortunes dip in the last 10 or 15 years ? and a lot of that came about because of budget issues that precluded Saugus having a JV team. Younger kids in the program couldn’t get experience at a lower, less pressure-packed level. When you compound this with the fact that Saugus falls within the parameters of a ton of private schools, not to mention Northeast Regional, good players were being drawn away in droves.While all this was happening, Ed Nizwantowski was building Peabody into one of the state’s elite football programs, on a par with Everett and Brockton. The high-water mark for Peabody came in 1993 when the Tanners bombarded St. John’s Prep in the Super Bowl, 34-0.Under those conditions, it was certainly understandable that one team or the other would want to pull the plug. But in one of the more ironic occurrences in the annals of Thanksgiving football, Saugus beat Peabody three years ago, 13-0, in the rain ? the last game of the rivalry before it was resumed. Prior to that, the last time Saugus won a game against Peabody was 1988, when Marc Fauci was a junior.Prior to that, though, the game was always the most unpredictable of the Thanksgiving Day rivalries, and it’ll be good to see it back on the radar again.This game ought to be competitive in that both teams have had their struggles this year. But there have been years when parity hasn’t mattered. The Saugus kids always rose to the challenge of playing a physically superior Peabody team on Thanksgiving. And more often than not they gave the Tanners a game ? until the very end when things did, admittedly, get out of hand.So let’s celebrate its rebirth. There’s no way of knowing what’s going to happen to these two programs in the coming years. Saugus has a good, thorough coach in Mike Broderick and Peabody has something similar in Scott Wlasuk. Someday, maybe, this game will have its old-time luster restored.Steve Krause is sports editor of The Item.